They’re not just coming for immigrants.
They’re coming for us.
Trump’s EO on birthright citizenship revives Dred Scott logic—where being born here means nothing if your bloodline isn’t “approved.”
Here’s how this targets the citizenship of descendants of enslaved Africans: 🧵
They’re coming for us.
Trump’s EO on birthright citizenship revives Dred Scott logic—where being born here means nothing if your bloodline isn’t “approved.”
Here’s how this targets the citizenship of descendants of enslaved Africans: 🧵
1/x Birthright Citizenship Has Always Been a Shield for Black Americans
After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment specifically to overturn the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which said Black people could never be citizens of this country. The 14th made citizenship a right for all born on U.S. soil, regardless of race or ancestry. It was one of the only structural protections Black people had in a country built on our forced labor and legal exclusion. Without it, any hostile administration could decide we don’t belong.
Trump’s executive order weakens that shield. By redefining who qualifies as "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States, it inserts a new test: parental status. This change guts the guarantee that birth alone is enough. For Black Americans, whose ancestors were denied legal personhood and whose families fought generations for that citizenship, this is more than a policy shift. It’s a targeted rollback of the very legal floor that made our rights real. If this floor collapses, we fall further than most.
After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment specifically to overturn the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which said Black people could never be citizens of this country. The 14th made citizenship a right for all born on U.S. soil, regardless of race or ancestry. It was one of the only structural protections Black people had in a country built on our forced labor and legal exclusion. Without it, any hostile administration could decide we don’t belong.
Trump’s executive order weakens that shield. By redefining who qualifies as "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States, it inserts a new test: parental status. This change guts the guarantee that birth alone is enough. For Black Americans, whose ancestors were denied legal personhood and whose families fought generations for that citizenship, this is more than a policy shift. It’s a targeted rollback of the very legal floor that made our rights real. If this floor collapses, we fall further than most.
2/x The Executive Order Quietly Creates a New Citizenship Test — and Black Folks Are Set Up to Fail
The order says you’re not a citizen at birth if your mother is undocumented or on a temporary visa and your father isn’t a citizen or green card holder. That means the government has created a two-parent immigration test to determine whether your birth counts. While this is framed as targeting new immigrants, the legal precedent it creates is much broader. It lays the groundwork for future citizenship to be tied to parental status, ancestry, or documentation history. That alone is dangerous.
But it’s especially dangerous for Black people. We know what happens when the state creates eligibility tests tied to documents: Black folks get excluded. This isn’t hypothetical. It’s what happened under Jim Crow with literacy tests, grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and more.
This new test isn’t about immigration enforcement. It’s about establishing a legal framework that makes citizenship conditional. And that framework almost always finds a way to trap us first.
The order says you’re not a citizen at birth if your mother is undocumented or on a temporary visa and your father isn’t a citizen or green card holder. That means the government has created a two-parent immigration test to determine whether your birth counts. While this is framed as targeting new immigrants, the legal precedent it creates is much broader. It lays the groundwork for future citizenship to be tied to parental status, ancestry, or documentation history. That alone is dangerous.
But it’s especially dangerous for Black people. We know what happens when the state creates eligibility tests tied to documents: Black folks get excluded. This isn’t hypothetical. It’s what happened under Jim Crow with literacy tests, grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and more.
This new test isn’t about immigration enforcement. It’s about establishing a legal framework that makes citizenship conditional. And that framework almost always finds a way to trap us first.
3/x Black Americans Face Unique and Intergenerational Documentation Gaps
Let’s be clear: this new system of proving parental status is not race-neutral. It directly intersects with a long history of documentation denial for Black people. Our ancestors weren’t allowed to be legally recognized as people, let alone citizens. Enslaved people weren’t issued birth certificates. After emancipation, many Black births went unrecorded due to lack of access to hospitals or refusal by white-run institutions to record them. Jim Crow only deepened this exclusion, especially in the South.
Today, many Black elders still lack official documents or have birth certificates with errors. These discrepancies cascade. If you needed your grandmother’s documentation to prove your mom’s status, and your mom’s to prove yours, the gaps compound fast. The federal government knows this. And it knows that Black Americans are more likely than any other racial group to lack access to required identity documents.
So when it introduces a citizenship test requiring proof of both parents' legal status, that is not a neutral rule. It’s a trap built on a rigged archive. One we were never supposed to pass.
Let’s be clear: this new system of proving parental status is not race-neutral. It directly intersects with a long history of documentation denial for Black people. Our ancestors weren’t allowed to be legally recognized as people, let alone citizens. Enslaved people weren’t issued birth certificates. After emancipation, many Black births went unrecorded due to lack of access to hospitals or refusal by white-run institutions to record them. Jim Crow only deepened this exclusion, especially in the South.
Today, many Black elders still lack official documents or have birth certificates with errors. These discrepancies cascade. If you needed your grandmother’s documentation to prove your mom’s status, and your mom’s to prove yours, the gaps compound fast. The federal government knows this. And it knows that Black Americans are more likely than any other racial group to lack access to required identity documents.
So when it introduces a citizenship test requiring proof of both parents' legal status, that is not a neutral rule. It’s a trap built on a rigged archive. One we were never supposed to pass.
4/x What Starts with Newborns Won’t Stay There — Retroactive Expansion is Coming
Right now, Trump’s executive order applies only to children born after February 2025. But legal history tells us that exclusions rarely stay narrow. We’ve seen this playbook before: create a policy targeting one group, then expand it under new legal theories. That’s how voter ID laws began. That’s how felon disenfranchisement spread. And that’s what this EO sets up.
By establishing a rule that your citizenship depends on your parents’ status, it invites future attempts to question the citizenship of anyone who can’t prove that parental lineage. What happens when you apply for a passport? Renew a driver’s license? Register to vote? Black Americans, particularly in the South, already face aggressive voter purges and ID mismatches.
Now imagine being told your birth certificate isn’t enough—you need your parents' immigration records, too. Or worse: imagine being flagged for review because of where you live, how you look, or who your ancestors were.
The people most likely to be burdened, delayed, or denied are the same ones who always are. That’s not an accident. It’s the design.
Right now, Trump’s executive order applies only to children born after February 2025. But legal history tells us that exclusions rarely stay narrow. We’ve seen this playbook before: create a policy targeting one group, then expand it under new legal theories. That’s how voter ID laws began. That’s how felon disenfranchisement spread. And that’s what this EO sets up.
By establishing a rule that your citizenship depends on your parents’ status, it invites future attempts to question the citizenship of anyone who can’t prove that parental lineage. What happens when you apply for a passport? Renew a driver’s license? Register to vote? Black Americans, particularly in the South, already face aggressive voter purges and ID mismatches.
Now imagine being told your birth certificate isn’t enough—you need your parents' immigration records, too. Or worse: imagine being flagged for review because of where you live, how you look, or who your ancestors were.
The people most likely to be burdened, delayed, or denied are the same ones who always are. That’s not an accident. It’s the design.
5/x This is Dred Scott in New Form: Ancestry-Based Citizenship by Another Name
Dred Scott told us plainly: if you're Black, your birth doesn't count. That ruling said descendants of enslaved Africans could never be citizens, no matter where they were born. The 14th Amendment was a direct rejection of that logic.
But this executive order walks us back. It says that birth in the U.S. isn’t enough if your parents don’t meet certain criteria. That’s not enforcement. That’s eugenics-era bloodline politics presented as federal bureaucracy.
The idea that your citizenship is invalid unless your parents "qualified" is indistinguishable from the old view that only some lineages are entitled to national membership. And we know who gets written out first.
This isn't theory. This is legal infrastructure being built to recreate caste systems—systems that always start by questioning our belonging.
Ending birthright citizenship for even a narrow class of people is a doorway. It opens the possibility of legally revoking what the 14th once promised: that we belong here, by birthright, no matter what they say.
Dred Scott told us plainly: if you're Black, your birth doesn't count. That ruling said descendants of enslaved Africans could never be citizens, no matter where they were born. The 14th Amendment was a direct rejection of that logic.
But this executive order walks us back. It says that birth in the U.S. isn’t enough if your parents don’t meet certain criteria. That’s not enforcement. That’s eugenics-era bloodline politics presented as federal bureaucracy.
The idea that your citizenship is invalid unless your parents "qualified" is indistinguishable from the old view that only some lineages are entitled to national membership. And we know who gets written out first.
This isn't theory. This is legal infrastructure being built to recreate caste systems—systems that always start by questioning our belonging.
Ending birthright citizenship for even a narrow class of people is a doorway. It opens the possibility of legally revoking what the 14th once promised: that we belong here, by birthright, no matter what they say.
6/x It’s Bureaucratic White Supremacy — and it Hits Before You Know it
This EO doesn’t mention race. It doesn’t have to. That’s how structural racism works. On paper, this is about immigration. In practice, it’s about creating a paper trail that Black folks can’t meet. That’s the quiet part.
The math is simple: create a complex documentation system, ignore the historical inequities baked into who has records, then disqualify people based on that gap.
The state already knows Black people are more likely to be missing documents. It already knows the cost of getting them is a burden—in money, time, and access. So when it implements a system that weaponizes those exact gaps, the impact is racial even if the text is not.
It’s the same strategy that made poll taxes and literacy tests "race neutral" tools for exclusion. This is not just about who crosses a border. It’s about who the state sees as belonging in the first place.
And when that standard becomes proof-of-parenthood, you’ve turned citizenship into a loyalty test that we were never meant to pass.
This EO doesn’t mention race. It doesn’t have to. That’s how structural racism works. On paper, this is about immigration. In practice, it’s about creating a paper trail that Black folks can’t meet. That’s the quiet part.
The math is simple: create a complex documentation system, ignore the historical inequities baked into who has records, then disqualify people based on that gap.
The state already knows Black people are more likely to be missing documents. It already knows the cost of getting them is a burden—in money, time, and access. So when it implements a system that weaponizes those exact gaps, the impact is racial even if the text is not.
It’s the same strategy that made poll taxes and literacy tests "race neutral" tools for exclusion. This is not just about who crosses a border. It’s about who the state sees as belonging in the first place.
And when that standard becomes proof-of-parenthood, you’ve turned citizenship into a loyalty test that we were never meant to pass.
7/x The Threat Is Real, and it’s Immediate — Not Hypothetical
People will try to say this only affects a small number of births. That it's symbolic. But we’ve seen how these "symbolic" policies metastasize.
States are already purging voter rolls under the guise of "citizenship audits." People have already lost their IDs and passports due to clerical errors and mismatched documents. Black Americans—especially those with Southern roots or whose families never had stable paperwork—are already being flagged for denial.
This EO gives that targeting a legal foundation. It says citizenship is conditional. That means it can be questioned, suspended, revoked.
The impact won’t just be federal. States will follow. Bureaucrats will act with cover. And families who have always believed they were citizens by birth will suddenly find they need to prove it.
With what documents?
From whom? At what cost?
Citizenship isn’t just a status—it’s access to rights, to safety, to self-determination. This order puts all of that in play.
People will try to say this only affects a small number of births. That it's symbolic. But we’ve seen how these "symbolic" policies metastasize.
States are already purging voter rolls under the guise of "citizenship audits." People have already lost their IDs and passports due to clerical errors and mismatched documents. Black Americans—especially those with Southern roots or whose families never had stable paperwork—are already being flagged for denial.
This EO gives that targeting a legal foundation. It says citizenship is conditional. That means it can be questioned, suspended, revoked.
The impact won’t just be federal. States will follow. Bureaucrats will act with cover. And families who have always believed they were citizens by birth will suddenly find they need to prove it.
With what documents?
From whom? At what cost?
Citizenship isn’t just a status—it’s access to rights, to safety, to self-determination. This order puts all of that in play.
8/x The Fight Ahead: This is the Line We Can’t Let Them Cross
The Fourteenth Amendment is the legal foundation of Black citizenship. If they undermine that, nothing else holds. Not voting rights. Not equal protection. Not due process. All of it becomes negotiable.
That’s what this EO is really about. Not just who gets to be a citizen—but who gets to feel safe claiming it. This isn’t a policy debate. It’s a redefinition of what belonging means in America.
And if we let them erase birthright for one group, they will expand that erasure again and again.
Descendants of enslaved Africans fought for generations to secure citizenship—through war, through Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights Movement. That fight isn’t over. This EO is a direct challenge to it.
We can’t afford to respond with technocratic critiques. We need a loud, unapologetic defense:
of our history,
our rights, and
our future.
This is the line we must hold. [end thread]
The Fourteenth Amendment is the legal foundation of Black citizenship. If they undermine that, nothing else holds. Not voting rights. Not equal protection. Not due process. All of it becomes negotiable.
That’s what this EO is really about. Not just who gets to be a citizen—but who gets to feel safe claiming it. This isn’t a policy debate. It’s a redefinition of what belonging means in America.
And if we let them erase birthright for one group, they will expand that erasure again and again.
Descendants of enslaved Africans fought for generations to secure citizenship—through war, through Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights Movement. That fight isn’t over. This EO is a direct challenge to it.
We can’t afford to respond with technocratic critiques. We need a loud, unapologetic defense:
of our history,
our rights, and
our future.
This is the line we must hold. [end thread]
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