What Black Women Deserved To Have Asked At The Debate

Roughly nine hours after the walloping Trump probably doesn’t realize (and probably can’t be convinced) he took at last night’s debate, I’m still 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 you to zero.

But 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. 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 whose disinformation about the pandemic is widely considered to have caused a death rate that was fully 40 percent higher than it needed to be.

 

Don’t Give An Inch; They Won’t Take A Mile

The same disinformation campaign 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 that handed to him by President Obama. Yet somehow a discussion about who had the best economy is given legitimate space. At what point do the rules than 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 Trump spews. Whether its about his economic plan that’s no more than a 3-card monty 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 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 people stop ceding all the territory to Trump and his dangerous lies and actions?

When do we see that when Black women are thought to be disturbed, they just get a bullet in the head?

What About Us?

I mean, there are any number of other identity specific groups who are always considered.

Billionaires and big business owners are always the group Republicans mean when they talk about taxes, tariffs and the stock market.

Middle East policy is almost exclusively limited to supporting Israel (also Saudi Arabia, but that’s supposed to be hush-hush I think).

Civil rights–diversity, equity and inclusion–is code for white women’s advancement. They’re the group that has benefitted more than any other from the work Black people–the majority of whom were Black women–worked and died to achieve.

Which brings me back to what I, what we, deserved to hear more about: us. Black women. Hardworking and still poor Black women. 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 ffaster 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 issues were discussed at the debate (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 everyday 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 restoration. It’s been too much and for too long.

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. We’re more alone now.

In discussions about reproductive health, I wanted to also hear about the maternal morbidity rates that show Black women are more likely to be die in childbirth, regardless of our station in life. I wanted to hear about the forced sterilizations that still occurs in prisons where Black women are incarcerated for crimes white women get a walk on. Black women who are also more targeted for violence, from our partners to the police.

And Black women whose harm goes ignored more often than not.

It’s time to network

It’s not fair to place that burden squarely on the Vice President’s shoulders. Black women clean up messes everyone else makes. It’s long past time for everyone to help us out.

That’s why I place the on the people who have the power and access to frame conversations–debates–and the stories that are told and the stories that go untold.ask questions like the ones above, or ask about the Congo and the Sudan since they touched the human cost of wars?

Why not ask how candidates should be held accountable in real time 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?

Why not tell Trump that if he says anything provably false, particularly if it’s a disgusting lie about Black immigrants that could actually get someone killed, his mic will be cut because when some percentage of his looney tune followers hear it. They have shown they are willing to kill people before. 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 MORE:

 9 Things You Should Know About Vice President Harris

Trump Earns His Stripes As The Grand Dragon Of Political Racism

Trump Confusing ‘Seeking Asylum’ With ‘Insane Asylums’ Is Latest Hint Of Cognitive Decline

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