Source: Win McNamee / Getty
Roughly nine hours after the walloping Donald Trump probably doesn’t realize (and probably can’t be convinced) he took at last night’s debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, I’m still left wanting. There’s no question–or shouldn’t be–about the Vice President decisively winning. She absolutely did. But winning against a serial liar, racist, sexist narcissist whose behavior regularly has people wondering if he’s in cognitive decline just kind of gets us to zero.
And don’t we want more?
Please don’t mistake what I’m saying. I am not blaming the Vice President for what is left wanting in me. If there’s blame to lay anywhere, I’m more inclined to hold a mirror rather than point a finger. Which is to say I’m looking at those of us in media, particularly the mainstream media, for giving so much air to a pathological liar over so many years. Among the many lies and disinformation campaigns he ran, we should all be apoplectic about him never being held to account for the one he ran during the pandemic. His actions are widely considered to have caused a death rate fully 40% higher than it needed to be.
Source: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Don’t Give An Inch; They Won’t Take A Mile
The same disinformation campaign that contributed to the U.S. having at one point, the highest rate of COVID-related deaths on the planet, tanked an economy that the 45th president at no point made better. At best, he held in place the economy handed to him by President Barack Obama. Yet, somehow a discussion about who had the best economy is given legitimate space. At what point do the rules that provide for limitations on dishonest speech attach to a person running for president?
LISTEN: Kamala Harris Breaks Down Her Plans For The Economy In Exclusive Interview With Rickey Smiley
I’m not bringing that up to re-litigate Trump’s blatant lies last night. I am not here to debunk the aggressively and provably unhinged, fact-free nonsense he spews. Whether it’s about his economic plan that’s no more than a three-card monte scheme, or his assertion that he somehow controlled the actions of the Taliban; whether it was him re-asserting the lies about the 2020 elections, and then in real-time lying about not lying about it; or even if it’s about him saying that Tim Walz and Democrats generally are down with killing babies once they’re born; my question is and will remain:
When do Black women get centered?
When do our liberal allies stop ceding all this territory to Trump and his deadly rhetoric?
When do we focus on the real world of right now when Black women are thought to be disturbed and get no airtime? They just actually get a bullet in the head? They get completed assassinations.
And Why Us? Why Black Women?
Because we wouldn’t be here having a conversation about a possible shift in America’s decline, nor a conversation about an Opportunity Economy without Black women. Biden would not have been elected without us and the Vice President would not be positioned to succeed him without us. We’re not the wealthiest nor largest group. But we’re the most trustworthy, the most consistent. That cannot be taken for granted anymore by anyone — especially and including those in the media who have the power and ability to frame conversations.
Plus, a whole slew of other identity groups are regularly spoken up for. Billionaires and big business owners are always the group Republicans mean when they talk about taxes, tariffs and the stock market. Those issues are a distance from bread and butter issues that confront most of us every day.
Middle East policy is almost exclusively limited to a frame set by AIPAC (also Saudi Arabia, but that’s supposed to be kind of more hush-hush I think).
White women have civil rights discussions all wrapped up. Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were always played out as code for getting the white women in. Forget any of those Blacks who fought and died for legislative change. White women have benefitted more from civil rights legislation and affirmative action than any other group.
Which brings me back to what I — what we — deserved to hear more about: Us.
Black women who are hardworking but still poor. Sisters for whom living paycheck to paycheck would be a step up. Black women like me. Poverty isn’t tied to education or accomplishment. It’s not and never was tied to bad personal financial choices. If that were true, Trump would be living on a piece of cardboard on top of a New York City subway grate. It’s tied to who America decides is important enough to protect and secure.
And as Malcolm X warned nearly 70 years ago, it ain’t us. Black women have never merited social protection in the eyes and actions of America.
Your blues ain’t like my blues
In the workplace, Black women earn 20 percent less than white women (and more than 30 percent less than white men). Yet we still carry more than others do, and quantifiably, in the workplace and beyond it.
We are the primary caretakers of our families across multiple generations, and we are the primary caretakers of our communities–including our lovers, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, uncles and cousins.
But the same amount of care we pour into everything from elections to family still doesn’t make our needs rise to the top of the list. Not even our own lists.
We still don’t have anything that approximates quality–or often any–healthcare, let alone mental healthcare. But I wanted to hear about it, about our rates of depression and those of our daughters, whose rates of suicide have risen faster and higher than any other group’s.
And we are still burying our children because state-sponsored violence has only increased, not decreased in the 10 years since some semblance of national data began being collected.
But none of these sorts of queries were made last night. None were discussed. (Although hat tip to the Vice President on the Opportunity Economy Agenda and the specific inclusion of small business owners. That’s us! Black women in the gig economy!).
I wanted to hear about the plan for sisters who regularly work long days every day for months and months but still don’t earn a check that pays the rent and buys the food at the same time. I wanted to hear about not just the financial plan but the plan for our holistic restoration.
No Black woman in the nation where more billionaires live than in any other should still have to say sick and tired of sick and tired. But I’d guess more of us do than in 1964 because we’re more alone now than we were in ’64. Mass incarceration and other family disunification policies saw to that.
And for the love of Black baby Jesus, in discussions about reproductive health, can one of the moderators ever ask about maternal morbidity rates that show Black women are more likely to die in childbirth, regardless of our station in life? Can someone address the forced sterilizations that still occur in prisons where Black women are incarcerated for crimes white women get a walk-on? Black women are also more targeted for violence, from our partners to the police.
And Black women whose harm goes ignored more often than addressed.
Time to network it
Lazy people will say let Kamala Harris deal with it. She’s Black. But that’s not fair. There is a responsibility she carries but she’s not the only one. The issues Black women confront are issues of America’s weaknesses and inhumanity. Black women are always called to clean up those messes usually white men make. Let white men get to work here too, their sons and everything. We can tell them how to get it right.
And those who have the power and access to frame conversations — debates — have to also do their jobs. Stop dialing it in. Stop praising people for simple fact-checks. Start making people do the real dive. If we’re going to ask about foreign policy and aid, ask about the Congo and the Sudan too. Spend less time on racist lies about Haitians. Just call a thing a thing–a white supremacist a white supremacist–and move on.
Ask how candidates should be held accountable for spreading provably false statements. Why not push the envelope on whether or not there’s anything a president could do that should require legal consequence? How was there even a debate that didn’t ask about the changes to the High Court?
Why not tell Trump that if he says anything provably false as he did roughly two dozen times last night — particularly if it’s a disgusting racist lie that could actually get someone killed — that his mic will be cut because when some percentage of his looney tune followers hear it, they’ve shown they’re willing to kill people over it. Kill people.
Why can’t we, as journalists, as media professionals, say, we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore?
SEE ALSO:
9 Things You Should Know About Vice President Harris
Trump Earns His Stripes As The Grand Dragon Of Political Racism
