Obama made me feel hopeful … until he didn’t. That’s why when Kamala Harris announced her race, I had to look carefully at what she represented
. . . "At a campus watch party – among the generation that would later be identified as hapless, capitalism-killing millennials – we felt unadulterated joy. Media outlets circled around what they considered the epicenter of black life on 125th Street in Harlem, capturing the thousands of people who descended on to the streets to dance. We blocked traffic and exchanged high-fives with strangers, ignoring the mist that was industry operatives. We saw a bailout for banks and big business that dwarfed the stimulus of American households. Despite middle-class trappings, economic insecurity hit me and much of our generation hard. Back home, my mother and I struggled to pay for a home that mortgage lenders targeted with a subprime mortgage. We saw Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown and Rekia Boyd shot and killed. We saw the beer summit and respectability politics. Despite doing many things “right”, it wasn’t enough. Homes in our mostly black neighborhood outside of Atlanta still have not recovered. Justice for most of the families of police and vigilante violence has still been unserved. Banks are still being bailed out.swelling our straightened hair. The hope Obama promised was omnipresent and lasted for days. Then 2009 happened.
"We graduated into the worst job market in a generation, threatening our ability to pay back our college and post-graduate debts. Obama filled his cabinet with financial industry operatives." . . .
"So when the California senator Kamala Harris announced her bid for the presidency, women at the intersections of a marginalized race and class had to consider what this meant for us." . . .
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