America Has a Problem
My thoughts regarding the 2024 election.
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It’s already been a week since the election. I am exhausted. I am furious. I am grieving. One thing I’m not, however, is surprised. Nor was I in 2016. Logically, I know what happened: racism, misogyny, and ignorance. Though my beliefs may seem reductive, this election was only a metaphor for what life is like as a Black woman in this country. Vice President Kamala Harris was more than qualified and did the impossible feat of running an election campaign in one hundred days. She was just not “too white” nor “too man.” If you ever needed an example of what Black women mean when we say that you’ll have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to get half as much, the 2024 election was the test case for being overqualified and showing up, only to be rejected by a society that sees you as inherently inferior. I don’t think there is anything Vice President Harris could have done any differently. Trump played on and validated the fears of white America. Now, I won’t get into the particular policies and failures of the Democratic party, but Trump has essentially been running for president for almost a decade; people knew who he was. We knew that his re-election would negatively affect not just America but the world. This man had concepts of policy, campaigned for mass deportation of migrants, and heeded plans to publicize Project 2025, but even after everything, people still voted for him. And now here we are… again.
To make sense of this moment, I refer to Toni Morrison’s essay “The War on Error” from her book The Source of Self-Regard. In her essay, Morrison invokes the phrase “War Against Error” to describe the fifteenth—and sixteenth-century religious efforts to correct those whose beliefs conflicted with the church. Though she writes this essay in response to the Iraqi war, she calls for a modern War Against Error – “a battle against cultivated ignorance, enforced silence, and metastasizing lies.” It appears that even after twenty years, we are still in this never-ending war, one that we are losing badly. It’s not an exaggeration to say that America has moved further right. From people advocating against mask mandates to women romanticizing trad wife content and the rise of right-wing “anti-wokeness” podcasters/influencers online. From major corporations making cuts to DEI programs to the general dissociation from any sense of responsibility to one another. Even in the great blue state of California, the majority of the electorate voted against the ban on forced prison labor, and this summer, we saw that universities, the bastions of liberal education, reacted violently and excessively to pro-Palestinian protestors. Don’t let me get started on the government’s failure to quickly persecute Trump. If you’re worried about what American fascism would look like, it’s already here. Since Covid ravaged our communities five years ago, it became apparent that this country is much crueler than what I’ve personally known…that we will sacrifice the vulnerable and accept lies over truth.
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” - Toni Morrison
To understand America is to understand its history. Too many of us are in denial about what this country is and how it’s operated since its founding. This is a white supremacist nation doing what it was built to do. Black people have held firmly to the idea of the American dream and vote not because they align with every Democratic policy but because we uniquely understand this country and how awful it can get. Time and time again, Black people have poured into this country, trying to save it from itself. But in the end, the country didn’t want to be saved. This is what the people voted for; maybe it’s the only way people will learn. We understand that multiracial Democracy in America is less than sixty years old. It’s been contested, often violently, and fragile since then. The first time America attempted a multiracial democracy was during the Reconstruction era, which violently ended with Black Americans stripped of their new citizenship rights for nearly a century. All in the name of “national unity.” We have known American fascism (not to have the rights of citizenship, not to be able to cast a ballot, not to be protected by the nation’s laws). We also understand that whiteness and white supremacy are ideological, not physical. Hence, the reason why there is an increase in many people of color voting for Trump. It’s in these moments when you realize that whiteness isn’t loosening its reins; it’s expanding who it’ll allow to participate in it.
People keep saying that our ancestors survived slavery and so much more than this. And while this may be true, when is enough enough? I understand the sentiment that many Black people, especially Black women, feel when it comes to the country. That we are alone in this war to keep this country afloat or that we have to work twice as hard to get nothing in return. It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing. But I’m conflicted with the idea that we should step back and completely disburden ourselves with this issue. We should continuously fight for a just America, but we can’t do it alone. I have no idea what the next four years will bring. Many of our rights, liberties, and neighbors will come in direct attack, and I will mourn for the loss of what this country could have been, but one thing is for sure: I’m not going to spend the next four years of a Trump presidency glued to news channels and podcasts again. Nor will I have faith in the Democratic leadership to do what needs to be done. I refer again to the wisdom of Toni Morrison: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” Our duty is not to save the Democratic party, the United States, or the world. We must invest in each other and our communities. Black women, or people rather, will continue to live and flourish as we have always done.
As always, thanks for reading!
xT.H.