For a Time Like This

There has never been a “convenient” time to be Black in America.

There have been moments of progress. Seasons of visibility. Years when diversity felt celebrated. But comfort? Safety? Stability? Those have always been fragile and negotiated rather than guaranteed.

Black History Month often arrives packaged as a highlight reel. We hear about firsts and famous figures. We repost quotes. We celebrate resilience. And yes, that matters. But Black history is more than inspiration. It is instruction. It is strategy. It is survival. And in a time like this, that truth feels urgent.

We are living in a moment where progress and pushback exist side by side. Where books are challenged. Where voting rights are debated. Where conversations about race are reframed as “divisive.” Where immigrants, Muslims, and other communities of color face increased hostility and suspicion. For many Black people, this moment does not feel new. It feels familiar.

History teaches us that whenever Black communities gain visibility or power, resistance often follows. Reconstruction was followed by Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Movement was followed by mass incarceration and policy shifts that quietly maintained inequality. Gains have often been met with backlash. That pattern is not accidental. Black advancement has always forced this country to confront itself, and confrontation makes people uncomfortable.

But Black history also tells another story, one that is just as consistent as backlash. We endure. We build. We organize. We create. We imagine beyond what we are given.

From freedom movements to mutual aid networks, from spirituals sung in secret to cultural revolutions broadcast across the globe, Black communities have always turned pressure into power. We have created art out of pain. Institutions out of exclusion. Joy out of survival.

Black History Month, especially in a tense political climate, is not about nostalgia. It is about remembering the blueprint. It reminds us that:

• Systems can attempt erasure, but memory is powerful.
• Policies can restrict, but people can mobilize.
• Fear can spread, but so can courage.

This month is also instructive for other communities of color. The forces that restrict Black freedom rarely stop with Black people. Immigrant communities face deportation threats and labor exploitation. Asian American communities experience cycles of invisibility and violence. Indigenous communities continue to fight for land, sovereignty, and protection. Muslim communities navigate surveillance and suspicion.

Oppression is rarely isolated. It expands, but so does solidarity.

The history of Black resistance has often opened doors for broader civil rights protections. It has modeled organizing strategies. It has demonstrated the power of collective action. It has shown what it means to claim dignity in a system that withholds it.

In that way, Black History Month is not exclusionary. It is instructive. It asks us to remember how communities survive when systems fail them. It asks us to study resilience, not in a romanticized way, but in a practical one.

Still, we must be honest. There is fatigue in this moment. Fatigue from explaining racism over and over again. Fatigue from watching rights debated as if they are optional. Fatigue from educating others while protecting ourselves. Fatigue from holding grief and responsibility at the same time.

And yet, fatigue has never stopped Black creativity. It has never stopped Black organizing. It has never stopped Black faith. It has never stopped Black women from leading, nurturing, protecting, and imagining beyond the present crisis.

Black History Month in a time like this is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about grounding ourselves in a longer narrative. We have faced worse. We have been counted out before. We have been underestimated before. And we were not powerless then either.

The biblical story of Esther poses a question that echoes across generations: “Who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this?” For Black people and other people of color, that question carries weight. We did not choose the circumstances of this moment. But we can choose how we respond to it.

This is not the time for symbolic gestures alone. It is a time for alignment between values and action. Black History Month reminds us that we are descendants of people who navigated systems designed against them and still carved out futures.

It lives in how we vote, how we teach our children, how we protect our communities, how we build businesses, how we worship, how we rest, and how we refuse to disappear. In a time like this, Black history is not just something to celebrate. It is something to practice.

Because if we are here still building, still creating, still organizing, and it is not by accident.

It is because our ancestors endured so that we could stand.

And now we stand, not only for ourselves, but for those who are coming behind us.

For such a time as this.