Pressing Forward in the Face of Intimidation

Black journalists don't have the luxury of looking away from the Trump madness.

By Shalise Manza Young

In this country, there isn’t much new, especially when it comes to the treatment of Black Americans and their fight for equality — and, often, pushback wasn’t just reported by newspapers and media, it was supported.

For centuries, the newsrooms of what is now called legacy media were composed overwhelmingly of white men, and historically they were plenty happy to cheer on the overt racism in their towns and beyond (to this day, media’s gatekeepers are still overwhelmingly white).

(AleksandarGeorgiev/iStock)

Because of that, newspapers and outlets serving African American communities have long been critically important, from pre-Civil War days through the Civil Rights movement to the present time.

And because Donald Trump has encouraged violence toward journalists and has a long history of anti-Black racism, repeated instances of denigrating Black women as “low I.Q.,” and verbally attacking multiple Black female reporters who were doing their jobs, it seemed like only a matter of time until his rhetoric turned into action.

That day arrived last Friday. Attorney General Pam Bondi proudly announced on X that she directed the arrest by federal agents of independent, award-winning, longtime journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort as well as Trahern Crews, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and state senate candidate and activist Jamael Lundy.

All four are Black.

All were released within 24 hours, but that isn’t what matters. What matters is the naked targeting by Bondi in service of Trump, and the fact that she pressed forward with arresting Lemon in particular after judges in two federal courts dismissed the charges she wanted.

All this stems from a Jan. 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul. A protest group coordinated to interrupt services at the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, also leads the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. As we all know, Jesus instructed his flock to brutally terrorize neighbors with an accent and kidnap 5-year-olds whose parents are seeking asylum.

Lemon and Fort were there as journalists, a role so crucial to democracy it was enshrined in the very first amendment of the Constitution.

Trump and his band of horribles chose to occupy Minneapolis because of its Somali population, which is represented in the U.S. House by Ilhan Omar, for whom Trump has reserved some of his most vile invective. But neither Somalis nor Black Americans in the Twin Cities have been out in the streets protesting en masse, likely because they know the most fervent violence from the masked goons would be directed at them.

So, the American public hasn’t seen video of a Black mom being killed and called a bitch, which historically would garner some attention but not national outrage. What it has seen is video of the assassinations of white mom Renee Good and nurse Alex Pretti, who is, by American standards, the Perfect Victim: a white, presumably straight, gun-toting man.

That’s a problem.

And that’s why, legality be damned, Bondi arrested Lemon and Fort. It gave the MAGA base the racism it craves — the official White House X account used an emoji of chains on its post mocking Lemon’s arrest — with the added bonus of Lemon being gay and Fort a woman, while further demonizing media professionals who do journalism and not propaganda.

But if they were hoping the brazenly unconstitutional detentions, however brief, would bring Black folk out in force to get the videos Trump and Stephen Miller prefer, it hasn’t happened.

Historians of fascism say the violence gets worse as the authoritarian feels his power start to slip. It’s hard to know if we’re at that point, because, though public polling on Trump is historically low and dropping, the people who could actually put a stop to his thuggery won’t, or at least they haven’t yet. If there is a red line for any of them, he either hasn’t crossed it yet, which, holy shit, or they are so afraid of crossing him and his unhinged cult that they’re content to close their eyes and wait for it all to pass, wrapped in the safety of their racial and socioeconomic privilege.

Black and Native peoples have never had that luxury. Which is why reporters like Lemon, Fort, Ida B. Wells, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and legions more have pressed forward even in the face of intimidation, like Bondi’s publicity stunt, or outright violence, like the destruction of the offices of Free Speech, the Memphis newspaper Wells co-owned.

It’s why in September, I pinned a photo of myself with my children to my Instagram feed. In the caption, I repeated to that larger audience what I had begun telling those I’m closest with: that after spending a decade being openly critical of corporate media for equivocating and both-sidesing what clearly was happening with Trump, his violent vitriol, unending bigotry, and constant lies, I couldn’t be a hypocrite and also cower as I turned from primarily sports opinion writing to political.

I determined to follow in the footsteps of Wells, Hannah-Jones, Joy Ann Reid, and other Black women who did and do tell the unvarnished truth despite knowing the potential dangers. And if that writing ever got me on the radar of this regime and I ended up disappeared, I asked my village to help care for my children. To be aunties and uncles and mentors and sounding boards as they navigate adolescence, adulthood, love, career ideas, or whatever else comes up.

I’m sure some rolled their eyes and thought me ridiculous. But I knew what would be coming. It may not find me — I’m a pretty small fish in the massive media pond — but I don’t have the privilege of those Republicans in Congress.

What I do have, like the women who inspire me, is a spine, and an unwavering devotion to telling the truth.

Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.

---