A Black Woman President is Not Black Girl Magic

First, an announcement: Alan and I have decided to extend our reading of Solidarity through the end of the summer. We didn't quite realize what a dense and altogether important book we'd chosen, especially at this moment. It's worth giving you and ourselves more time to digest what we've realized is an essential piece of political education. If you have been hanging in there with us, thank you!

We’ll meet to discuss Solidarity on August 28 from 6:00 - 7:00 PM Eastern. I hope you’ll be able to join us! If you haven’t already registered, click below to get the zoom link. If you’ve already registered, there’s nothing else to do. You’re still signed up forAugust 28th.

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It's been a little over a week since the announcement that Kamala Harris is all but sure to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

And there has been a whirlwind of excitement, hope, and relief since then. Black women came together immediately, the same day in fact, organizing and raising money to support Harris's candidacy.

And just as immediately, I felt conflicted. I was so conflicted that, unlike most of my friends, I did not join the call with 40,000 other Black women. And truthfully, it felt strange not "being in that number." But as a Black woman who is also an abolitionist, I've had to process what was quickly dubbed the ultimate example of Black Girl Magic; with my values and incessant critiques of Empire, an Empire some of my dearest friends and loved ones were now loudly cheering. I've been navigating relationships carefully, levying critique with care, patience, and love. All the while, dear friends have been bewildered about my lack of full throated participation and glee.

But being excited just didn't ring true for me. As is my practice, I look to poets to help frame my thoughts. When I began to interrogate what Black Girl Magic means to me, I thought of Lucille Clifton's description of her mother.

“Oh she made magic, she was a magic woman, my Mama. She was not wise in the world but she had magic wisdom.” – Lucille Clifton

Her description is how I think of my mother, grandmothers, and all the very best Black women I’ve ever known. Lucille Clifton brought me home to myself and helped me reconcile what I felt immediately and can now articulate clearly:

This is not a Black Girl Magic moment.

And not because we aren’t magical.

Black women have birthed nations, survived against all odds, and provided the physical and emotional labor to sustain our communities and the very backbone of this country. Our milk fed our enslaver’s children. Our wombs birthed babies conceived through rape only to watch our babies be enslaved, brutalized, and terrorized alongside us. Later, we cooked, cleaned, and maintained the homes of White people for pennies while they prospered. Our labor has always been undervalued and never fairly rewarded. Still, we make pennies on the dollar for the same positions that we earn only by being twice as good. Flawless. 

Black women did that. We are that. Ask about us. Or better yet, check our record, a record that shows, time after time, since we were allowed to vote, Black women, more than any other group, show up to thwart the worst of what this country has offered for leadership. We have consistently voted, and the times we have squeezed our way through the door, political or otherwise, we have fought for the most marginalized. (Shoutout to Shirley Chisholm and Sheila Jackson Lee. May she rest in peace.)

But we’ve always done what we do within a brutal, imperialistic, White Supremacist framework, the Empire that is the United States of America.

Can we be clear about that?

Can we call a thing a thing?  And can we please not call it Black Girl Magic?

Kamala Harris will not save Democracy. She can’t. There is no democracy to save.

The very process by which she was deemed worthy of taking the reins from a President who has presided over, aided, and abetted a genocide while in the throes of obvious cognitive decline while boasting an abysmal record and approval rating —makes it clear we are not a democracy.

Yet, we have come to the hour when a Black woman has been anointed to save us. From Trump. From the rapid implementation of Project 2025. From a freefall into unabashed fascism.

Let's be clear, though: fascism is already here. Democracy in its current iteration cannot be saved, for it is already gone.

Should we do whatever possible to save the most marginalized, the most vulnerable, from the sure, brazen, unmitigated harm that will happen under a Trump Presidency?

Before we analyze the untenable situation we face, before we even get to the conversation about what our vote means, what it doesn’t mean, and what kind of power it may or may not hold, we must be clear about what it means to serve as President of the United States. 

Eight years ago, in 2016, I stumbled upon an article: I'll be so proud when my daughter is president and runs a corrupt oligarchy by one of our generation's best writers and thinkers, Kiese Laymon. A satirical piece, the power of it has now landed right at our feet in real-time to amplify the truth we must reckon with. 

“I want her to say nothing about the engineered lack of healthy choices facing both Palestinians and poor black children in Mississippi….I want my daughter to say to irresponsible black women, but not to responsible Wall Street white men:

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

I want her to privately tell those same Wall Street white men, “Thank you for your contributions” while publicly saying, “I would fight for tough new rules, stronger enforcement and more accountability that go well beyond Dodd-Frank.”
– Kiese Laymon

I credit this article as part of my political education and awakening as it laid bare the hypocrisy of the U.S. Presidency by juxtaposing aspirational hope with the stark truth of what the office of the President does in reality. It brilliantly removes the shiny veneer and places the office firmly, truthfully, in the context of Empire. 

Eight years later, I know that whatever we may call it, Kamala Harris's candidacy and potential Presidency should not be met with glee. 

This is not a Black Girl Magic moment.

It can’t be. The job requires one to preside over death and destruction under an ever-duplicitous guise of championing democracy. The most marginalized and vulnerable will die under a Harris presidency precisely because it is a requirement of the job.  There is no mistake about this. Putting a Black face on Empire will not change Empire.

Our current reading selection, Solidarity, makes this point about, ironically, DEI and political office.

“When corporations talk about "diversity, equity, and inclusion," for example, and feature a rainbow of faces in their marketing, they are attempting to mobilize a range of identities to support the status quo. The same goes for politicians who invoke their identities while advocating for policies that harm working people, as though attacks on public health care and education are less egregious when led by a Black man or a queer woman.

The goal of truly transformative solidarity must be to transcend oligarchy, not diversify it.” – from Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Ida by Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor

To be fully transparent, what bothers me most is the readiness and glee with which so many christened Kamala's candidacy as the ultimate Black Girl Magic achievement. I suspect the reasons may lie in what Toni Morrison once said about racism that illuminates ways we have internalized it.

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
– Toni Morrison

Winning the Presidency, the most powerful office in the world, will not be the last “thing” required of White Supremacy to recognize us as fully human. Nor will it unequivocally prove our worth to those who don’t see us as worthy. And critically, more importantly, it can’t possibly attest to our magic. 

Black women BEEN magical, without the approval of Whiteness or ascendance into White rooms and spaces. Even more than that, the White House is the very antithesis of the essence of our magic, a magic that lies in the ways we have cared for our communities and stitched together survival, sustenance, and joy. The many ways we have made a way out of no way time after time for a long, long time. Since arriving on these shores and even before. We must be clear that what happens in the Oval Office is an affront to all our ancestors held dear and true. 

There are rooms we should never aspire to be in. I also believe we should use our power to ensure we save as many people as possible, just like we've always done. Two things can be true.

But what’s even more true is this:

If Kamala Harris becomes President, we will still live within a brutal Empire whose chief export is death abroad. An Empire that brutalizes Black, brown and poor people from within. An Empire we know is destined to fall.

Meanwhile there are countless examples of Black women exemplifying Black Girl Magic by living the values of our ancestors. They perform the magic of community care. They are our mothers, our grandmothers, our aunts and neighbors. Some are activists, and organizers who work to provide mutual aid, formally and informally, in our communities. We will lean on their ancestor approved brand of magic no matter what happens in November.

But Kamala Harris’s anointment as the Democratic nominee is not a Black Girl Magic moment. 

And whether she succeeds or fails will not, and will never be, a reflection of the very best of us, the inheritance from our ancestors that is life-giving, life-affirming, and life-sustaining—the real Black Girl magic that has saved us time and again. 

Should she become President, Kamala Harris does not have the power to, in the words of Lucille Clifton, "make magic" in the Oval Office. Nor can she impart the office with "magic wisdom." The job simply doesn't require it, won't tolerate it, and can only make a mockery of what Black Girl Magic truly means.