At my core, I’m a person who wants to enable those who are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to improve human lives. This means that I’m a highly empathetic observer, an educator, and a communicator. I’m lucky to have found my purpose early enough in life to enjoy working with university students, faculty, and other colleagues to solve problems during my 25 years in higher education. I realized early in life that I liked to put systems in place to make things fair. I continue to choose friends who prefer order over chaos and productivity over laziness. I came to understand that I am most attracted to people who not only have ambition, but who have good character, intelligence, energy and the tenacity to push forward. I harbor an often-silent distain for the selfishly ambitious who willingly step on others to get ahead. I’ve seen too much of that in my life and career and my solution until now has been to distance myself from those people. However, with regards to our political leadership, silence only becomes consent that further empowers their horrific dealings. I consider it a gift that I easily recognize the desirable traits in people, and I joyfully become of service to them as a sounding board, counselor, cheerleader, mentor, and sponsor.
Through this blog, I not only report what I’m observing in the world, but my response to it, hoping that others are inspired to respond in ways that will be helpful to them. That said, I have a few concerns for the future of our young people if voting Americans aren’t able to access the reliable information needed to make reasonable decisions.
My greatest fear is that our media outlets have been hijacked by powerful rich white men whose agenda is to re-assert white male supremacy and white male rule in every sector of American life. They are attempting to take control over every narrative, including science, social relationships, healthcare, crime rates, the economy, and climate change. They have the ability to demonize countries and entire groups of people, leading to wars and discrimination. We already saw how right-wing media convinced the country that young black males presented a threat, leading to police brutality, erroneous arrests, harsher sentencing, and incarceration. Recently, we saw how Trump used the media to turn migrants into criminals to be feared and rounded up like animals. We see how Republicans use the media to turn transgender women into threats against women in bathrooms, sports, and children’s identity development.
We are seeing a right-wing takeover of media outlets at every turn. The corporate media, once motivated by profits through clicks and views, is now also fearful of reprisals from the incoming administration if they cross Trump. Social media and corporate news media have ceased robust fact-checking and are actively promoting the voices of those who question the aptitude and leadership of women and people of color as DEI hires despite their resumes. I was shocked to hear the fire chief of Los Angeles being called incompetent because she was a woman. Trump is continuously given platforms to literally lie about the leadership’s response to the Los Angeles area fires, and the media aired his blatant lies and unsubstantiated blame claims with minimal rebuttal.
In response to unchecked media attacks on DEI, companies are rolling back the DEI initiatives that gave opportunities to talented job seekers from diverse backgrounds, including women. In the coming years, our corporate media outlets will be no different from the propaganda mills in China, Russia, and North Korea. The voices of those who speak the truth will be effectively silenced or greatly minimized through algorithms designed to weed out all voices of dissent. Real problems like mass shootings, climate disasters, and pandemic deaths can be easily covered up when media are compelled to simply not report certain things.
This is quickly becoming a problem for all of us. Women, immigrants, environmentalist, people of color, and especially LGBTQ folks are in danger of being demonized at the whim of powerful white men who want to preserve white male domination. The answer is to not be silenced and to demand journalistic integrity. We can support independent news outlets and journalists who refuse to be compromised. We can sue media outlets, like Fox, again for misinformation or for failing to report the actual news. We must continue to sue men, like Rudy Guliani, who defame others. We must support civil rights organizations and their attorneys who will stand up for our civil rights. The next few years will demand our attention, our voices, and our dollars.
My second concern is for young women. Despite becoming more educated than their male counterparts in recent years (which is a problem), we’re watching in real time the push to return women to traditional roles as wives and mothers by the most powerful white men in our country. Raising up men by suppressing women is not the best thing for humanity. Talent and innovation are not found in one gender. Both girls and boys need to be raised to reach their full potential. This requires unconditional love and a collective commitment to invest in their education and character development.
Musk and others claim to be concerned with the low birth rates in the country, but that is only a front for their fears of losing white male domination. They have made having children undesirable under the current circumstances and they have no plans to reduce the cost. In fact, their strategy depends on high costs. They believe that keeping childcare unaffordable will force many women with children to stay home. I predict that a Republican Congress will not pass anything having to do with paid maternal leave to further push women out of the work force. They will reduce food programs to force would-be single mothers to remain in dependent relationships that may be unhealthy and even dangerous. The fact that Republicans are trying to make divorce more difficult speaks to their agenda for young women. And of course, removing a woman’s right to abortion is part of their plan. They claim to be concerned about declining birthrates, but the reality is birthrates aren’t a problem if they are willing to allow immigration from Africa and Latin America. We have always been a nation of immigrants, however, these men and their followers make it clear that they only want white immigrants and white babies. This is about white male domination and returning women to roles of subjugation and second-class citizenship.
I predict we will observe more media campaigns designed to convince young white women that their greatest aspiration and role in life is to be a wife and mother. Watch for the proliferation of romanticized images of happy white women with beautiful white babies in the coming months. The policies are going to favor stay-at-home motherhood and marriage. They will make the lives of single white women a living hell by shaming them into submission. When they control the media, they control the narrative. I see the war among white women on social media over their role as women. More than half of white women voted for Trump. They are at war with each other. Black and brown women have always had to balance work and children. We were never the “June Cleavers” in this country. And so, it is no surprise that black women are currently the most highly educated demographic in the nation. As the DEI doors close, we must continue to boldly forge our own paths forward and upward, presenting our undeniable excellence and qualifications as job seekers and entrepreneurs.
Of course, they will do nothing about black female maternal death rates because they don’t want our numbers to grow. In the coming years, it will be increasingly dangerous for black women to have babies, especially in red states. I hope the white nurse who purposefully broke the bones of black babies in the NICU is charged with a hate crime. Unless something changes, I fear for young black females of childbearing age. My advice is to continue our pursuit of education and honing our talents. Find good men who are educated and who see you as an equal partner regardless of their race or ethnicity. Choose doctors you can trust and leave red states. I know many young black females are finding refuge outside the U.S. and I can’t blame them.
These are my greatest concerns. All the stuff Trump says about taking over Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal are only distractions away from their actual agenda: maintaining white male domination by taking over the media and subjugating women.
Let’s not allow it.