My mom texted me yesterday to ask if I thought Kamala was going to win the democratic presidential candidacy. My mother is an immigrant from Haiti, the first Black republic, whose continuous economic and political upheaval is traced directly to colonization and retribution stemming from a successful overthrow of the French in 1804 and subsequent occupation and trade manipulation by the United States.
I am a CEO, leading Code2040, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing racial equity in tech, and leading an organization of majority Black and Latinx workers focused on issues facing Black and Latinx people feels harder than it ever has for me. This is one of the most challenging years for us as we face a philanthropic sector that is reeling after the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, vast corporate and political divestment in DEI, and the US’ continued partnership with Israel in a genocide against the Palestinian people. As we’ve watched Black, Brown, and social justice formations combat attacks on the progress we’ve made to dismantle systemic racism, it’s resoundingly clear: we must be catalyzed to act beyond representation because Black faces in high places will not save us.
While creating pathways into leadership for Black and Latinx people in the innovation economy is a crucial part of our work at Code2040, we need to advance leaders who are racial equity advocates, committed to creating lasting, systemic change, and ready to dismantle the structural barriers that keep us out.
I remember when Issa Rae told Variety at the Emmy’s, “I’m rooting for everybody Black,” because most of the time, I am too. In this moment, I’m rooting for Black people, and that means I’m not rooting for Kamala Harris.
Representation is not transformation, and it certainly is not the liberation we deserve. Rooting for Black people is a commitment to uprooting the legacy of chattel slavery and genocide that are foundational to this country. Rooting for Black people is eradicating white supremacy at its roots while tending the seeds of liberatory futures.
I believe that like me, my mother knows this. Nevertheless, my mother loves the United States.
I grew up in a home that had an American flag outside, my mom decorated the garden with americana, and on American Independence Day, she bought us all t-shirts with American flags on them. She voted in every primary and general election, up and down the ballot, and she really believed that Barack Obama would change the course of the future. When, as an adult, I learned more about Haiti’s history and the catastrophic impact of U.S. foreign policy on Haiti, I asked her why she had so many American flags up all the time. “I love this country,” she said, “This is the best country.”
My mom was a nurse in an early community-based care model for homeless people in Manhattan. I remember walking with her once as a kid, and noticing someone sitting on the sidewalk. She walked over and said surprised, “Crystal, what are you doing over here, I thought you got into that SRO! (single room occupancy–subsidized housing for low income or unhoused people)” She talked with the woman, Crystal, who was her client at a local shelter, and a stranger to me, and they made plans to reconnect at the shelter the next week. That’s how she taught me to be: talk to everyone, respect everyone, see everyone; notice people, notice what they care about, what they need, what they hope for. She taught me that we show up for each other.
My mom taught me about unions and collective bargaining; I slept in gigantic 1199SEIU t-shirts my entire childhood. She was a Christian but she taught me about birth control and abortion because she understood that they are healthcare. She believed, “children should be wanted.” She understood that we have a responsibility to one another to do better, fix what we can, and repair.
As a Black woman in a leadership position, like my mother taught me, I am committed to showing up each day for the people I work with, being accountable to our mission to eradicate white supremacy from tech, and remaining aligned with my values.
We are working to do more than achieve racial parity in the workplace; we are aiming to radically transform the innovation economy. In what will undoubtedly be an unprecedentedly divisive election season, rife with noxious political rhetoric and attacks on anti-racist work, we need to remain focused on eradicating white supremacy at its roots and we will need racial equity, moving beyond diversity and inclusion, to do that.
Amongst all of the backlash against anti-racist organizing and rising authoritarianism, the Democratic party taps Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black woman, to replace Joe Biden as the presumptive presidential nominee. Racist, sexist vitriol kicked up immediately, supported by the foundation of the right’s concerted effort to delegitimize anti-racist work. Harris has been called a “DEI candidate,” undermining her credentials and obvious qualifications to be the president, while simultaneously appealing to the fallacies of reverse racism and post-racialism gaining legal traction.
I wish that I could say I was excited for the first Black woman to be named presidential nominee by a major political party. When I think about the injustice of the electoral system and the material impacts of the outcome of this presidential election on the lives of our most marginalized communities, I feel resentful.
When I think about the ways the US will continue providing weapons and support to Israel as war is waged against the Palestinian people, spend billions of dollars on defense, and intensify militarized policing, I feel white-hot rage and grief. The leader of the US being a Black woman in and of itself doesn’t shift the purpose and impact of the US imperial project.
Now, I see my mom’s love for this country is related to feeling belonging and purpose in her fantasy of the U.S., which she still holds alongside the ongoing destruction of her first home, Haiti. She is attached to the national political imaginary of the U.S., fantasizing it is a place of progress, where someone can make linear improvements in their material circumstances, and systems are progressively improved. That she hopes for this to be the truth is less a reflection on the material reality of the United States, and more on who she strives to be in the world: someone who is loyal to people, centers human connection, supports systems of community care, recognizes the inherent value of humans, sees possibility in people and systems, learns better and then does better. Her politics are relational politics, local politics, labor politics, but they are not representational politics.
I never heard my mom talk about being a Black nurse, or the importance of people seeing Black nurses. Her purpose in the world wasn’t to represent and inspire, though she did; it was to substantively change the lived experience of the other people she came into contact with throughout the day. She didn’t teach me that being Black is “getting a proverbial seat at the table,” it’s who we are to each other and what we do with that understanding. Being Black is about remembering that we have responsibility to each other, one generation to the next and the previous, and that being together in that responsibility is how we create lasting change.
Voting in the upcoming presidential election currently feels like a harm reduction calculation. We deserve leaders whose politics are relational, local, and human-centered rather than plutocratic, repressive, and dictatorial.
We will never see racial justice achieved by our electorate. Our work for racial justice includes revolutionizing the tech landscape, challenging the industry to be defined by racial equity, driven by our collective, social good, and creating life-affirming technologies. Racial justice is going to take the power of community, organized labor power, and a legal strategy that aims to transform our system of governance, insisting that other worlds are possible.
We need to pursue every avenue for the creation of radically new worlds because electoral politics and politicians are not going to save us. As we deepen relationships with each other, and create the systems of support we need to thrive in this world, we grow the possibility to collectively liberate ourselves. I believe collective liberation looks like taking over the means of disseminating news like Palestinians on the ground in Gaza have done, workers demanding ethical and transparent use of their labor like tech workers with No Tech for Apartheid, National Bail Out organizing the Mama’s Day Bail Out for mothers impacted by money bail and pre-trial detention.
The power for radical change is in what we make possible when we show up in community together, loving each other and grieving and fighting together to build the worlds we dream for ourselves.
Code2040 is addressing the racial inequities and imbalanced distribution of power that Black and Latinx people face in tech. They are committed to building a reality where Black and Latinx people in tech can lead and thrive inside an ever-growing economy shaped by the digital revolution.
