Trump can growl at Black women, but he can't take our shine

Black women are a force of nature, and like a hurricane, that is why they are feared.

(C-SPAN)

By Shalise Manza Young

Beginning around the time I started high school, my mother went back to college.

For the next eight years, while working full-time and being a supportive mom to my younger sister and me, she took one night class a semester to earn her associate’s degree. When she graduated with honors from Johnson & Wales University in 2000, the year after I’d graduated from college, I cried like a baby. Her determination to finish what she’d started decades earlier was incredible.

A working mom going to school isn’t an entirely unique story. But my mother’s circumstance is illustrative of the Black American experience. When she graduated from high school in 1967, she began classes at Fitchburg State University thanks to a scholarship that covered her first year.

And then she had to drop out. Even though classes were only $200 a semester, her parents just didn’t have the money. Her father’s day job was at the local car dealership—but as a Black man, even in Massachusetts, he was allowed only to detail the cars, not sell them. He worked at night as well, but then, as now remains the case for so many, Black workers were kept in the lowest-paying jobs.

I’ve thought a lot about Mom’s achievement lately, as I see headline after headline about the many ways Black women are under attack in this country. About how she could not be denied her shine, even though her road was long and bumpy.

Malcolm X said, “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”

He said that in 1962. It’s as true now as it ever was.

For generations, Black women have been the foundation of American society and at the forefront of the incremental pushes toward progress and a democracy for all, watching the rights we fought for extended to others but not fully to us, and sometimes not at all.

I’m biased of course, but I believe Black women are a force of nature, and like a hurricane, that is why they are feared.

Our contributions have been disguised. Our achievements minimized. Our beauty criticized in public. Our style and influence are mocked before being adopted (think long, elaborately decorated fingernails) or ignored, even as others go viral for stealing a dance one of us created.

For centuries we have raised children, often not our own. We have buttressed our communities through our grief, as racist “tough on crime” policies of the 1970s and ‘80s saw our fathers, husbands and sons caged in shocking numbers. We were the backbone of the fight for women’s voting rights in the early 20th century, only to be excluded by white women who believed their cause would gain popularity if Black women were cut out of the proposition.

And, somehow, as every day requires our strength to survive, we’ve maintained our softness and poured our love into others—and still managed to look younger than our years (Angela Bassett is 67, y’all).

In a country that never meant for us to be free, it rocks some to the core when we thrive. When we’re dictating our own happiness and radiating joy. When we’re living our lives for us, and not in service to those who do not see our humanity or live under the false belief that there is a ceiling to what we are capable of.

As we’ve seen a small group of Black women rise to places of national prominence – Vice President Kamala Harris and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson chief among them – their qualifications aren’t just ignored, the MAGA infrastructure, from elected officials to podcast hosts, have screamed and shouted and called them everything but a child of God. A quick google search will show that both women were manifestly qualified for their roles: Harris’s resume is far superior to that of the sitting vice president, who earned the forever ire of Harris’s sisters across the country when, on the eve of the 2024 election, he disgustingly called her “the trash”; Jackson’s resume was better than all of her peers when they were nominated to the Supreme Court, yet she only received 53 confirmation votes.

More recently, we have seen Donald Trump’s seething disdain for Black women rear its ugly head again: on Sept. 19, as National Urban Radio Networks reporter Ebony McMorris attempted to ask him a question about his proposed invasion of Memphis, he cut his eyes at her.

“Quiet,” he growled. “You’re really obnoxious.”

McMorris stood her ground, but Trump never answered her question. Unsurprisingly, as happened before her when Trump demeaned other Black women serving as White House reporters—April Ryan, Abby Phillip, and Yamiche Alcindor—not a single reporter came to her aid in the moment.

Being a Black woman in America often means no achievement is enough. The rules and standards will always be changed to ensure that.

Trying to prove your worth or appease the doubters isn’t just exhausting—it’s futile.

The road is always long and bumpy, but we’ll never be denied our shine.

Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.

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