We will have a (Black, South Asian) Woman President, but at what cost?

Kristen's Un-Gentrified Front Porch for August 28, 2024

Then Senator Kamala Harris in 2017 in Virginia with Virginians (United States Senate - The Office of Kamala Harris, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Welcome back to what I call my UnGentrified Front Porch, the home each week for my essay of the week and some of my vlogs and project photos from my other social media accounts. Soon, I’ll resume hosting a weekly livestream Q&A and releasing new episodes of my podcast Defying Gentrification. However, you can head to YouTube to listen to any streams and episodes you may have missed! And read below to my thoughts this week, on the inevitability of our first (Black, South Asian) woman president in the so-called United States and how it really feels when we need a stronger image and push of liberation.

It’s no secret that I am depressed. Well, it started as anxiety, and it’s clinically complex post-traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD), but it’s a regular feeling of malaise.

If you found my words because of Substack sending you here, you might just think this is a well-written grief project about the effects of gentrification on my body, mind, and career in urban planning and nonprofit communication across the lower 48 of the so-called United States.

If LinkedIn is how you found me, you might consider me “bold” or “courageous” for being so real about how my career has been affected not just by the places I live, but the messiness of being in the empire’s service. Depending on your occupation and political leanings, you may either be joyfully in agreement or cautiously curious or concerned with care about me even calling it “the messiness of being in the empire’s service.” 

And if you’ve listened to my podcast or ever heard one of my speeches or interviews or panels, you’ll hear everything I just said it in my slightly flattened Southern (US) accent, indicating that I am the daughter that  migrated far from home. It also shows me as an entity and vessel of the shame that comes from moving about the country and feeling the pressure to conform, and contort, but making sure I still carry my roots in my voice. 

This brings me to my analysis of our President-Elect. Yes, I’m speaking it into existence, because unlike in 2016, a few things have happened that tell me this is going on to be the time and place. And such as it is, my Black queer radical working-class feminist personage has the fruitful intersectionality to tell you what’s about to happen and has happened.

In this so-called country, with its tepid values of freedom, if we are putting a Black (yes, even a light-skinned and also South Asian) woman in charge of ourselves, then we’re absolutely requiring her to say all the “right things”.

Even if they are terrible things. 

And yes, there’s good mixed in and there is honest care and concern. Yes, she probably has moments and family and friends you can relate to.

And yes, you might see yourself as beyond all of this. You’re even working on all levels, first in your body, then your immediate community, and chosen family towards resistance and renewal. You’re blocking as much of this fascism and conformity as you can, pulling those roots and building from it a better, more inclusive space.

But we share a citizenry and land space with those who have a very different view and when you average it all out, you get what you saw at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

You get a president-elect, who will be a president-elect, that fits the moment. And that moment is a muddy stew of everything of which we are complicit.

However, I want this to be a moment where you think hard about how you really feel about Black women and those who present partially or fully as what we consider feminine in this society. 

For those of us who are Black embodied in such a way, what do you see when you look in the mirror. What has respectability told you,  you “need to do”?

This is where I ask you why you might be bothered at me telling the truth of how it is, instead of more bothered that yet we have another sista/sibling who has had to for lack of a better illustration “ high-tech shuck and jive” so that we can save our lives. Lives that in some cases would turn right on back around and snuff ours out, because they are on their way to getting theirs.

And to my non-Black melanated siblings, especially at this moment to those who are so bent on being that model minority instead of weeping and wailing with me at the loss of your autonomy of the stewardship on your lands, what say you in the mirror? 

Also, some of y’all are radical and want to think you know us, and believe that we only come in the flavor of respectability outside of your bookshelf or social media feed, but where are your in-person, on the group chat comrades who look, feel, and sound like me? When we do rebuild the system, are we really there? Or will you be just as carceral to us as you were to the old system because you think that anti-Blackness is always okay and that our skin and ways still preclude our globe from ever being clean?

And then we get to those under white skin. Even some of you who have shaken off gender, race, and ability limitations and prejudices. Your elders and peers got us here. You can’t ignore them. And maybe blame their lust for bombs and guns and control for getting us here. For seducing us with propagandas that make us feel good, but are full of worms.

This is where we are on this globe. But we can do better. And it starts with the mirror. Rest with it, be with it. And then let’s talk about what we can or can’t do.

****

I want to end this letter on a different note, that I’m glad I was able to get to Podcast Movement and the National Book Festival this week. It reminded me of the roots of my creative practice and I was overjoyed that so many of my fellow creatives were able to connect and that I likewise got to meet some of you.  Oh and we snuck in a Washington Mystics Game that included a Hall of Fame Ceremony for Alana Beard

Here are my short films of:

My experience on Day 2 of the Podcast Movement

The Washington Mystics Game

And, the National Book Festival

Now, I’m hunkered down and still testing negative, but I am glad I got to experience these things. And yes, crochet carried me through, both on my body and in my hands!

There are limits to power and fame in an imperialistic society. Let this be the week and the century that we create a better society, from joy and grounded peace.

Until next time,

Kristen