By Dr. Leo Croft, article courtesy of medium.com
“What would Nat Turner do?”
That question started living rent-free in my head back in 2016 during the fascist test run. The answer never changed: fight. Not perform. Not pray for permission. Fight. Fight with skill, with strategy, and with a refusal to bend to systems that were designed to erase us.
If the system is a machine, you jam it with the very tools it built to grind you down. You don’t hand it oil; you hand it sand.
I had a fire in me long before red hats and white “law and order” cosplay. I grew up understanding that what we call “freedom” for Black Americans is, at best, an illusion maintained by a thousand unspoken agreements.
If I’m passionate, it’s because I’ve seen what those agreements cost. I’ve paid. My people paid. And when I’m asked how I feel about Black MAGA, I don’t hesitate.
Disgusted.
The next question is the one that cracked my chest open: “Disgusted… why?”
Because Black MAGA isn’t just a bad idea or a political disagreement. It’s betrayal with a price tag. It’s grief with a brand deal. It’s a knife in the back sharpened by your own cousin and blessed by a church elder.
The Church of Comfort (and the Gospel of Obedience)
Let’s not play coy. A lot of Black MAGATs are welded to the church. And before anyone gets cute, I’m not talking about faith — I’m talking about institution.
The institution that taught generations of us how to dim the light so white rooms wouldn’t squint. The institution that baptized respectability politics and called it “wisdom.” The institution that told the righteous angry to hush, then taught them to sing about heaven while catching hell.
Where in your Sunday school did they ever name Black anger as holy?
When did they say rebellion could be righteous? We got those sermons only when they were safe for donors and optics — collective anger scripted for press releases, never individual defiance that might actually move a budget.
You know the pattern: churches that can raise ten grand for an overseas mission in a week, but somehow get “uncomfortable” when it’s time to raise five grand to keep Black kids in the neighborhood housed, fed, and safe.
Suddenly local justice is “politics,” but foreign evangelism is “God’s work.” Translation: we’ll do what keeps white approval intact.
That’s the pipeline where Black MAGA thrives. It’s obedience with a choir robe on. It’s chains that smell like frankincense.
And this is why I invoke Nat Turner — a pastor. He didn’t bow to the plantation and call it peace. He didn’t wear the master’s hat and call it humility. He didn’t lead us back to the field and call it “order.”
He used the scripture in his bones and the fire in his belly to say no so loudly that the country still hears it whisper through the trees.
Faces on the Poster, Checks in the Mail
The Hodge Twins. Candace Owens. Andrew Tate and his brother.
Different scripts, same paycheck. They sell white comfort dressed up like “tough truth.” They call us lazy, violent, fatherless, doomed — then smile for camera two. They feed white America a story that says, “See? We’re not racist. The Black ones say it too.”
They don’t speak to us; they speak over us. Not to persuade Black folks, but to absolve white folks. That’s the job. And white America loves them like a wet nurse — until the baby grows teeth.
Every time they cash out, a Black kid somewhere sees the applause and confuses acceptance with being useful. Don’t get it twisted. You aren’t accepted — you’re being used. You’re a receipt stapled to someone else’s conscience.
Black MAGA is the overseer’s whip with a podcast sponsorship.
The Second Death of Fathers
I loved my dad. In the late 80s he was on crack. Then one day he woke up in a gutter, said “nah,(bleep) this,” and never touched it again. No rehab. No program. Sheer will. Flawed man, strong spine. He died years later clean, and I miss him daily.
But that’s not the father whose death haunts this conversation.
When I married my ex, her father became my every-day dad. Pastor. Former Chicago Christian radio voice. Tech/sound nerd. Fashion head.
Meticulous with his home, his car, his church, his wife. Former Black Panther. Passion bursting at the seams. He prayed with me and for me. Told me he was proud of me. After the divorce? He stayed. Still checked on me. Still claimed me as son.
Then late last year, I saw it: “Trump 2024.”
My thumbs hovered over my screen. I must’ve started a hundred messages and erased every one. I just sat there and cried, because I knew I had lost a father again — not to death, but to a decision that annihilated the man I thought I knew.
That’s a funeral you can’t invite people to, because the body is still walking around quoting scripture.
That’s what Black MAGA does. It scrapes the paint off your memories until the raw metal of reality cuts your hands. You bleed from touching what used to hold you.
“Let’s not play coy. A lot of Black MAGATs are welded to the church. And before anyone gets cute, I’m not talking about faith — I’m talking about institution. The institution that taught generations of us how to dim the light so white rooms wouldn’t squint. The institution that baptized respectability politics and called it “wisdom.” The institution that told the righteous angry to hush, then taught them to sing about heaven while catching hell.”
The Nate Story (Friendship on Trial)
Studio night with my boy Jim — music flowing, stems bouncing, the room in that electric zone where strangers become brothers. A DJ friend brings through a cat named Nate. We vibe instantly. Over time, me and Nate start talking business. Cool dude. Solid energy. Feels like family.
Fast forward to 2016–2017. That same DJ — my brother — pulls me aside, jaw tight, eyes wet.
“Man, I fell out with Nate.”
“What happened?” I asked…
“He knows my kids are mixed. To them, he’s Uncle Nate. How the hell do you support a man who thinks my wife and children are lesser humans? How do you smile in my face and vote for that?”
He wasn’t just angry; he was shattered. A man who’d held his babies and called them niece and nephew had turned around and co-signed the ideology that dehumanizes them.
I watched my brother grieve a living man the way you grieve the dead: in waves, in silence, in bursts of fury that shake the walls.
He spoke on it later on his podcast. I cut Nate off too. I don’t care if your melanin matches mine. If you’re MAGA, you chose the side that would auction my community for votes, headlines, and dopamine.
I’m not negotiating with that. We’re not building bridges over a trench you dug to drown my people in.
Why Betrayal Hurts More Than Racism
Racism from a stranger marks you. Betrayal from your own remakes you.
A slur from a stranger is a gunshot from across the field — you can see where it came from. Betrayal is a knife slipped between ribs by a familiar hand. Your nervous system learns the wrong lesson: “Maybe I can’t trust my instincts. Maybe I can’t trust my memories.”
That’s how betrayal rewires a body — confuses friend for foe, scrambles the tripwires, and floods you with static until even love sounds like a threat.
That’s why losing my father-in-law hurt worse than a thousand Twitter trolls.
That’s why my brother wept over Nate. Because betrayal forces a recalibration of reality: it wasn’t a mask they put on — it was a mirror you didn’t want to look into.
Trauma 101: wounds you can predict are survivable; wounds that come disguised as safety get stored as identity. Betrayal tells your amygdala, “Home is dangerous.” And once home is dangerous, you never fully rest again.
History Isn’t Repeating — It’s Remembering
Black MAGA is not new; it’s just louder with better lighting.
During slavery, overseers whipped their own to prove loyalty.
During Reconstruction, some traded ballots for personal safety while their neighbors bled.
During the Civil Rights era, moderates begged us to soften our truths so white donors wouldn’t get nervous.
The costume changes, the choreography doesn’t.
Every generation has its sellouts. Black MAGA is just today’s hat.
What Black
MAGA Demands
Black MAGA isn’t just a hat — it’s a contract. But not one you sign on paper. It’s one written in the betrayal of your own.
It demands you forget your ancestors. Pretend Nat Turner was confused. Pretend Malcolm was too harsh. Pretend Angela was too sharp for modern times.
It demands you perform respectability. Smile through the chokehold. Call it “civility.” Call it “unity.”
It demands you abandon your people. When rights get rolled back, call it “states’ rights.” When your community cries out, call it “playing victim.”
And at the end? It demands you cash the check. Make the content. Parrot the lines. Take the brand deal. Call it “independence.”
And if you break it? The applause stops. And you find out quick that applause was all they ever gave you.
The Receipts
This isn’t theoretical. This is blood on the ground.
Policies dressed up as “integrity” that suppress Black votes. Police state budgets ballooning under “law and order.” Book bans strangling truth under the lie of “parental rights.”
Every Black MAGA voice makes those things easier to sell. They grease the gears. They open the door.
This isn’t abstract. This is rent due, scholarships lost, fridges empty, families broken. This is survival priced out of reach.
How We Fight
We don’t fight betrayal by sugarcoating it into debate. We fight it by starving its oxygen.
That means saying it plain: Black MAGA is a disgrace.
It means refusing to make them rich with our outrage clicks. Don’t stitch their clips. Don’t duet their soundbites. Keep your voice louder than their algorithm.
It means reinvesting in our own. Fund the block, not their circus. Pay the teachers, not the trolls.
It means teaching the parallels. Saying the quiet part out loud: overseers then, MAGA hats now.
It means amplifying builders, not arsonists. Platform organizers, healers, storytellers who love our people enough to resist the check.
That’s how we fight. Not by shaking hands with snakes, but by watering our own gardens until their desert looks pathetic.
The Real Disgrace
My disgust isn’t mild. It never will be.
Because I’ve buried a father once and watched another vanish into a slogan. Because I’ve watched a friend grieve “Uncle Nate” like a death. Because I’ve seen churches step over their own members’ overdue bills while raising money for strangers who make white donors feel noble.
Black MAGA spits on Nat Turner’s fire, Malcolm’s iron, Angela’s clarity, and the blood of every ancestor who refused to bow. It’s not politics. It’s betrayal. It’s treason. It’s a funeral in a red hat.
So when I ask again: “What would Nat Turner do?”
He wouldn’t sell us out.
He wouldn’t bow.
He wouldn’t bend.
He would fight.
And so will I.
Written by Dr. Leo Croft
Behavioral Scientist | Cultural Strategist | Member of The American Psychological Association
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—About the author: PhD. Cultural strategist. “I break down race, power & media with real psychological receipts.” Dr. Croft is the author of The Book of Blackness. He’s also the founder of Stix Figures.
