Opinion: Ms. Rachel’s Stand for Racial Justice Reveals a Brutal History of Policing White Allies

Ain’t it sad. Folks who call themselves Christians are out here mad at Ms. Rachel, a children’s show host trusted by millions, for having the nerve to care about children. All children. Including the ones this country trains people to look away from, from kids starving in Gaza to Black children whose deaths never seem to get the urgency they deserve. She’s spent over a year receiving death threats for it. Then she said the investigation into Nolan Wells’ death would’ve looked different if the races were flipped, and baby, we didn’t need a study for that. We’ve been saying it for generations. But she said it out loud, on camera, with her name attached, and suddenly she’s a race-baiter who needs to stay in her lane. It’s funny how loving your neighbor suddenly stops applying the moment your neighbor is Black.

Let me tell you what’s really going on. Whiteness was never about skin. It’s a loyalty contract, and it only holds up if regular people continue to sign it, even when it costs them.

This isn’t new, and it isn’t even the first time children’s television has been punished for showing us as humans. In 1970, Mississippi’s Authority for Educational Television banned Sesame Street outright, not for bad content, but because the cast was integrated. They would rather deny every child in the state early education than let white children see Black children as equals on screen. Sound familiar?

History has always punished white people who broke ranks, and it wasn’t gentle about it. Juliette Hampton Morgan, a white librarian in Montgomery, publicly supported the 1955 bus boycott. Her own community harassed her for years until she died by suicide in 1957. Anne Braden helped a Black family buy a house in a white Louisville neighborhood in 1954 and got indicted for sedition for it. Clarence Jordan started an interracial farm in Georgia, and the Klan firebombed it repeatedly. James Reeb, Jonathan Daniels, and Viola Liuzzo were all murdered in 1965 for showing up to the movement as white allies.

Even those who survived paid something. Jane Fonda spent decades fundraising for the Black Panthers, bailing out political prisoners, and hosting them in her home. The FBI surveilled her for it. The country turned her into a symbol of betrayal, “Hanoi Jane,” and hounded her until she felt forced to make a public apology. Fonda herself has said her wealth cushioned her in ways it didn’t cushion the people she stood beside.

This contract with whiteness doesn’t expire. It keeps renewing. Let’s talk about now.  According to Pew Research, more than 50 percent of white women voted for Trump in 2024, months after Roe V. Wade fell, with abortion rights on their own ballots. Meanwhile, 92 percent of Black women didn’t play that game.

Ms. Rachel didn’t sign the contract. She’s just the latest name on a very long list.

Randi B is an author, entrepreneur, activist, and avid traveler. Find her as Randi B on all social platforms.