There comes a moment in nearly every Black American woman's life when the myth of American meritocracy shatters like fine china on concrete. For some, it's the first time they watch a less qualified colleague coast past them on the corporate ladder. For others, it's the realization that excellence - even the double portion our elders always insist upon - provides no shelter from systemic inequality.
For 92% of us, that moment crystallized in the early morning hours of November 6, 2024, when America's old patterns emerged with devastating familiarity.
Through the machinery of oligarchy, America stood much like the emperor of that old tale, stripped of its progressive pretense but still parading in imagined finery. Its message rang with the same cracked clarity as the Liberty Bell: your credentials cannot override our prejudices.
As Black women in America, we've long played by rules we didn't write, in a game we didn't design, chasing a dream that was never imagined with us in mind. We’ve checked all the boxes. We've mastered their institutions, earned their degrees, and dominated their boardrooms and courtrooms, only to find ourselves perched precariously on the “glass cliff.”
America extends us the invitation to lead only when disaster looms, then rescinds it the moment they realize Black women's competence might actually upend the systems designed to keep us on the margins.
The evidence, as James Baldwin might say, is before us. The U.S. was presented with Kamala Harris, a woman who embodied every marker of achievement they claimed to value. Through Howard University's hallowed halls, Kamala Harris walked in the footsteps of intellectual giants. In Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, she found a sisterhood devoted to scholarship, service, and the uplift of all mankind.
She charted her course through America's power structures with precision. First, as the District Attorney of San Francisco and then as the Attorney General of California, where she wielded influence across the largest state justice system in the nation. From there, she legislated in the marble chambers of the Senate. When she claimed the Vice Presidency, she stood as living testimony to a truth Black women have always carried: our excellence is not a question but a constant.
Yet, when confronted with the undeniable evidence of our capabilities, America revealed its true allegiance. It chose instinctively. It chose, as it has consistently chosen, to run it back.
Despite the palpable disappointment many of us felt by this choice, upon reflection, I’d posit that this rejection may be our redemption.
Sometimes, the first step toward freedom is realizing the futility of looking for salvation in places never meant to set us free. We’ve spent centuries proving our worth to a nation that repeatedly shows us it never intended to honor our contributions.
Generation after generation, we have shouldered this country’s moral burden, nursed its conscience, and carried its dreams of equality forward – all while being denied the freedoms we helped secure for others. Zora Neale Hurston saw this truth with unflinching clarity. America has cast Black women as its mules, demanding we pull the nation toward its ideals while our own liberation gathers dust in the corners of tomorrow's promises.
Look closely at the pattern. They only summon us when the house is on fire and when circumstances teeter on the brink of calamity. Only then do they remember our competence and our proven track record of making a way out of no way.
In these moments, America plays a cruel game. It offers us the wheel of its storm-battered ship, but only as a theatrical gesture. Sure, we can captain the vessel, but heaven forbid we dare chart a new course. We can put out the fires, but dare not speak about who's been playing with matches.
The moment we propose solutions that might prevent the next disaster rather than just clean up this one, America snatches back control. The choice underscores the fact that they prefer familiar chaos to any meaningful change.
But what if, in rejecting our leadership, America has inadvertently released us from the obligation to save it?
In the wake of this nation's decision, 92 percent of us saw past the electoral math to something more fundamental shifting beneath our feet. Langston Hughes asked what happens to a dream deferred. Now, we have to wrestle with an even more chilling question: What happens when a dream dies?
Death – whether of a person, a dream, or an illusion – has a way of bringing everything into focus. It forces you to confront the red flags you’ve been ignoring, the compromises you’ve been making, and the burdens you’ve been carrying that were never yours to bear.
The death of this particular dream clarifies what many of us have felt in our bones but were afraid to name. Perhaps we’ve been attempting to breathe life into a vision of America that exists only in our imagination. Like loyal children striving to redeem an abusive parent's potential, we've worn ourselves out trying to change a nation fundamentally resistant to its own evolution.
But perhaps there is power in letting this dream die. Maybe there is freedom in finally allowing ourselves to mourn what never was, so we can birth what could be. The death of a dream creates space for new visions to take root.
This time, our visions can emerge from our own imaginations, planted in the rich soil of our ancestral wisdom, and watered by the certainty of our inherent worth. No more contorting ourselves to fit within the narrow confines of American dreaming. No more seeking validation from systems that were never built to recognize us.
Perhaps it's time to consider that our salvation isn’t tied to rescuing a nation that has shown us through policy, practice, and presidential politics that it values our labor more than our liberation.
The fear is palpable now as many of us have pledged to finally step away from America's wreckage (or escape it altogether).
You can hear it in the unsteady voices of former allies and see it in the anxious glances of those who have come to rely on our ability to turn their chaos into order. Their nervousness echoes in performative gestures, like blue friendship bracelets and other hollow declarations of solidarity. These crafty symbols do nothing to dismantle the structures crushing us, but everything to assuage guilty consciences.
Many shudder at the prospect of Black women finally deciding that America's emergencies are no longer our most urgent problems to solve.
Let them tremble. That fear is not ours to manage. Those anxieties are not ours to soothe. For too long we've been democracy's first responders, racism's clean-up crew, and the patriarchy's emotional support system. We've been everything to everyone, except ourselves.
Some might argue that our destinies are inextricably linked to America's fate. They'll insist that we forfeit our power the moment we step back from these institutions we've fought so hard to enter. This thinking reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Black women's relationship to power because the truth is, our genius transcends every boundary they've tried to draw around us.
We are the daughters and granddaughters of women who turned kitchens into classrooms and church basements into freedom-fighting headquarters. Our power doesn’t lie in our proximity to existing systems but in our ability to imagine, create, and sustain new ones.
So to my sisters who've mastered every game only to find the rules rewritten, who've exceeded every benchmark only to watch the finish line move again, I say this: Let America have what she chose.
Let her run it back, run it down, run it into the ground if she desires. Let her wrestle with her demons alone.
Our task now is not to save her.
She has made it abundantly clear she doesn't want to be saved. Instead, our task is to redirect the focus toward securing our liberation.
Because the energy we've spent trying to save a nation that repeatedly rejects us could fuel a thousand freedoms of our own making.
-Courtney
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