Kamala Harris doesn't owe you shit

A Black woman is not going to save you

image via kamalaharris.com

Kamala Harris is not your magical negress.

She’s not your mammy. She’s not your auntie. She’s not your savior. She’s not your “clean-up woman.”

She ran for president against Donald Trump, and in the end, he was elected.

And now that he has spent his first week in office showing his entire ass, people like

Jennifer Rubin

want to call on Kamala to speak out against it.

A lot of Black women across social media have been saying “Don’t ask me for shit” since the election results were announced, and maybe people weren’t taking that seriously, but it’s very real, baby.

So this idea that Kamala — who is no longer a government employee or elected official of any type —should be the face of calling Donald Trump out is absurd.

This isn’t the first time y’all have called on a Black person to fix a problem white people created; I’ve written about this before.

They wanted Obama to fix it too.

A little more than a year after Donald Trump took office,

Hamilton Nolan

wrote an essay titled “Obama Sucks as a Post-President” for Splinter. In it, he ‘called out’ Obama for not speaking out directly “about everything Donald Trump is doing to undermine our democracy.”

I found it funny it was Obama who he thought wasn’t doing a good job of being a post-president in that regard.

I addressed that when I responded to him with “Obama Doesn’t Owe This Country Shit”:

Why not call for Bill Clinton to fix it? Or Bush 43? Or Bush 41, for that matter? Why is the black man expected to be the one to step up and correct what’s wrong?

The most privileged and entitled part of the entire essay comes in its last line, when Nolan says, “Barack Obama: your life is not just about you. Get your fucking shit together man.”

Nolan was not the only person at that time calling for Obama to fix it, and although my response was directed to him specifically, it could apply to everyone who was sending out that message:

Obama did his time. He put in his eight years of service in the White House. He endured the criticism. He withstood the abuse lobbed at his wife and daughters. He smiled and waved and hugged and kissed babies and was the picture of dignity the entire time he was in office. He did his time, and he moved on.

When he left, America voted in an ignorant, xenophobic, racist egomaniac who has spent his entire time in office doing everything in his power to tear down Obama’s legacy. And this country is sitting by and letting him do it.

Here we are in a second Trump presidency, and here we are again with people asking the Black person to fix it.

In “Harris was Right: We Need to Hear From Her,” Rubin writes:

Now, less than a week into the Trump orgy of unconstitutional power grabs, preposterous declarations (renaming the Gulf of Mexico might be the stupidest of the bunch) and the release of the Jan. 6 felons (some of whom were convicted of violent crimes), I sure would like to hear the voice of the other woman nominated to run for president. Many of us would welcome the clear, compelling voice of former Vice President Kamala Harris.

She argues that Harris “was the last administration’s most compelling advocate on a range of legal and public-safety issues, from the reversal of Roe v. Wade to the dangers of untrammeled executive power to anti-immigrant incitement” and that she “showed Democrats how to be tough on the border without being cruel, reckless, and contemptuous of the Constitution.”

As true as all of that may be, why is the onus on Kamala to come forward and do something about it? Why are you not calling out all those people who are still elected officials? Why not anyone other than the one person who tried to stop a second Trump term before it even got started?

“Though she certainly deserves a break, whenever she is prepared, given our political vacuum, no one is better positioned to summon democracy defenders to stand up to a lawless president than Kamala Harris,” Rubin writes.

The ‘but’ was loud and silent at the same damn time.

Get to work, Black girl. Fix these white people problems just like you been doing since the days your people were enslaved.

Listen, I am not part of the KHive. I am not Kamala’s biggest fan. I have my critiques of her, not the least of which is the way she waffled on the topic of the Gaza genocide.

I do, however, recognize when a Black woman is being asked to do the labor that should be done by other people, and I can’t stand idly by and watch that. I won’t stand idly by and watch that. I won’t stand by and watch it because this is a macro version of what happens to Black women every single day of our Black-ass lives.

I have friends in corporate America who have shared experiences that are not at all dissimilar to the thing I am describing right now. They are called in to clean up a mess the white person before them made.

Enough is enough.

It’s not up to Kamala Harris — or any other Black woman, man, or child — to undo centuries of systemic racism and white supremacy.

That’s white people’s job, and the sooner y’all realize that the sooner you can get to work on that.

During the four months Kamala Harris campaigned as a presidential candidate, we all saw the racism and misogyny thrown at her. We watched them pretend they couldn’t say her name properly. We watched them pretend she didn’t have the resume to back up what she was trying to do — a more impressive resume, I should say, than the person who got the job instead.

In 2020, Donald Trump was essentially fired from his job. He tried to keep it, but the hiring committee said no, and they went with another candidate – Joe Biden.

When Biden’s four-year contract expired, Donald Trump applied for the job again. Biden initially sought to keep his job, but in the end, he realized he shouldn’t even be running to answer the front door, let alone another term in office, so he stepped out of consideration, and Kamala Harris decided to try for the role instead.

Harris and Trump interviewed for the same position, and Trump was given the job.

It would appear that now, the hiring committee is asking the candidate who didn’t get the job to come and tell everyone what the person who did get the job is doing wrong. Loudly.

They want her to be the face of his meeting with HR as he either gets put on a performance improvement plan or gets fired. They want her to deliver the bad news.

Asking her to do this is asking her to place a target on her back and become the object of his ire. They want her to be the proverbial scapegoat so they can sit back and watch her take the beating for saying the things they are too afraid to say on their own.

If you can’t see how problematic this is, then you are being willfully obtuse.

You cannot lay the burden of undoing 400 years of American policy and practice at the foot of a Black woman.

It’s time for y’all to get loud, vocal, and sassy for yourselves. Stop expecting a Black woman to perform in that role for you.

This isn’t a quirky sitcom; this is real life, and it is a reality that we as Black people did not create; it is a reality that can only be deconstructed by those who hold the tools that built it and keep it working.

In case I’m not being clear enough, that’s you, white people.

Kamala Harris doesn’t owe you shit.

Repeat that to yourselves over and over again.

Then get to fucking work.

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things you should read

With legacy media contorting themselves into all kinds of uncomfortable shapes simply to avoid calling a thing a thing, I wrote the thing that we all know to be true: Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute.

A discussion needs to be had about how legacy media is failing us, and I don’t think it’s unrelated to how our country’s political system is failing us. They are working in concert.

Once we have that conversation, we have to decide what we are going to do about it — then we need to do it.

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For DAME (independent journalism that you can support for $5 a month), Max Burns wrote “Trump’s Egregious Executive Orders Won’t Lower The Price of Eggs.”

He hit all of the high notes.

There were two Trumps on display in the Oval Office on Monday. One was Trump the president. The other was Trump the television producer, dutifully instructing photographers and newscasters from the world’s media outlets on which angles would play best with their audiences. The moment was Trump at his most gruesomely honest, inflicting immense suffering on whole swaths of the people he dislikes while leading the media around by the nose. It was one of the few times Trump has ever looked genuinely happy.

And

Executive orders are especially sticky legal entities. They exist in a gray area that makes them especially appealing to presidents who want to evade Congress. Most orders can’t even be reviewed by the federal courts, so they offer a seductive tool for operating without oversight or appeal. That makes executive orders feel almost immutable once signed — which is exactly what presidents are counting on.

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