It is and has not been a secret, that I believe that Kamala Harris is one of most brilliant political figures we have ever seen in this country. She conditioned herself to always, with humility, be the wisest and most prudent person in the room.
She has been a unifier and has developed and implemented some of the most visionary criminal justice models in the country. And, she, as if she were the prophets Jeremiah or Isaiah, plainly and prophetically predicted our current political and economic situation. She told us so.
On my quiet side of the universe, we know that Kamala was not elected to be the president of this country because there was an electoral unwillingness to allow someone like her—brilliant, capable, visionary, and yes, a Black woman—to lead. And we openly discuss that over here. And I honestly believed that that notion was pretty noncontroversial, based on what we are witnessing in government right now.
That was until I saw comments from a liberal, progressive, even feminist person on social media who articulated every reason why Kamala lost—she was a woman, and in the shadow of a man, and was a law enforcement officer—other than the reason we knew she lost. And it made me reflect on a thing.
From my perspective, the American memory is a curated gallery, designed to comfort rather than convict. We flock to the exhibits of historic courage and distant cruelty, finding solace in the condemnation of sins that require nothing of our present selves.
This is the standard by which white America engages with racism—as a phenomenon safely confined by remote geography and distant time. It is easy to weep for the children of Selma or to marvel at the apartheid of old Johannesburg. Those atrocities are fixed in the past, their villains safely buried, offering the modern observer a cheap grace. In this framing, racism is a localized anomaly, a southern pathology, or a historical relic. It is never a mirror.
This selective resonance explains the grand paradox of our modern political era: the coronation of Barack Obama alongside the quiet, systematic rejection of Black political power at the local and state levels.
When America elected its first Black president, it did not signal an embrace of structural equality; it signaled a desire for a national absolution. Obama was a singular, historic figure whose appeal lay partly in his ability to exist above the fray of local, historical grievances. To vote for him was, for many white Americans, an act of self-exoneration—a grand, symbolic gesture that supposedly closed the book on America’s racial debt.
Yet, when the theater shifts from the grand stage of the White House to the mundane halls of county commissions, state legislatures, mayoral offices, and even working to elect someone like Kamala, the illusion of progress shatters.
Local politics is where the abstract concept of equality meets the concrete realities of power and resource allocation. It is where decisions about zoning laws, school district boundaries, property taxes, and police budgets are made. And it is precisely here, where the stakes are immediate and material, that Black politicians face an entirely different wall of resistance.
An Anglo voter can enthusiastically support a Black president while simultaneously organizing against a Black mayoral candidate who promises to desegregate local schools or reallocate municipal funds. The former is an act of historical romanticism; the latter is a perceived threat to neighborhood homogeneity and generational wealth.
We see this in state houses across the country, where Black politicians are not merely struggling to get elected, but are actively stripped of power when they do. The Anglo political establishment readily tolerates Black leadership when it is symbolic, but revolts when it attempts to govern.
The resistance to local Black political power reveals an uncomfortable truth: white resonance with the struggle against racism ends the moment that struggle asks for a sacrifice of local privilege.
Until America grapples with the racism embedded in its own school boards, municipal courts, and city councils, its celebrations of racial progress will remain an exercise in displacement. We will continue to applaud the heroes of yesterday while voting down the equity of today, preferring the comfortable myth of a post-racial nation over the difficult work of local justice.
