When I reflect on Black History Month, I think of the brilliant Black science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Her work masterfully tied together social justice and speculative futures. People often say she predicted the future. But what Butler really understood was power. She understood patterns. She understood what happens when fear, hierarchy, and oppression go unchecked. 

In 2000, in an interview with Essence, Butler was asked what the answer was to the disasters she imagined. She said,  

“There’s no single answer that will solve all our future problems…Instead, there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be”. 

I’ve returned to that quote again and again over the past year, but especially in recent weeks. Not only because what we are witnessing can accurately be described as disaster, but because the need for those thousands of answers has never been clearer. 

If there were ever a reminder that anti-Blackness remains foundational in American politics, it was the President of the United States posting a racist image of the Obamas and then gaslighting the public about what we all plainly saw.  

The Trump administration uses gaslighting as a political tool. Some of the most powerful people in this country are trying to convince us that cruelty is normal; that injustice is exaggerated, that the harm we witness is imagined. 

They want us to ignore the reality of people dying in ICE custody. They want us to ignore masked agents using violent, and deadly force without accountability. Being surveilled, rounded up, brutalized, and killed by law enforcement is not an abstraction. It is a lived reality for far too many in this country.  

Black history also teaches us to be in solidarity with every underrepresented group facing discrimination.  

The attacks on our rights, our access, and our dignity feel relentless. That is not accidental. Overwhelm is a strategy. Exhaustion is a strategy. Fear is a strategy. When people are tired and isolated, they are easier to silence. 

They want us to be too discouraged to act. Too hopeless to organize. Too divided to see what is happening to all of us. 

But our history tells a different story. 

Black communities have always understood the radical truth that oppression of any of us is the oppression of all of us. Fights for racial justice, LGBTQ rights, immigrant justice, reproductive freedom, economic justice and in every fight for civil rights, solidarity has been our greatest defense and our greatest strength. 

They try to undermine our storytelling because our stories have the power to change culture. Culture changes policy. Policy changes our lives.  

Our stories change the world.  

This month, the most powerful way we can honor Black History Month is to refuse isolation. Refuse the lie that we are alone and that we don’t see what is right in front of us.  

Choose to be one of the thousands of answers.