“We Mistake Visibility For Power”: Black Leaders At ESSENCE Fest 2025 Call For Strategy Over Symbolism Amid Civil Rights Rollbacks

Months after a pivotal election and in the face of mounting civil rights rollbacks, Black thought leaders gathered at the Global Black Economic Forum stage during the 2025 ESSENCE Festival of Culture in New Orleans with an urgent call: The time for strategic resistance is now.

The panel, titled “The Politics of Being Black: The Resistance, The Reimagining & The Tools You Need to Move Forward,” featured Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and social justice leader and author Rashad Robinson, in conversation with author and political analyst Charles M. Blow.

“I’m not a hopeful person,” Hannah-Jones said, reflecting on a recent trip to her ancestral roots in Mississippi. “But I just came back from Mississippi, which is my ancestral land, with people who were in the Civil Rights Movement, literally in the movement, who were beaten, arrested… and they could not have imagined that they could dismantle racial apartheid in the United States.”

That sense of both realism and resistance framed the conversation, which tackled the erosion of civil rights protections, the fragility of American democracy, and the ongoing need for bold Black political imagination.

Referencing her latest piece in The New York Times Magazine, Blow asked Hannah-Jones to contextualize the federal rollback of civil rights under the current administration.

“My argument that most Black Americans today have not lived in this America is to say that most of us who were born after the Civil Rights Movement, or even who fought in the Civil Rights Movement, haven’t lived in an America where the federal government has been weaponized against us in this way,” she said.

“If we want to go back to a period where the federal government was actively promoting segregation and discrimination, we would have to go back a century to the period known as the Great Nadir,” she added. “We need to be realistic about what this administration is intending to unleash against Black people and other marginalized and oppressed people.”

Robinson offered a pointed reminder that visibility alone isn’t enough. “We mistake presence and visibility for power,” he said. “America can love and celebrate and monetize Black culture and hate Black people at the same time.”

When asked if protest still has a place in today’s movement, Robinson emphasized the need for a multidimensional strategy. “We need integrated strategies,” he said. “We have to have a strategy of forcing institutions to be accountable while working to also build our own.”

Blow turned to the concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump’s newly signed legislation—dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—on Black communities.

“What we’re going to see, honestly, is suffering,” Hannah-Jones said bluntly. She cited attacks on Medicaid, HBCUs and environmental protections. “We’re actually moving in silence right now, building our own institutions, building our own structures of self-care because I think the way that we survive this moment is to engage in self-protection.”

Robinson closed the loop with a message on urgency and outcomes. “Racial justice is not simply about morals. It’s not simply about doing the right thing,” he said. “It is about strategy—because at the end of the day, I’m not doing this to sort of feel good. I’m doing this to win as many possible things I can win for Black people.”

Despite the gravity of the moment, the conversation ended with a charge grounded in legacy. 

“We have an obligation to ourselves to be good ancestors one day,” Hannah-Jones said. “That’s what gives me hope.”

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