As if Black women and women of color haven’t been saying what is wrong with this country for centuries. Almost every day I get a message from a white person saying, “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” As if I haven’t been writing for years. We are the ones who kept Roy Moore out of office. We are the group that voted against Trump more than any other. “Listen to Black women.” “Listen to women of color.” That has been the refrain of so many on the left since the 2016 elections. In 2017, forty-five years after Shirley Chisholm was accused of playing “vaginal politics” and the words “go home nigger” were hatefully scrawled across her campaign materials because she dared to believe a Black woman could be president, and almost twenty-five years after Lani Guinier was labeled the “Quota Queen” for daring to envision an election process that didn’t disenfranchise voters of color, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley have been called everything from racists to terrorist sympathizers for daring to believe that their communities were worth representing and worth fighting for. It sounds almost ridiculous to type that in this day and age, but when I think about the politics of recent years, it is as accurate a way as any to describe the fear, anger, and downright hatred many Americans have toward women of color who dare reach for political power without first capitulating to white male supremacy. Congress, and everyone freaked the fuck out. In 2017, four confident, talented, unapologetic young women of color were elected to U.S.

Ijeoma oluo mediocre book