When Even White Women Are No Longer Safe

By Rob Redding

Editor & Publisher

NEW YORK, Jan. 8, 2025, 8 p.m. — There is, in truth, no distance between the killing of Rennie Nicole Good and the killing of Charlie Kirk. The nation trembles with the voices of women who refuse to be silent, and they are right to raise their voices. Their grief is not hysteria. It is testimony. What chills me is the chorus of those who insist that Good should have followed orders, as if obedience were the price of one’s right to live. Those who make such claims reveal themselves, and they should face the same reckoning that fell upon those who spoke too freely about Kirk.

And so I must ask, as a Black man in a country that has written its history in the blood of my people, when has it ever been permissible to kill a white woman in the open air of an American street. I will wait. The answer, known in every household whether spoken or not, is never. The police were never meant to protect us. They were meant to contain us. Their charge, instead, was to safeguard White people, and above all, White women. Yet Good’s death announces something this nation is terrified to confront. Even those once considered untouchable are no longer safe.

President Trump would do well to understand the fire he is playing with. The justifications offered for Good’s death do not arise from reason. They rise from the deep and festering divisions that split this country into red and blue, into tribes that no longer speak but only shout. To call her a “domestic terrorist” is not merely reckless. It is an invitation to chaos. It is the kind of language that sends people into the streets, that turns fear into fury, that pushes a nation already trembling toward the edge of something resembling civil war.

This is not the hour for cleverness or political theater. This is the hour for truth. Rennie Nicole Good was a mother who believed in her own voice. Charlie Kirk was a father who believed in his. Both were struck down because of what they represented to those who fear dissent. There is an old saying that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. Trump risks transforming Good into exactly what he fears. Kirk was already a symbol before his assassination. Good is becoming one now. Those who claim to think critically must recognize the weight of this moment, and recognize it without delay.

Rob Redding is the author of No. 1 best selling book Black Power in the Age of Artificial Supremacy Featuring Redding-Shim Kwet Yung . He is the bestselling author of 18 books. He is the host of Redding News Review Unrestricted and creator of ReddingNewsReview.com. He is also an emerging visual artist who lives and teaches at two colleges in New York City..