As the sun went down in San Francisco on the night of February 8, 2026, Bad Bunny’s highly anticipated Super Bowl Halftime Show was coming to an end. On the field: a diverse frenzy of celebratory color, from man-made materials to mankind. Above all these, a jumbotron projecting black text on a white screen: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”
I picture this as reminiscent of a time when black words framed up against white backgrounds were printed headlines; written reports of whites’ swords aimed in offense towards those of Black backgrounds. An overly elongated moment in history that a 21st-century woman like myself could not imagine, even in changed contexts of time or space, neither by paradigm nor race.
Yet as I imagine in the 1960s, it was the very lack of color and all the blank space on these pages that allowed for people to stare off and think about what it was they were reading about. Bound to waiting for a paper to come once a day, unless they were to put on shoes to seek out the news, Americans read how Black activists and anti-racist organizations triumphed over the hate they faced on a daily basis for years until Americans were ready to shift their focus to a different issue they started.
One of these organizations, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was founded in 1960 with a logo of an interracial handshake and a one-page “Statement of Purpose”. In this statement reads, “Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hopes ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt…,” and finally, “The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social immorality.”
Eventually these philosophies of love began to win, mostly in part by the power of words from those who lived and died by the cause. Though their bodies could be killed, their outspoken love and publicized hope to see Black Americans and white Americans treated as equals could not be.
Though a more colorful America had bloomed from the seeds of love, today I’m afraid we only see two colors again. Our pocket-sized infinite “news?” devices project at us millions of opinions grounded in biases, presumptions, and assumptions, filling our eyes and ears with violent white noise more than bringing to our attention good news of progress, love, and hope.
Seventy years ago we had a movement of love between Black and White. Today, we have a movement of hatred between Red versus Blue.
Of course, one of the most covered topics in America today involves the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the deportation of immigrants, and the violent altercations that have occurred between ICE agents and U.S. citizens and non-citizens.
Arguments and accusations and assumptions have filled my feed as I’m sure they have yours. I think most Americans regardless of political affiliation have a right to say, “Instead of being asked what I believe, my beliefs have been decided for me.”
Because it’s only me behind the screen and I can only speak on my experience, I’ll share that my belief in God has led others to assume that I must be a racist anti-immigrant MAGA fanatic. What I believe is this: my first identity is in Christ. To believe this for me, I ought to believe it for all. I know from what I believe that Jesus loves every immigrant as much as He loves every ICE agent. If that puts a sour taste in your mouth, I assure you it puts one in mine, too. The point, though, is that we are not our political party, we are not our citizenship status, we are not our occupation. We are extremely imperfectly human and terrified of being so.
I think of the Civil Rights Movement when I think of these issues today because I’ve been learning it was a time of people holding hands with people and demonstrating the change they wanted in that way: through love. By going out and helping your neighbor. I can’t say I see this now. I can’t say I truly believe people want change as much as they seem to want violence.
Allow me to be very clear, too, that by a call to eliminate “violence” I do not mean to diminish anger. Anger is not the enemy in the equation, nor does it progress into violence on its own. America, and any governed entity for that matter, has only ever changed for the better because someone was angry enough about something to take action to fix it. The remedy cannot be violence and unceasing hatred.
If I’m to give my honest two cents, I think people gotta stop wanting people dead, man. I think we need to say less “FUCK YOU, FUCK THIS, FUCK ICE” and use our words to communicate the change we wish to see. Do you know what you’d love to see, or do you just know what you hate to see now? Do you want to give your representatives ideas, or just tell them you hate them so they hate you too? Do you want something or someone to change? Or do you just want them to “fucking die”?
Wishing that someone would die is not hoping for change, it’s seeking a sickly entertaining short-term solution to a problem in a longtime fractured society. A re-evaluation of policy, advocacy in love, and human-to-human interaction with those whose rights you want to see improved are what will bring about change. Violence and death only pushes “opposing sides” further, though I put that in quotes as I think we’d all surprise each other with how many human rights we mutually agree on if we just took the time to ask where our opinions and beliefs are coming from.
And if you truly don’t think love can work even for the worst of your enemies, at least consider how much it pleasures them to see you bothered by their own hate. Don’t give them the violence they want, either. Someone has to break the cycle. Decades ago for a different problem, many people banded together and did. I have faith it can be done again.
I’d regret it if I didn’t say one last thing.
After listing the aforementioned grounds of justice on which the organization stood, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee continued their Statement of Purpose as follows: “Love is the central motif of nonviolence. Love is the force by which God binds man to himself and man to man. Such love goes to the extreme; it remains loving and forgiving even in the midst of hostility. It matches the capacity of evil to inflict suffering with an even more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the while persisting in love.”
Having written my words, I cannot glorify love without glorifying God, for “God is love”. I’m not sure where you stand with the man upstairs, but if you love anyone, you might like what He has to say about that. Remember always that He loves you.
“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
“But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Corinthians 13:14.
“Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” – Romans 13:10
“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you.” – Ephesians 4:32
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” – 1 John 4:7-8
Civil Rights, 1963-1964, Item 11. (1963). [Documents]. In Civil Rights, 1963-1964. Brandeis University. Student Activism. Reveal Digital. https://jstor.org/stable/community.34022608
National Humanities Center, 2007: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/. In the public domain. Published in Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History, ed., Staughton Lynd (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co.), pp. 398-399. Photograph at bottom reproduced by permission of Danny Lyon. Complete image credits at nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/imagecredits.htm.
“Holy Bible, New American Standard” & “NASB” & “New American Standard Bible (Updated)”
