I care if a black woman is on the Supreme Court because black women are among the more-than-competent jurists who are qualified to be there. How will that "hold the rest of us back?" I don't expect a lone black woman to "fix" the issues of the black community. I expect her to look at issues with a perspective that includes the black experience and interpret the law with knowledge, common sense, and compassion. I hope that her presence on the Court may inspire more people of color to take government seriously.

I don't believe that as a group the majority of us can't figure out the scams of White Supremacy. We've been living them for as long as we've been present in the Americas, mostly as stick and occasionally as carrot. What is the "anything" that we are accepting? Every intelligent person I know understands that "Juneteenth" as a Federal holiday is performative. While some are "happy" with the recognition, the rest of us know that there wasn't a single right we gained as a result. We're not fooled. We're aware. Maya Angelou on the quarter means nothing to me. (Somebody is going to hate me for saying that.) As far as I can see, activists keep working on the issues that matter--eyes on the prize.

Now we do get fooled sometimes. We look at crap on the Internet that we take for fact and we let it influence our behavior. We don't examine where things come from, we don't ask enough questions, and we don't always act in our own best interests. I believe it's the responsibility of those who have more knowledge to school the rest.

What I do believe is that many of us have chosen inactivity and apathy rather than action. You've probably ascertained by now that I am active in Democratic politics and believe that being involved at every stage of the electoral process is our way toward power. For example, everybody and their mother turned out to vote for Barack Obama in 2008. He didn't have a "true" working majority in the House and Senate for his first two years, though many claim he did. Okay. Black people were happy as clams with 2008, so we figured the job was done, and we stayed home in 2010, to our detriment. I don't have to remind you what happened after that. Same story in 2012. We turned out, though not as many of us, in 2012, and Obama was re-elected. We stayed home again in 2014, lost the Senate, and nothing got done after that. Do you remember how many people were angry at Obama for "not getting things done?" Did they think about why?

We stayed home in 2016 because "nobody looked like us." I'm angry about that because it's so superficial. Though I don't depend on us to save America, or save the Democrats, we have so much at stake that we need to save ourselves. How much different would that four-year period have been? You don't get anything unless you win. My aim is to win. If we want people not to concentrate on the "shiny object," then we need to point them where they need to look. I don't want to keep living with the kind of government I don't deserve because other folks have checked out.

I know I won't change your point of view. Though I may sound like a cockeyed optimist, I'm realistic about life in these United States, and I've been involved in politics for a long time. I try not to be cynical, as I believe you are, but I'm disappointed that so few of us are keeping me company in the work.