When I walked into work on March 2, the conversation around the watercooler was that the United States and Israel had bombed Iran. As a Black woman, I knew I spoke for thousands of Black people when I asked, “Who is ‘we’?”
For Black people in this country, “we” has never been automatic. It has always been conditional.
There’s a term for that — what W.E.B. Du Bois called “double consciousness.” It describes the psychological conflict Black Americans experience while living and navigating in a society that undervalues them. The struggle between how we are perceived and how we perceive ourselves produces a kind of dual identity.
So when I asked, “Who is ‘we’?” it was because I’m used to the two-faced way America claims and uses Black people while simultaneously belittling and berating us. It shows up in moments like these:
The Three-Fifths Compromise written into our founding documents.
The erasure of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Six Triple Eight from school curricula covering World War II.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation that Sunday church service remains the most segregated hour in America.
Beyoncé winning Best Country Album, only to be structurally excluded the following year.
Black Americans remain essential to the nation’s prosperity but peripheral to its protection.
To be clear, Black Americans are not ambivalent about war, service or sacrifice. Even though Black people make up only 13.7% of the population, we comprise 21.4% of all military branches. My loved ones who enlisted with the promise of paying for school and working themselves out of poverty may now be pulled into a war that 93% of Black people openly oppose. This pattern didn’t begin with my peers.
Like the majority of Americans, my grandfather’s generation and his father’s generation served in every major war: World War I, World War II, Korea and the Gulf Wars. They fought next to members of every race. They defended the same flag. They wore the same uniform. They risked their lives to protect this country. At war, they were part of the “we” of America.
After each deployment, Black veterans expected the brotherhood — the “we” they became part of overseas — to extend to a “we” when they returned home. They quickly realized that was not the case. Instead, veterans like my grandfather returned to segregation, redlining, lynching threats and renewed racial hostility. While the G.I. Bill built white middle-class wealth for veterans, many Black veterans were systematically denied equal access to housing loans, education benefits and economic opportunity. These men fought under the umbrella of “we” Americans and returned as “them” — second-class citizens.
The plain truth is this: Black Americans are extended the identity of “we” when sacrifice is required — in war, in labor, in culture. But we are seen as disposable and excluded when benefits, payment and respect are at stake.
The current White House administration, many Black Americans believe, continues that pattern — from policies tied to mass incarceration to the erasure of Black history and layoffs that disproportionately affect Black women. It’s no wonder many are choosing to opt out of the “we” now.
We are tired of the game. It’s why Black Americans are emigrating and starting new lives abroad. It’s why Joy-Ann Reid hosted the People’s State of the Union. It’s why the cast of Sinners received a standing ovation during the NAACP Image Awards on Sunday. The applause was as much about their performances as it was about supporting them after the dehumanizing incident at the BAFTA awards.
So when a president who many Black Americans believe despises them declares military action and the headlines read “we,” I ask again: “Who is ‘we’?”
Julienne Louis-Anderson is a former educator and Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project.