“Their success is not the result of hard work—it is the inheritance of unchallenged dominance. Ours must be the result of strategic, institutional clarity.” — HBCU Politics Editorial Board

The Cult of Entitlement

The American experiment has long been a contradictory endeavor—a nation built on lofty ideals of liberty and equality while sustained through conquest, enslavement, and exclusion. Nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in the rise and continued grip of Donald Trump and his supporters on the Republican Party and a large segment of white America. Their worldview is not grounded in democratic principle or meritocratic discipline, but in a deep-seated entitlement to power, wealth, and status—an entitlement that refuses the very legitimacy of accountability.

Trump’s political movement is not about conservatism. It is about confirmation—the confirmation of a delusion. The belief that America belongs to a particular racial, religious, and cultural tribe, and that any challenge to that tribe’s authority is inherently illegitimate. This is not mere politics; it is cultural supremacism cloaked in grievance. And it has metastasized into a national crisis that challenges not only African America’s fight for equity and power, but the very function of American democracy.

The Myth of Merit: “We Work Harder”

Trumpism is built upon a recycled mythology: that white Americans, and in particular his mostly white, working- and middle-class supporters, have earned their place at the top of society through hard work. Anyone else—especially African Americans, immigrants, Muslims, and increasingly, even elite white liberals—is accused of demanding “handouts,” “special treatment,” or “playing the victim.”

This is absurd on its face.

For more than two centuries, Black labor—enslaved, underpaid, criminalized, or altogether stolen—built the foundation of American wealth. African Americans worked without pay for generations, followed by a century of state-sanctioned exclusion from economic opportunity via redlining, segregated education, criminal injustice, and employment discrimination. Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of whiteness accrued capital, property, and access, often through government subsidy and favoritism—land grants, FHA loans, the GI Bill, New Deal programs, and tax advantages.

When Trump supporters say “we work harder,” what they really mean is “we believe we deserve more because of who we are.” Their cries of unfairness are not directed at billionaires or monopolists. They are directed at the idea of Black success, Latino emergence, and immigrant aspiration. It is not actual meritocracy they want—it is an aristocracy of identity.

The Fantasy of Victimhood

Donald Trump has transformed the Republican base into a paradox: a powerful group that perceives itself as oppressed. A majority demographic, in control of 70% of elected offices, 90% of major corporate boards, and 99% of generational wealth, sees itself as being “replaced,” “silenced,” or “left behind.”

This is not a political grievance. It is psychological displacement. It reflects a deep inability to conceive of a multiracial, multipolar America where Black success is not conditional and where HBCUs, Black-owned banks, and African American-led policy initiatives rise in power and influence.

Trump’s rise was a response not just to Barack Obama’s presidency, but to the symbolism of a competent, articulate, and scandal-free Black leader. Obama violated the fantasy that Black people only succeed through affirmative action, tokenism, or criminality. He was too poised, too intelligent, too global. For millions of white Americans, that exposure to Black excellence was not inspiring—it was infuriating.

Trump, then, became the counter-symbol. Crude. Entitled. Rich by inheritance. Unapologetically white and male. His very lack of preparation became his qualification. He was not a leader—he was a vehicle for a revolt against reality.

The Rules Do Not Apply to Kings

One of the most dangerous aspects of Trumpism is its relationship to law. From refusing to concede an election to stashing classified documents in a bathroom to calling for the jailing of political opponents, Donald Trump has repeatedly rejected the rules of democratic governance. His supporters do not care.

Why?

Because they do not believe those rules were ever meant for them.

This is the hallmark of American racial authoritarianism. It pretends to respect law and order—but only as a weapon. When the law is used to check Black protest, Muslim immigration, or Latino voting rights, it is holy. But when that same law threatens white privilege, it is dismissed as corrupt, deep state, or socialist.

Trump’s indictments are not his downfall—they are his resurrection. His criminality proves to his followers that he is being persecuted by the same system that once assured their dominance. He is not seen as a violator of law, but as a martyr to white grievance. In that sense, Trump is not running against the government. He is running against reality itself.

Delusional Destiny: Birthright of the Chosen

The language of Trumpism is soaked in exceptionalism. America is the greatest. Trump is the savior. His followers are the “real Americans.” Everyone else is an invader.

This belief in a divine, unearned superiority goes beyond politics. It is theological. It is why so many white evangelicals embraced Trump despite his immorality. He is their flawed king—anointed by grievance, not grace.

This is the same mindset that rationalized colonization, enslavement, and Jim Crow. It is the belief that history favors the strong, and that strength comes from bloodline, not justice. Trump did not invent this. He simply gave it a stage, a slogan, and a Twitter feed.

What African Americans and HBCUs must understand is that we are not merely fighting ignorance. We are resisting a foundational delusion—one that believes Black advancement is theft, that diversity is oppression, and that democracy is only legitimate when it delivers white rule.

The Institutional Response: Power, Not Performance

HBCUs and African American institutions cannot afford to respond to Trumpism with mere performative allyship, protest slogans, or symbolic gestures. What we are facing is a deeply entrenched belief system—a fusion of race, class, and cultural mythology.

We must respond with institutional power.

That means building our own political action committees, endowments, media outlets, venture capital firms, and public policy centers. It means training future lawyers who don’t just know the law but rewrite it. It means creating think tanks that do not ask for access to the table—but buy the table, the chairs, and the land under them.

Trumpism will not be defeated by fact-checking or calls for civility. It must be out-organized, out-funded, and out-governed. And that work begins with HBCUs and their alumni networks choosing strategic power over symbolic inclusion.

Rewriting the Future

America’s future is not guaranteed to be diverse, just, or democratic. The assumption that “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice” is only true if someone is bending it. That is our job.

Trump and his movement are not anomalies—they are a symptom. A symptom of a nation that has never reconciled its foundation of stolen labor and stolen land with its fantasy of righteousness. African America’s challenge is to build a political and institutional future not as an alternative—but as a correction.

We are not guests in this country. We are builders of it. And we are no longer asking for a seat at the table. We are building our own institutions—and if necessary, our own political table.

Trumpism may believe in the permanence of its entitlement, but history shows otherwise. No empire of delusion survives the reality of rising power. The future belongs not to those who believe they were born to rule, but to those who build the capacity to lead.