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Black Kids Will Save America

Ijeoma Oluo
The Establishment
Published in
5 min readNov 9, 2015
Flickr/scottlum

Our kids aren’t just fighting against the oppression that threatens their lives, they’re also fighting for the quality of living that they deserve.

TT he night Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, my brother called me. He was sobbing. I hadn’t heard him cry like that since he was a child. There was no greeting, no yells of elation, just the same sentence through his sobs.

“Nobody ever told me I could have been president.”

He repeated that a few times, told me he loved me, then hung up the phone.

Nobody ever told him that he could be president, and nobody told me, either. I don’t think I ever heard a black classmate say that they wanted to be president when they grew up. Our parents loved us and believed in us, but they were realistic about the world. A world that was (and still is) out to get their babies.

For decades, many of us have believed the promise made by White Supremacy, that if we keep our heads down and work hard, while asking politely — but not for too much — we will be rewarded. We won’t be rewarded with power or freedom, but with safety and a little financial security. A chance for something slightly below middle-class white respectability. We didn’t believe this because…

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The Establishment
The Establishment

Published in The Establishment

The archives of culture + politics site, The Establishment. Media funded and founded by women — Nikki Gloudeman, Kelley Calkins and Katie Tandy with Ijeoma Oluo, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jessica Sutherland. The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice.

Ijeoma Oluo
Ijeoma Oluo

Written by Ijeoma Oluo

Come for the feminist rants..stay for the selfies and kid quotes. Inclusive feminism here.