Election Day came and went.
Many Americans went into the voting booth. Many came out shining bright with their “I Voted” stickers, with the hopeful expectation that their civic duty would end a century-long fight for freedom by voting a Black woman into office to clean up the mess of 44 white men before—and maybe even solve world peace.
I’m here to tell you, freedom was never going to be that easy.
Kamala Harris’ loss is a testament to something many Black women consistently face in their life: being overqualified and overlooked. Black women, the backbone of the social justice movement, the unloved, the unthanked—the scapegoat.
For many Americans who have never had to experience the scorch of bigotry, it is easy to see this as a fair loss. A simple sports match where there’s a winner, and there’s a loser. “We can all be friends,” and “let’s not be sore losers.”
Honestly, as a Black woman, I knew that despite who won, the fight for liberation would be in the distance.
As I scrolled on social media, I was baffled by a barrage of white women speaking on how they can separate themselves from the 53% of white women who voted for Trump because it’s uncomfortable to be mistaken as a Trump supporter—and I’m here to say, you cannot.
Buying blue friendship bracelets, posting black squares and saying, “I’m sorry, Black women,” does not resolve these white women from guilt. Voting blue, and marrying red, doesn’t free you.
‘It Is Time to Have Difficult Conversations’
The biggest downfall of any freedom movement is the resistance to discomfort. In order to gain liberation, it is time to have difficult conversations, address your own bigotry and bias, and give up your luxury of staying out of politics.
The days of performative activism are over. This election shouldn’t have been a shock, only a wake-up call of where our country is and where it has always been. The world isn’t going to end, the apocalypse isn’t right behind us. In fact, the consequences of our country’s actions are staring right back at us.
When I think about my grandmother, who was the daughter of a sharecropper from Mississippi who completed the 11th grade twice just so that she could get a high-school diploma, I’m reminded that my fight isn’t over.
When I think about my other grandmother, who saved up all her money to attend Xavier University just for her father to tell her that she had to stay home and be a good Creole-Catholic wife, I’m reminded that my fight isn’t over.
Black women have been saying they’re exhausted for years—of being the backbone, of being the one to fix it—and it shouldn’t just be us in the fight. But I will say, If my exhaustion means freedom for my great-great-great granddaughters, I’ll be exhausted for the rest of my life.
It is time to get uncomfortable. It’s time to think about the way in which we interact with folks different from ourselves; it’s time to correct the bigotry of our relatives; it’s time to correct the bigotry of your girlfriends and boyfriends and friends.
If this election wasn’t a wake-up call, then I’m not sure what will be.
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
