A wake-up call for #WhiteAmericans

The deaths of #ReneeGood and #AlexPretti are forcing white people to face hard truths about power and violence

By Chauncey DeVega, Senior Writer, February 1, 2026

"None of what we have seen over the past few weeks — not the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis at the hands of federal officers, the seizure of children by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents, the callous disregard of civil rights and liberties from an increasingly authoritarian administration — is supposed to be happening in America. But it is.

"American citizens are being arrested and brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights — recording ICE, standing nearby or simply being the 'wrong' color in the wrong place. The Trump administration has labeled these Americans 'domestic terrorists,' claiming they posed existential threats to heavily armed federal agents, despite clear video evidence to the contrary. Immigrants are hiding, afraid to go outside. Entire neighborhoods and communities are under siege. Even though it’s only January, at least eight people have died from their encounters with ICE.

"The #CognitiveDissonance is dizzying. #Disorientation is one of the #authoritarian leader’s most powerful weapons.

"Hours after Pretti was killed on Jan. 24, hundreds of people protested near the site in Minneapolis where he died. There, an older white woman told a reporter that 'the government is not supposed to be doing these horrible things to the American people. It is unbelievable. This is something like Nazi Germany or Russia.'

"I yelled at the television. 'What d**n country do you live in?'

"But her sentiments are common among people who are gathering at protests, community meetings and town halls all across the country.

"Like many other white Americans, and too many Black and brown Americans, she seemed willfully ignorant of her own country’s history, which includes #genocide and #LandTheft against #FirstNations; white-on-Black chattel #slavery; #JimCrow and #JaneCrow; the #BlackCodes; the #RedScare; violent social and political repression of #LGBTQ Americans; the #PalmerRaids; mass #incarceration and the #WarOnDrugs, to name just a few examples."

Read more:
https://www.salon.com/2026/02/01/a-wake-up-call-for-white-americans/

#AmericanHistory #Racism #SystemicRacism #USPol #Authoritarianism