Girl, nobody cares that you're in the 92%
I'm going to hold your hand when I say this.
When the exit polls for the 2024 Presidential election were released, I was not at all surprised that 92% of Black women voted for Kamala Harris. The overwhelming majority of Black women have been voting democratically for decades. A lot of us are satiated by representational progress, so of course, seeing someone who looks like us breeds more enthusiasm for hitting the polls. After Biden dropped out of the race and Harris announced her run for president, over 40,000 Black women hopped on a Zoom call organized by #WinWithBlackWomen to rally up support for her. Black women are not monolithic so I cannot assume why all of the Black women who voted for Harris made that choice, but I know many who did so reluctantly, and others who are aligned with an uncritical “I’m Rooting for Everybody Black” brand of Black excellence that believes Black people taking up space in systems that were not designed to serve us is the progress we need to be free. For many of these reasons, Kamala Harris really didn’t have to earn Black women’s vote, and the Harris-Walz campaign proceeded to roll out an Obama-era campaign full of celebrity endorsements, cringy attempts to gain youth voters, courting Republicans, and continuing to finance genocide as a “right to self-defense”. As a result, many people in our community failed to address the way their campaign was failing to meet the moment because they were so jazzed up by the possibility of seeing ourselves back in the Oval Office again.
In the weeks after the election, I saw a lot of cursory platitudes from Black women talking about why they thought Kamala’s defeat was caused by racism and sexism. Certainly, in a neo-Nazi regime, racism, and sexism were at play but there were also several other variables that contributed to this loss, including a lower voter turnout, Americans gradually becoming more conservative, losing campaign time by waiting for Biden to concede, failing to separate herself from Biden administration policies, losing underserved and propagandized working class voters, and a lot of empty word salad speeches in critical moments that required a clear vision for the country. And while I recognize how there is a double standard in which an evil racist idiot can do far worse and still win the election, too many of us strive for a version of equality where marginalized people can get away with the same shit white men do when we really should raise the bar for everyone.
Some of us were so caught up in the optics of the election that we started to lose sight of the fact that our two-party system is no longer a choice between left and right. The shift in the American political spectrum since 2016 and the Overton window in which our elections are played out has made identification with either party much more convoluted. However, most Democrats in the US are moderate, so if your primary political tool as a Black person is voting for Democrats, then you are not acting in service of your liberation. Voting is an important civic duty, but the act alone is not inherently transformative, or even progressive, when the choice is between neoliberalism and fascism. Yet, there is a growing sentiment that Black women in the 92% were the only brave souls to do the right thing, and we must rest and prioritize our self-care. We are no longer marching, standing on the front lines, or carrying everyone’s dead weight. We have done our part, and ya’ll got it. But how many of us have considered that it is we who have the most to lose if we decide to take fascism lying down? Especially those among us who are poor, LGBTQIA+, disabled, immigrants, or lacking the privileges that those of us who have the luxury to sit on top of the world, sipping lattes, watching the world burn down do. It’s not really a gotcha when we’re the ones who are about to get got, babes.
And listen, I get it. Black women are TIRED as fuck right now, and rightfully so. We deserve rest, care, respect, security, and safety. It’s hard enough to navigate life being both a woman and Black without the added complexity of the inherited trauma that has been passed down for hundreds of years. We bear the weariness of our foremothers in our blood and bones, but we are not our foremothers. Many Black American women born after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are among the first in their families born with the right to vote — a significant distinction between us and the women who paved the way for us. We have been afforded rights and privileges that our foremothers did not live to see, and we have them because they took actions outside of voting in elections, because they didn’t even have that choice. Many will argue that the women who came before us put in that work so we didn’t have to, but if the work stops with us, what happens to the future generations we leave behind? In general, a lot of the #RestIsResistance proclamations I’ve been seeing in these spaces conflate hyperindividual comfort with the work required for us to actually build a world where prioritizing rest is not a privilege only a few of us can afford.
I don’t think it is our job to save the world or pour from empty cups, but I do think we owe it to ourselves and our communities to consider how we’re going to survive what we’re up against, and the ways we can show up and support the most vulnerable among us. I’ve personally been collaborating with other Black women to build new ecosystems and communities. Whether it is raising social awareness, learning survival skills, creating mutual aid funds, volunteering with grassroots organizations, boycotting and divestment, decreasing consumption, or donating to overlooked causes, there are steps each of us can take that will hopefully lessen the blows of the cruel political suppression we will be enduring the for the next four years and beyond. Imagine how powerful we would be if 40,000 Black women were hopping on a Zoom call to talk about new systems, and not just ways to continue participating in this one? I love disassociating as much as the next dreamer, but it’s not going to protect us — but compassion and communal care can.
Continuing to talk about being in the 92% nearly six months after a lost election is, at best, a Black Liberal virtue signal, and at worst, symptomatic of how American hyperindividualism has infused our political perspectives and disconnected us from the role we all play in resisting oppression. The trauma of being Black in America didn’t start with you, and the tradition of fighting against it isn’t going to end with you. There have always been Black people who are active in liberation, and those who are too afraid, worn down or complacent to do the necessary work, but we have all benefited from the courage and tenacity of people who kept pushing for what we deserve even the odds were insurmountable. The question we have to ask ourselves now is whose shoulders are we standing on to occupy the spaces we are now, and how do we honor them by not allowing all of the work they did to die in vain?
💋 ✌🏾
With love,
LaChelle
Great piece! This has been one of those moments that highlights for me how Black Americans are very much still Americans. Our reasoning can also be corrupted by noxious, individualist political frameworks even though we’re targeted by the country’s dominant ones. We’ve gotta be brave enough to confront that
I hear where you’re coming from, and I understand the angle, but I have to push back a bit. As one of those Black women who’s been saying exactly this, I think it’s more layered than what’s being presented here.
In my experience, choosing to “let them do it” and leaning into rest and preservation hasn’t meant abandoning our livelihoods—or our communities. Like you mentioned, in both my real life and online spaces, Black women are choosing rest, but we’re doing it intentionally. Not as a retreat, but as a form of resistance. We’re not walking away from the work—it’s just evolving.
Black women have long been the backbone of our families, our churches, our schools, and our movements. We’ve led while being tired, stretched thin, and often unacknowledged. So now, when we say “I’m part of the 92% y’all got it,” it’s not a betrayal of our liberation. It’s a survival strategy. It’s a different way of being committed. We’re not forsaking the fight—we’re choosing to fight differently.
I do agree with you, though, that our blind allegiance to the Democratic Party is something we need to interrogate and actively address.
We know the cost of not prioritizing our wellness, and we also know our wellbeing is collective liberation. So yes, we can afford to rest. In fact, we can’t afford not to.