“Black People Are Not Apes.”
That sentence shouldn’t be crucial in 2026. During Black History Month. It shouldn’t have to be printed, displayed, or defended contained in the United States Capitol. And but, there it was, elevated as a type of protest throughout final night time’s State of the Union.
But the more durable fact is that the actual humiliation wasn’t the existence of the signal. It was that that is what the Democratic Party’s opposition seems like proper now.
An indication.
A sentence.
A placard held at chest degree whereas energy walks previous it unmoved.
That just isn’t resistance.
While government authority expands, federal companies are reshaped, immigration enforcement hardens, folks die in ICE custody, civil rights protections are dismantled, and courts are stocked for many years, the Democratic Party lifts a slogan into the air and calls it confrontation. While Trump continues deploying language that dehumanizes complete communities, the Democratic Party retains responding with symbolism.
The get together’s response retains shrinking into gestures, rigorously timed dissent, contained outrage, and social media and television-ready disruption that dissolves the second the cameras lower away. And the steadiness of energy stays precisely the place it was. The get together appears trapped in a cycle of expressive resistance that’s excessive on ethical readability and low on structural consequence.
Rep. Al Green’s signal says Black People Are Not Apes.
Fine.
But the place is the laws that blocks the coverage structure behind the rhetoric?
Where is the procedural warfare? Where is the coordinated, relentless obstruction that makes authoritarian overreach and structural racism unsustainable?
Trump doesn’t function inside a shame-based political framework. He doesn’t modify his conduct in response to public rebuke. His model is defiance. His attraction is confrontation. His energy base rewards escalation, not introspection.
So what precisely is an indication about zoology supposed to perform?
It doesn’t sluggish government orders. It doesn’t redirect federal companies. It doesn’t constrain enforcement mechanisms. It doesn’t construct legislative coalitions. It registers ethical objection, after which energy continues transferring.
For years now, Democratic management has handled spectacle as technique. The assumption seems to be that publicity alone weakens authoritarian and racist conduct. That if voters simply see sufficient cruelty, sufficient extremism, sufficient provocation, they may recoil. But spectacle is Trump’s native language. He thrives inside it. Meeting spectacle with spectacle just isn’t counter-programming. It’s amplification.
Meanwhile, communities on the bottom are coping with materials penalties: deportations, regulatory rollbacks, large job losses, starvation and illness, assaults on public schooling, erosion of voting protections, and judicial appointments that can form legislation for many years. None of that shifts as a result of a congressman held up an indication.
If Democrats need to be taken critically as a counterweight, they need to show one thing greater than ethical differentiation. They should show strategic self-discipline.
And what would that appear to be?
That would imply procedural obstruction the place doable. Coordinated state-level resistance. Forcing votes that create political price. Sustained investigations tied to messaging. Using committee assignments as leverage factors as an alternative of press platforms. Understanding that authoritarian drift is institutional and never theatrical.
Black voters, specifically, will not be confused about what’s at stake. We perceive dehumanization. We acknowledge coded rhetoric. We understand how language turns into coverage. What is more durable to just accept is watching the get together that depends most closely on our turnout reply to these stakes with gestures that really feel emotionally satisfying however politically weightless.
There is a widening hole between the size of the menace and the size of the response. And that hole erodes confidence. If a president is consolidating energy, the opposition should reply with coordinated structural countermeasures,not symbolic disruptions designed for digital camera cycles.
An indication can seize consideration. It can not shift authority. A slogan can pattern. It can not dismantle coverage. The Democratic Party’s problem proper now’s credibility. Not rhetorical credibility however strategic credibility. Voters have to see proof that management understands energy as one thing to be exercised, not merely critiqued.
Because the uncomfortable actuality is that authoritarian actions and white supremacist campaigns don’t collapse below ethical stress. They are resisted by organized, sustained institutional drive. That requires danger and escalation. It requires transferring past decorum when decorum is being weaponized.
“Black People Are Not Apes” ought to by no means must be declared inside Congress. But the deeper indictment is that if this declaration is essentially the most seen type of resistance we are able to muster on this political second, then the issue is larger than rhetoric.
If a sentence on an indication is the sharpest device Democrats are prepared to make use of, then the issue just isn’t Trump.
It’s muscle.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and creator of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.
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