I don’t want another black president: a love letter

I woke up this morning after not a lot of sleep. I was restless. Having been awake seemingly at every hour of the night by the perpetual terror, the likelihood, of another Trump presidency. I could not get my body to stop buzzing with anxiety. 

I woke up this morning after not a lot of sleep. And saw his name plastered all over the home page of The New York Times app. It wasn’t shock. Not like the first time. More like the resignation of living in this reality for almost a decade. My body calculating that not only had he won, he had also finally secured the popular vote. More Americans wanted this man to be their President, than not.

This semester, I am taking a course in Black Feminism. And we have talked a lot about the ways that black women have, and continue to be, incorporated into the system. That is, how they have been used—actually and ideologically—to bolster the project of US Empire. Kamala Harris would fall into this category, by way of this analytic. She is part of the project that incarcerates and kills black people at disproportionate rates—a national system of policing and violence that was borne from slavery and has yet to loosen its hold on our lives. And a global system that has systematically perpetuated violence and funded genocide and sown chaos all over the world. This country cannot keep its hands to itself. Has never kept its hands to itself. Because that is not what empire is built to do. And she, indeed, is part of the system—as much a part of the system as perhaps any American might be. And had she been elected President, I believe she would have been, rightfully, asked to account for these violences and her part in them. But she was not elected President. And so, today, I’m not thinking about these violences and these grievances, alone. Today, the mantra that has played over and over in my head is: I don’t want another black President.

Earlier this year, I took a doctorate-level comprehensive exam in the History of Atlantic Slavery—meaning, in academic speak, that if I have budding expertise in any field, it is that one. Which is really to say that I have budding expertise in the history of the American project—which was inarguably constituted by the systematic enslavement of African and African-descended people. I have budding expertise, then, in the history of this country. What has been solidified for me, across this study and in my Black Feminism course and in my two-plus years of a doctoral program and since my time living in St. Louis, is that this country will dispense with black women in perpetuity. Indiscriminately. Violently. It will discard of them as easily as it will use them to secure its place of power in the world. And so today, all I can think is, I don’t want another black President.

I understand that a black President might make more of us safer for longer—or at least symbolize more safety for more of us for longer—but, I wonder, at what personal cost? What I am feeling today is that one black life—Kamala’s black life, for instance, though not solely—is more valuable to me than the symbolism that white America needs to sustain its project. This country shows itself, over and over again, as unworthy of being led by the people it has historically and systematically captured and denigrated and murdered for centuries—even as we have tried to make the supposed-promise of America more possible for more of us, and thus for all of us. Even as we, too, have committed to the project of being in this place and of this place and for this place.

But this place, indeed, is unworthy.

It was unworthy at, and before, its inception: And we know this from American slavery—from the systematic capture and enslavement of a people. Kidnapped from their homelands. Stuffed into cages and holds, living flesh on top of dying flesh on top of urine on top of feces. And this was all before the violence that would wait for them at the American shore, for all 250 years of legalized slavery. We should remember, of course, that it has only been 160 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. And that the enslavement of black people was legally practiced on this soil for more years than not: seeping its way into the psyches and ideologies and, perhaps, even spirits of all of us who have come to occupy this place. Which is to say nothing of the types of subjugation and oppression that have followed.

So, it was unworthy over 100 years after the Constitution declared something about all men being created equal: And we know this from the sexual violence against black women, that made the economy of the slave trade more possible, and that has defined every era of American life since. We know this from the eruption of white supremacy and violence that followed the Civil War—the gang rapes and the lynchings and the white hoods, to be sure. And also, insidiously, the literal spectacle that white women and men and children made—and enjoyed—of black suffering and death: a phenomenon that continues to pervade our national consciousness and way of life.

In 1944, Recy Taylor was abducted and gang-raped by six white men as she walked home from church in Abbeville, Alabama. No charges were ever brought against her assailants. She was 24-years-old.

Miraculously, to me, Mrs. Taylor lived to be 97—less than a month after the release of the documentary, The Rape of Recy Taylor.

This country was unworthy nearly a century later, still: And we know this from the siccing of dogs, the humiliations at the lunch counters, and the assassinations of our leaders. We know this from the cancer that has taken the lives of so many black feminist academics, whose brilliant thinking and work has been shared with the world at great personal cost—whose place in academia was perhaps defined by precarity. And it, indeed, is difficult to survive, let alone thrive, when living in a constant state of precarity and violence.

Fred Hampton, a freedom fighter, assassinated December 4, 1969. He was 21-years-old.

Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet Audre Lorde, died from breast cancer at age 58.

This country remained unworthy at the turn of this century, almost 400 years after those first Africans landed at Jamestown in 1619: And we know this from the Barack Obama dolls on a noose; and for the ways they have derided Michelle Obama, and still do, distorting the story of her blackness and her womanhood at every turn; and for all of the sick things that have been said about their daughters. A brilliant symbol of possibility for so many—and, again I wonder at what personal cost. Perhaps their memoirs would tell me something of how they have understood the risks and rewards. Still, it feels impossible, to me, to believe their sacrifices worthwhile, as I have witnessed and experienced the blowback of white supremacy and racial violence over the course of the last decade—knowing that their family will probably not live a day on this earth without someone calling them out of their names, threatening their lives, or trying to enact violence against their person. A lifetime of that, for what? And for whom?

So. I don’t want another black President.

And I don’t see this as cynical. Though, indeed, I am disillusioned with the idea that an American Dream has ever existed for anyone who looked like me.

Still, my views are not rooted merely in this disillusionment: They are rooted, instead, in a deep and abiding love for black people. And what our existence in the world—among each other and our families and our friends—makes possible. And so I write this as a love letter to us. I don’t want another black President because I don’t want us to give ourselves over to a country that has shown itself, over and over and over again, as unworthy. As deeply and fundamentally undeserving of our radical love, perpetual commitment, and astonishing optimism. And, today, this mantra—I don’t want another black President—feels like protection. Survivance. Like maintaining the possibility for something else, for us.

I don’t want another black President, allowing the office and the white supremacist pressure cooker—that is this country’s calling card, its foundation, the roots it has sown for centuries—to chip away at their existence and their person. Instead, I want us to stay as protected and as whole as possible, in our small corners of the world. I want Kamala to go home and to cook Sunday dinners for her family. And to cackle, unabashedly, with her sister, because she just can’t hold the joy in. I want her to keep rooting for the Golden State Warriors whenever she has time to catch a game. I want her to continue mentoring and inspiring young black women and girls to follow their dreams—showing them what it looks like to strive for something other than humility, as certainly, we’ve had enough of that. And I want her to write memoirs about all of the things her mother taught her. I want her to exist, fully, without the vitriol and violence and denigration and disrespect that surely would have come with greater force, had she been President.

I don’t want another black President, martyring themselves, both as accomplice and as a scapegoat, for all of the ills that this country has constituted. That this country still constitutes. I want black people, instead, to stay tucked away in their small corners of this place—perhaps just a little removed from the ever violent and impossible existence that has been pressed upon us for centuries. And I want them—us—to find ways to thrive there. To sustain there. To love ourselves and our people, there—instead of a country that, at its very core, cannot love us back.

I don’t want another black President, because I don’t think this country is worthy of being given another black life. And I don’t think it ever has been.

I don’t want another black President, sacrificing her wellness and family and joy—perhaps even her soul—in a futile attempt to lead this empire away from its violent and self-destructive destiny. This place will be what it has been—it has shown us so. But I believe that good can be made in our small corners of the world, instead and still. And that maybe, that is the only good that has ever been consistently, and sustainably, made.