We start this week where we left off last, with these words from Ava DuVernay: “the tide turns in our favor the instant we decide to see and say for ourselves. Let’s get our words right. Let’s look our opponent in the eye and speak truth. WORD FOR WORD. Wherever you are. Every day.”1
White folks, as we plunge deeper into this war against our own government, we need to understand our opponent’s playbook. As we learned last week, Black voices and Black history teach us narrative resistance. The Trump administration has borrowed white America’s tactics for controlling story from more than a century ago. To fight back now, each of us needs to learn their tactics, and how Black history illustrates them.
Over the next three weeks, I’ll explore this war over who controls stories, and how we, as white folks, need to fight back. Today, I start by describing the six tactics that authoritarians use to control narrative and reinforce racial hierarchy. Next week, I’ll dive into how my own family history illustrates several of these tactics. In week three, I’ll explore how each of us can exercise narrative resistance by casting light on these six tactics and how they’ve been used, both now and before.
