You Want to Thank Black Women?

So, you want to thank Black women for helping Joe Biden win? Here’s how.

When W.E.B. DuBois wrote that he would “not go to the polls” in 1956, it resonated with me deeply. My first introduction to sociology came by reading an excerpt of “The Souls of Black Folk” by DuBois for class. He introduced me to the revolutionary idea that black people in America should withhold votes. In “I Won’t Vote”, published in The Nation, he echoed my disenchantment and utter contempt for the U.S. electoral system and everything it stands for.

So, I didn’t vote in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election after voting in 2016, 2008, and 2004. I say this because I don’t want you to thank me for a Biden/Harris win. I’d hate to take credit for something like that.

In fact, don’t ever feel the need to thank me for anything. As a black woman in America, I don’t want or need your thanks. I need your action and your fight. I need results. We, black women, deserve results. Thank you is far from giving unto us our (overdue) due.

As for the black women who voted? Let’s talk about my esteemed sisters. Though we disagree, esteemed they are, first and foremost. I won’t mention the conservative ones because we all know they weren’t thanked for voting for Trump.

You want to thank them, no? You keep tweeting or posting on Facebook that you don’t know how the United States could ever thank Black women enough. You’re at a loss for words, speechless. Black women have saved you from jumping over the precipice of neoliberalism and into full fascism yet again. You’ll run headlong into it eventually, though. That much is a given.

You don’t know what to do? It must be quite shocking to know this. You knew you didn’t deserve this assistance. You’ve sat by on your asses for years, through two presidents at least, as black women wept over the bodies of their dead children, many whom were left in the street to rot and putrefy in full view of man and God.

What shall you do? Well, you could thank us by not killing our daughters and sons. Breonna Taylor, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Philando Castile — among a legion of others — deserved to live lives uninterrupted by white supremacy and the violence it sows around the world. They deserved to live until God called them home, not until this fascist state chose to dispatch them to Him.

You want to thank black women? How about this? Stop killing us while we carry our babies or attempt to give birth to them:

Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women — and this disparity increases with age, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report today in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

Most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Racial and ethnic disparities in pregnancy-related deaths have persisted over time.

That also means calling off your hell hounds in blue who like to kill pregnant black women like Charleena Lyles in front of their children, and punishing them to the fullest extent of the law for being terrorists and murderers.

You want to thank black women? Stop beating us to death and stop raping us. Oh, and while you’re at it, make sure to avoid gaslighting us about our abuse, who is abusing us, and the fatal results.

You can thank black women by not subjecting them to high infant mortality rates because you can’t hate black women without hating black children. When we go to work, you could make the workplace less hostile with your ignorant, tiresome microaggressions. You could stop passing us over for promotions and pay raises.

You could thank black women by not starting wars that see their sons and daughters taken hostage or rotting for days in the sun like LaDavid Johnson. You could fix the unjust and corrupt American justice system. You could free the black men and women locked up for holding less weed than most Washington dispensaries that rake in millions. You could start there, your ode to your slave-owning past.

Free healthcare, student debt forgiveness, and free college tuition are other ways to thank us. There’s no need for the hand-wringing and the desperation. Those are all tangible ways to thank black women, and I haven’t even skimmed the surface. There is so much more that could be done.

Personally, I don’t believe the United States should be saved. I don’t think it’s salvageable. I believe any nation soaked in this much blood — the blood of the indigenous and the Africans, especially — is an abomination destined to fail and cannibalize itself until nothing but a dessicated carcass is left.

The United States does not deserve to be saved by black women, because black women and their children are unworthy of being saved to Americans. This is why the murderers of black children like Trayvon and Aiyana can walk around freely without a care in the world. They don’t have to even watch their backs the way our children do just because they have the audacity to exist. This is why Carolyn Bryant has survived to a ripe old age and Emmett Till never got to see his 15th birthday.

Don’t thank black women, help black women. Protect black women. Fight for black women. Your thanks are as hollow as your friendship or concern for us. Save the congratulations for your self-congratulatory Facebook posts and awkward Thanksgiving family dinners.

We’re good.