The White House altered the photo of Civil Rights Attorney, Nekima Levy Armstrong, following her arrest after participating in a protest at a Minnesota church where the pastor is an ICE agent. Homeland Security director, Kristi Noem, shared the correct image (on the left) on social media, but called the peaceful protest a “riot.”

Employing racist caricatures are in keeping with this regime’s political ideology. And following the Supreme Court’s heinous decision to allow for racial profiling, they have taken this to the extreme. ICE, under the direction of the DHS, has been mostly targeting Black, Brown and Asian people in their recent pogroms in Minneapolis.

Of course, none of this is new in the United States. There is a long legacy of denigrating Black women. Whether it be the mammy, or the “angry Black woman” or the Jezebel, or the “welfare queen.” Stripping the humanity away from Black women has been a fundamental feature of white supremacy in America. Along with this dehumanization of Black women came the terror and violence of the state, with rape, medical experimentation, forced sterilization and lynching being the most common methods.

The protest on the church in Minnesota was also not a “riot.” And the use of that term is loaded with racist dog whistles itself. In truth, the protest was totally justified given that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, is an ICE agent.

White Christians have long supported the white supremacist arrangement of power in the United States. In particular, southern white evangelicals, who played a major role in justifying slavery with Bible verses and later supporting Jim Crow discrimination and segregation.

Throughout the centuries-long history of white European colonialism and conquest in North America, racism has played a central part in its ideology and culture. And little has changed in this regard. Black, Brown, Indigenous and Asian communities have long suffered under the boot of American “democracy.” Now that the net has widened to include white people, perhaps some will begin to understand that none of this is new.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026