This is us

One of the fun things about owning your own doctor’s office is the endless supply of magazines. I get free "waiting room copies" of magazines you’ve never heard of, and many that you have. I saw one I didn’t recognize today, and I checked it out. And let me tell you, if you’ve never read an issue of “Essence,” you really should. Trying to figure out what the point of it was, I looked it up on Wikipedia, which summarizes it thusly:

Essence is an American monthly lifestyle magazine covering fashion, beauty, entertainment, and culture. First published in 1970, the magazine is written for African-American women.

Like many publications about art, fashion, music, and so on, Essence spends a lot of time trying to take things that are simply supposed to be beautiful and fun, and make them important and deadly serious. Which, to me, sort of takes the beauty out of beautiful things and the fun out of fun things. But that’s just me. The articles really were remarkable. Check out this passage from an article written by a black female hairdresser (Mecca James-Williams):

During my first year in Jamaica – liberated from the constant pressure of being under the White gaze – I gleefully rocked these protective styles when going to dinner with friends and to nature adventures at the beach or river. I started to get used to my hair in every stage and style, as I traded in unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards for a deeper level of hair acceptance.

Golly. I would absolutely LOVE to share a drink or two with Mecca, and try to understand how one reaches a deeper level of hair acceptance. I just don’t get it. It just seems so foreign to me – her article sounded like satire to my ears. But she clearly takes all of this VERY seriously. I would have a lot to learn from her.

You may be surprised to learn that Essence Magazine has endorsed a candidate for President of the United States. Based on the rest of the magazine, I felt that politics is beyond the scope of their publication. Until I thumbed back through it again, and read some of the large type passages here and there:

Thrive & Power

Embracing Power and Purpose

If you do not define what power looks like for you, you’re going to be subject to trying to live up to someone else’s definition.

Frequent discussions of power seem odd for a fashion magazine. To me, at least. But that explains their interest in politics, I suppose.

It may not surprise you to know that Essence Magazine has endorsed Kamala Harris for President. They published two interviews with her in this issue, with beautiful pictures of her. Both interviews of the Vice President are conducted by the CEO and President of Essence Ventures – Caroline Wanga. The two are pictured at an Essence festival, which was staged to celebrate Kamala Harris's campaign for President.

It’s quite an interview. Neither of them excels in brevity, or in focus, so it can be difficult to follow. Check out this representative exchange:

Wanga: You’ve been on an economic tour. You’ve been on a reproductive-freedom tour. Somewhere in this audience or on the Internet is my niece, Ayo—known as Yo-Yo to me. And she is somewhere between 8 and 32 years old. And one of the things that happened when you became Vice President is, Ayo told me that when she becomes president, her platform is going to be ice cream. As I look at the upcoming election, I’m looking at Ayo. And I’m trying to prepare myself to have a conversation with her—that her doctor may not think her health care is important, that she may not be able to make a minimum wage or aspire to achieve work or an occupation that matches her intelligence. I am worried that I have to have a conversation with Ayo about why her brother, Xavier, may not be safe—and it’s a conversation I didn’t have to have with my little brother. How do I make sure that Caroline doesn’t have to have that conversation with Ayo in 122 days?

Vice President Harris: There are many ways— but in 122 days, it’s your vote. I mean, here’s the thing about elections—and this is maybe the inside deal that my former colleagues at the Congressional Black Caucus [CBC] can tell you. The people who make decisions at that level often will pay attention to either who’s writing the checks or who votes. That’s a cold, hard reality. And so when we vote—that is in a democracy, as long as we can hold onto it—the power that we have as individuals is to weigh in on who is making decisions, based on what we value and care about. I’ll give you an example of why elections matter—there are many. But one issue is Black maternal mortality.

I have no idea what Wanga’s question was, or what Harris’s answer was. And the whole interview is like that.

As I was reading, I kept thinking, “This is the next President of the United States.”

If I were running for office, and a magazine wanted to interview me, and I noticed that that magazine had an article about reaching a deeper level of hair acceptance, and the CEO was dressed like a circus clown on acid, then I would politely decline that interview. That interview cannot help me. It will only make me look trivial and ridiculous.

But Harris, who does interviews for absolutely nobody, agreed to do TWO interviews with them. These are her people.

And I don’t mean people who are black women. I mean people who write articles about deeper levels of hair acceptance. Those people.

Are there enough of those people to elect Harris President? Do they represent over 51% of the population? I think they do. Our culture has deteriorated that much. Caroline Wanga discussing politics makes Hugh Hefner discussing philosophy sound intelligent. That’s how far we’ve fallen.

Harris accepted these interviews. Because she recognizes that which I still try to deny:

This is America in 2024. This is us.