Construction crews swooped in and began digging up Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC on March 10. The street’s mural, near the White House, was a powerful symbol and widely supported by the African American community.
It is a brazen blow to Black equality and justice. The far right celebrated the racist act online, with conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk visiting the site to hail “the end of this mass race hysteria in our country”.
President Donald Trump is seen as a racist by a majority of Black people, dating back to his real estate days in New York City. His family refused to rent to African Americans and was sued by the federal government.
In his first term as president, he openly blasted protests organised against police violence and criminality following George Floyd’s 2020 murder by cops in Minneapolis. The killing led to one of the biggest popular anti-racist upsurges since the 1960s’ civil rights movement.
Trump encouraged the police to attack peaceful protesters and even sought to use the military against them at a Washington DC march. But his military commander pushed back.
Trump 2.0 has no such guide rails. He has appointed loyalists, including billionaire Elon Musk, who is partnering with him in wrecking government institutions. Up until Trump’s chaotic tariff wars, most of the ruling class backed his policies.
From day one, Trump has attacked Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and has even banned the use of those words or concepts in government documents. According to military.com, Army public affairs officials have been directed to take down online content that includes race, gender and affirmative action, as well as observances of Black History Month and Women’s History Month.
It came as no surprise, then, that Trump ordered Black Lives Matter Plaza — first created in 2020 — be destroyed. Trump and Congressional Republicans told Washington DC’s mayor and city officials that they would deny the city millions of dollars if it did not do so.
The city leaders denounced Trump’s and Congress’s “blackmail”, but went ahead.
For Black people, it is further proof of Trump’s racism and another example of a long history of betrayal and being treated as second-class citizens.
USA Today reported that “crews started removing the large, yellow, Black Lives Matter mural down the street from the president’s home” with jackhammers and “tore up pavement and uprooted black barricades that surrounded the 50-foot-wide artwork”.
“Most of the people who stopped to watch the work told USA TODAY they were sad to see the installation go. Sitting on a nearby bench, Karen Long, a former D.C. resident who moved back to neighboring Arlington, Virginia, two years ago, described the construction scene as ‘somber’.
Long “heard about the demolition on the morning news and needed to see it for herself. Although disheartened by the effort, Long said she viewed the mural’s removal as part of the long ‘moving process’ of change”, but told USA Today that Black Lives “would matter regardless of yellow paint on the ground”.
“This is not the end of it.”
African Americans and other oppressed minorities have fought a lengthy battle against institutional racism and the ideology of white privilege. In the not-too-distant past, this supremacist ideology led to lynchings and Black communities being burned to the ground.
Resistance like that seen in the 2020 protests — and symbols like the Black Lives Matter Plaza mural — will rise again.