I often wonder if that is true, though…would hand recounts in November 2024 have demonstrated results different than what was received? Trump fought for those counts; why didn’t we? As a guarantee all was as it should be.
We must accept responsibility for all the ways we don’t fight. How often has the party elected incumbents on name recognition only, caring little for the policies they spearheaded? Education matters. Critical thinking matters. Common sense matters.
Biden voted against federal funding for abortions “no fewer than fifty times.” “In 1981, he voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade, a vote he later called ‘the single most difficult’ he cast as a senator.”
Biden was the architect of a war on drugs which disproportionately penalized persons of color. Dare I mention Anita Hill…
And yet, South Carolina helped keep Biden in that 2020 presidential primary.
We all have so much work to do. Elections require our due diligence. Accessibility. Safety. They require fair play. There are so many issues with them, but that is a topic for another time perhaps…
And I wonder if our nation has been ready for a Black woman president…would we fight for a review of the results to know…
Nicole, I hear you. Many of us wanted that same reality not as a fantasy, not as a slogan, but as a fully lived possibility. What I’m naming in this piece isn’t the absence of that desire among us, but the limits of the country we’re asking to receive her.
There’s a difference between our belief in Michelle Obama’s power and the country’s comfort with that power. Some of us saw a president. Others only saw a symbol. That divide is the heart of the paradox.
Your comment reminds me that the longing was real and the country’s hesitation was real, too.
Let me add to that, she's a woman. Women are ok as mommies and maybe they can have jobs where they have to work harder faster and longer. But they can't have control over their own bodies.
Trevor Noah said on his last Daily Show ( not a direct quote) that if you want wisdom, then ask a Black woman. But where are these men when Black women run for office? It's lip service.
And rape and pedophilia?
Think back when Anita Hill bravely testified against Clarence Thomas and others against Kavanaugh.
They got appointed with a majority vote anyway.
And now, shouldn't the testimony be enough?
We, as women united, must get rid of these pedophiles and their criminal nazi supporters. And start to run this country.
It was a cycle as old as the country itself, a choreography rehearsed in the marrow: praise for women’s ability to bear the unbearable, swift punishment for any trace of authority. And when that authority lived in a Black woman’s body, every contradiction cut sharper, deeper, like the unyielding press of a seam that would not give. They borrowed our labor, our cunning, our unfiltered vision; they craved our wisdom, wore it when convenient, but the instant we stepped into real power, the support they’d dangled before us evaporated, a mirage gone at sunrise.
You saw it in the hearings, Linda. In the way voices are weighed, stories calibrated, and the ritual of who the country chooses to believe. Countless times, the testimony of women, especially Black women, has hung in the air, laden with consequence, only to be dismissed, discounted, cast out for the comfort of men unaccustomed to being held to account. History has documented every instance. No one can claim ignorance.
But here is what I cling to, even as the country rehearses its cold indifference: Black women have never asked for indulgence to lead. We carried the unmuffled truth and deployed strategy long before anyone saw fit to hand us a microphone. The work – the real, bone-deep work – is in building a coalition unafraid to confront the cost of silence, able to recognize the fevered urgency of change. It’s in the riotous ache of not being heard, in the memory of every time our voices were shunted to the periphery.
Your voice is a force in this work. Your outrage, too. Don’t let it be smothered; don’t lay it down. Nothing truly shifts in this country until women, especially Black women, refuse the margins and take up space at the center, anchoring themselves there, immovable, turning the ache of exclusion into the engine of revolution.
This is so beautifully written.. I've been in the women's movement a long time and I recognize a voice that speaks for us and especially Black women, as you note. It is so very needed.
Wow, right on. Great writing.
Yessssssss. Thank you for naming these truths. ❤️
Great piece. Keep ‘em coming!
Melissa, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read it. More are coming, I’m just getting started.
Great! Hope you are doing well. Miss working with you. Take care.
This article does some of us an injustice: I wanted her our next president. Not in theory. But actuality.
I often wonder if that is true, though…would hand recounts in November 2024 have demonstrated results different than what was received? Trump fought for those counts; why didn’t we? As a guarantee all was as it should be.
We must accept responsibility for all the ways we don’t fight. How often has the party elected incumbents on name recognition only, caring little for the policies they spearheaded? Education matters. Critical thinking matters. Common sense matters.
Biden voted against federal funding for abortions “no fewer than fifty times.” “In 1981, he voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade, a vote he later called ‘the single most difficult’ he cast as a senator.”
Biden was the architect of a war on drugs which disproportionately penalized persons of color. Dare I mention Anita Hill…
And yet, South Carolina helped keep Biden in that 2020 presidential primary.
We all have so much work to do. Elections require our due diligence. Accessibility. Safety. They require fair play. There are so many issues with them, but that is a topic for another time perhaps…
And I wonder if our nation has been ready for a Black woman president…would we fight for a review of the results to know…
Nicole, I hear you. Many of us wanted that same reality not as a fantasy, not as a slogan, but as a fully lived possibility. What I’m naming in this piece isn’t the absence of that desire among us, but the limits of the country we’re asking to receive her.
There’s a difference between our belief in Michelle Obama’s power and the country’s comfort with that power. Some of us saw a president. Others only saw a symbol. That divide is the heart of the paradox.
Your comment reminds me that the longing was real and the country’s hesitation was real, too.
Let me add to that, she's a woman. Women are ok as mommies and maybe they can have jobs where they have to work harder faster and longer. But they can't have control over their own bodies.
Trevor Noah said on his last Daily Show ( not a direct quote) that if you want wisdom, then ask a Black woman. But where are these men when Black women run for office? It's lip service.
And rape and pedophilia?
Think back when Anita Hill bravely testified against Clarence Thomas and others against Kavanaugh.
They got appointed with a majority vote anyway.
And now, shouldn't the testimony be enough?
We, as women united, must get rid of these pedophiles and their criminal nazi supporters. And start to run this country.
It was a cycle as old as the country itself, a choreography rehearsed in the marrow: praise for women’s ability to bear the unbearable, swift punishment for any trace of authority. And when that authority lived in a Black woman’s body, every contradiction cut sharper, deeper, like the unyielding press of a seam that would not give. They borrowed our labor, our cunning, our unfiltered vision; they craved our wisdom, wore it when convenient, but the instant we stepped into real power, the support they’d dangled before us evaporated, a mirage gone at sunrise.
You saw it in the hearings, Linda. In the way voices are weighed, stories calibrated, and the ritual of who the country chooses to believe. Countless times, the testimony of women, especially Black women, has hung in the air, laden with consequence, only to be dismissed, discounted, cast out for the comfort of men unaccustomed to being held to account. History has documented every instance. No one can claim ignorance.
But here is what I cling to, even as the country rehearses its cold indifference: Black women have never asked for indulgence to lead. We carried the unmuffled truth and deployed strategy long before anyone saw fit to hand us a microphone. The work – the real, bone-deep work – is in building a coalition unafraid to confront the cost of silence, able to recognize the fevered urgency of change. It’s in the riotous ache of not being heard, in the memory of every time our voices were shunted to the periphery.
Your voice is a force in this work. Your outrage, too. Don’t let it be smothered; don’t lay it down. Nothing truly shifts in this country until women, especially Black women, refuse the margins and take up space at the center, anchoring themselves there, immovable, turning the ache of exclusion into the engine of revolution.
This is so beautifully written.. I've been in the women's movement a long time and I recognize a voice that speaks for us and especially Black women, as you note. It is so very needed.
Thanks for the inspiration.