Got to love America, or should we?
By Lola Renegade | September 15, 2025
Note: Let me be clear—it is not every white person I am naming, but it is the majority. The majority who remain silent, complicit, comfortable, the majority who benefit, the majority who uphold the systems that crush people of color and other marginalized groups. If this does not apply to you, you already know it. But if it unsettles you, then perhaps it does.
Even before the details emerged about the murder of the venomous, wrong-wing racist and misogynist Charlie Kirk, most of us in Black America already knew the trigger had been pulled by another white man. This is their story etched into the blood of this nation: violence as their signature, destruction as their inheritance. Since America’s barbaric founding, violence has been the white race’s unchecked birthright. That is their profile, their rite of passage, their playbook. Violence is the heirloom they polish and pass down—every day, generation to generation.
On September 10, 2025, Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University, a PWI (predominately white institution). Shot in the neck in front of nearly 3,000 people, he died onstage. The alleged shooter, Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old white man, was quickly taken into custody. His case is a chilling reminder that white male violence is so normalized in America that it now eats its own prophets. And yet the system will still bend toward verbal dancing, searching for mental health explanations, lone-wolf excuses, anything but naming it what it is—domestic terror. It is a label they are too eager and willing to put on people of color in America and around the world. Their cults’ response to Kirk’s murder was to call HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and threaten violence and terrorism. Several had to request their students and faculty either shelter in place and/or cancel classes.
America refuses to stop rehearsing this script—white men killing, white men destroying, white men writing tragedy into our lives, not only in America but across the globe. Mass destruction is in their DNA, passed down through their misplaced and deranged obsessions with guns, distorted Bible scriptures, and sports—the only semblance of acceptance of Black existence as long as they win them championship rings. Violence is poured into the very marrow of their bones. America was built on this truth, and America protects this truth. White men kill, and the system shields them. White men destroy, and the culture excuses them. White men riot, and they are pardoned. That is why January 6th became a stage for their rage and, somehow, a ticket back to power for their DEI (Dangerous, Entitled and Ignorant), authoritarian leader, Donald Trump.
In Georgia, fake elector Burt Jones—rather than facing prison for election interference—became lieutenant governor and now campaigns for governor. He is cut from the same cloth as U.S. Representative Preston Brooks, who on May 22, 1856, nearly beat Senator Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for daring to speak against slavery. Brooks was not punished; he was celebrated, showered with gifts of canes—the very weapon he wielded—sent from admirers across the country. This is America’s pattern: criminals exalted, violence rewarded. The more the years turn, the more the story stays the same.
The cycle is not accidental—it is curated, defended, and enshrined in law and politics. What happened to Charlie Kirk is not an aberration; it is the continuation of a bloody pattern that America refuses to break.
From its bloody birth to its turbulent present, America has been defined by one constant: the protection of white male violence and terrorism at all costs. The nation was built on it, enshrined in law, excused in culture, and perpetuated in politics. It explains and justifies how millions of people of color were slaughtered, enslaved, and terrorized with near-total impunity for white perpetrators. It explains why unarmed Black people are killed for existing while white men who commit mass shootings, lynchings, insurrections—even political assassinations—are shielded with sympathy, excuses, or outright celebration.
It is evident why white America wants and needs to erase our history. America’s origin story is soaked in bloody violence. Indigenous nations were massacred under the banner of “manifest destiny.” Africans were kidnapped, enslaved, and subjected to brutalization and death; our entire lives treated as property. Even after emancipation, lynching became a national pastime. Thousands of Black men, women, and children were tortured and murdered while white communities packed meals and gathered to watch, laugh, take photographs to put on postcards and mail across the country. Never was a white perpetrator held accountable. This impunity was never accidental; it was the system working exactly as designed.
Courts have always stood at the center of America’s protection of white violence. The Dred Scott decision declared that Black people had no rights white people were bound to respect. Jim Crow laws legalized racial terror and called it order. And today, a majority of Supreme Court justices have draped the blood-soaked American flag and the crippled bald eagle in Donald Trump’s hands—the worst president in history. And that says a lot, given the long parade of slave-owning, genocidal, racist presidents before him. These justices have fortified stand-your-ground statutes to shield white men who kill us, while Black men who defend themselves are caged for life. The double standard is staggering: Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy with a toy gun, was executed in seconds by police, while white mass shooters are escorted calmly into custody, treated to fast food on the way to jail, and described as ‘troubled’ instead of terrorists.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, upon being newly re-elected, did the unthinkable: on his very first day back in office, he signed a proclamation granting blanket pardons to more than 1,200 individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6th insurrection. Leaders of violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw their prison sentences vanish overnight. Even those who assaulted and killed police officers and threatened members of Congress walked free. Once again, America’s justice system bent itself to shield white male violence in its most brazen, anti-democratic form. To add insult to injury, the Trump administration agreed to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt—the white woman killed while storming the Capitol—transforming her into a martyr rather than an insurrectionist.
Kyle Howard Rittenhouse is not simply an American white male who gained national attention at 17 for killing two people and wounding another during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020. He is the inevitable product of a nation that nurtures white male violence, wraps it in the language of self-defense, and parades it as patriotism. Rittenhouse carried an AR-15 into the night with impunity, because America has long trained its white sons to believe that Black protest is a threat, that white vigilantism is justice, and that their guns are an extension of their manhood.
His acquittal was not surprising—it was a prophecy fulfilled. From the slave patrols of the 18th century to the police brutality of today, America has built a system where white violence is forgiven, even celebrated, while Black existence is policed, punished, and pathologized. Kyle Rittenhouse did not write this story—he simply stepped into the role America has been casting for white men since its founding.
Yet, John “Grand Master Jay” Johnson, the leader of the Not Fu*king Around Coalition (NFAC), a Black man, is in federal prison. He is serving a sentence of seven years and two months for brandishing a firearm at federal task force officers during a 2020 George Floyd protest in Louisville, Kentucky. Trump did not pardon him. Look up the cases of three Black women, Pamela Mason, Crystal Mason, and Pamela Moses who were convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to prison, even though their full right to vote should have been restored. Of the three, Moses was wrongly convicted of voter fraud and briefly imprisoned in 2022. Every American should be able to vote if they have served their time and are back in their community. Whatever happened to the American Revolution’s battle cry of taxation without representation is unacceptable?
Got to love America, or should we?
And so, a convicted felon, insurrectionist, racist, self-professed sexual predator, misogynist, fraudster, and psycho-sociopath once again occupies the Oval Office as president of the (un)United States. America has made itself the world’s punchline, stripped of credibility to lecture any other nation about democracy being superior to communism, fascism, or any other system it claims to despise.
Compare this with Brazil, where former President Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup against his government. Brazil, a so-called “developing nation,” has shown more accountability for political violence than the United States, where convicted felon Donald Trump who incited an insurrection not only escaped punishment but reclaimed the presidency and has more than doubled his net worth. America has slipped below the ranks of the so-called Third World; it has entered the new low territory of a fourth-world country, where corruption and lawlessness wear the mask of democracy while shielding violence for those with white faces.
The system is upheld not just by men but also by white women who weaponize their proximity to white male power. Carolyn Bryant’s lie about Emmett Till sparked his lynching. Today’s “Carolyns” (I never embraced the word “Karens” as identifying dangerous, lying white women) deploy police against Black people for existing in public spaces. Their actions ignite the machinery of white male violence while hiding behind fake tears and claims of fragility. Trump and his followers are present-day Roy Bryants and J. W. Milams, the murderers of Till. They abducted, tortured, and shot the 14-year-old Black boy in Mississippi in 1955 after Carolyn Bryant, Roy’s needy, desperate, and dangerous wife, falsely accused him of harassment.
Protecting white male violence comes at a catastrophic price. It has stolen millions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous lives, shattered families, and destabilized entire communities. It has siphoned billions into prisons and police instead of schools, health care, and housing. It has conditioned generation after generation to accept the lie that white violence is excusable while Black existence itself is criminal. It corrodes democracy, producing a two-tiered system of justice where punishment is not determined by the act committed but by the color of the perpetrator’s skin.
We cannot reform, nor cure, a sickness that America refuses to name. This is not random—it is systemic. And yet, no system of oppression endures without collaborators. Standing guard at the gates of white power—and hell itself—are the Clarence Thomases, the Candace Owenses, the Tim Scotts, the Byron Donalds, the Wesley Hunts, the John Jameses, the Burgess Owenses, the Michael Langleys, and others. They cloak themselves in the language of uplift while fortifying the very forces that strangle their own people. They are not anomalies but willing instruments, preserving white violence with a smile. Hand them a racist white partner and the illusion of inclusion into white circles, and they will dance the jig every time.
Film historian Donald Bogle, in his classic Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, exposed how Hollywood trapped Black performers in caricatures: the buffoonish “coon,” the hypersexual “buck,” the servile “tom.” These roles entertained white audiences while ensuring Black visibility never translated into Black power. Today, those old scripts are simply repackaged, performed not only on the silver screen but on the political stage—where Black faces are cast to uphold white supremacy.
This is no accident of history. From the first lash of the whip on enslaved Africans, to the stealing and burning of Native lands, to the lynching trees of the South, America has codified white violence as both natural and necessary. The Fugitive Slave Act, Jim Crow laws, and today’s mass incarceration all function as extensions of the same truth: white violence is forgiven, even rewarded, while Black resistance is punished with the full weight of the state and nation.
White male violence has always been America’s most protected tradition. From lynchings to mass shootings to political assassinations, the shield rarely breaks. Kirk’s killing shows that even those who champion violent ideologies can be swallowed up by them. Trump’s mass pardons prove that America’s government will excuse and empower insurrectionists when they are white. Bolsonaro’s sentencing in Brazil underscores how far the U.S. has fallen in comparison. Perhaps America can learn a thing or two from Brazil.
Until America confronts this ugly truth—its loyalty to protecting white male violence and terrorism above all else—it will remain a country in decline and collapse, a democracy in name only, sliding further into the ranks even lower than the third world and building its own fourth world.
Got to love America, or should we?
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