Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor - Fighting Racism in Trump's America

August 15, 2017
With Khury Petersen-Smith and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor at Princeton’s Center for African American Studies and author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, was forced to cancel two speaking engagements following her May 30 commencement speech at Hampshire College, where she called President Trump a “racist, sexist megalomaniac.” After Fox News covered the speech, she received more than fifty emails, some containing threats of violence, including “lynching and having the bullet from a .44 magnum put in my head.” These types of threats are part of a pattern of far right intimidation and violence-including the murder of two people in Portland for standing up to an anti-Muslim racist, and the murder by an “alt-reich” white supremacist of a Black university graduate in Maryland-that has been given a boost by Trump’s election. “The threat of violence, whether it is implied or acted on, is intended to intimidate and to silence,” wrote Taylor in a statement about the threats against her. She added: “The true strength of our side has not yet been expressed in its size and breadth, and so they believe they are winning. We have to change this dynamic and begin to build a massive movement against racism, sexism, and bigotry in this country. I remain undaunted in my commitment to that project.”