A Letter to the Minnesota DFL on Blackness, Belonging, and the Politics of Approval
Hey, Jumblr! Seeing anything familiar in this piece? (Bolding by me)
So that "no other minority" thing? Not true. Unfortunately, it shows that the problem is bigger and more widespread than is often assumed.
I have spent much of my adult life arguing with the Democratic Party.
I have questioned candidates. I have questioned policies. I have questioned priorities. I have sat in meetings, attended conventions, organized communities, and participated in countless conversations where disagreement was not only expected but necessary. Politics, after all, is not a religion. It is an ongoing argument about how we ought to live together.
Questioning the party is not new for me.
What is new is the growing realization that the questions themselves have become unwelcome.
That realization has been slow and, at times, painful. It did not arrive through a single election cycle, a single candidate, or a single controversy. It emerged through years of watching a political movement increasingly define itself through the language of inclusion while becoming less comfortable with disagreement. It emerged through countless conversations in which difficult questions were acknowledged but not answered. It emerged through the subtle but unmistakable feeling that belonging was no longer rooted in shared values, but in ideological compliance.
As a Black woman, that feeling is difficult to ignore because it carries echoes of a much older story.
Over the last several years, I have watched the Minnesota DFL increasingly define itself through the language of identity. Diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, belonging these words appear everywhere. They are repeated in speeches, campaign materials, conventions, and community meetings. Yet the more frequently I hear these words, the more I find myself wondering whether we have confused representation with liberation and symbolism with solidarity.
The contradiction became impossible for me to ignore as conversations unfolded around Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt. To be clear, this is not an argument against criticism. Public officials should be questioned. They should be challenged. Accountability is not oppression, and disagreement is not discrimination.
What troubled me was something else entirely.
What troubled me was watching people who proudly place Black Lives Matter signs in their yards, who speak passionately about protecting democracy, who insist that we must believe Black women, suddenly abandon those principles when confronted with a Black woman they disagreed with.
The issue at hand was the federal immigration enforcement surge that swept across the Twin Cities. People were angry. Fear was real. Communities were frightened. But what I could not understand was why so much of that anger became directed at Sheriff Witt, a county sheriff who neither created federal immigration policy nor controlled federal immigration enforcement.
Yet as I listened to accounts from those present, I heard story after story of people literally turning their backs as she spoke. Not debating her. Not questioning her. Not engaging her. Turning away from her.
There was something profoundly symbolic in that image. A Black woman standing before a crowd that regularly invokes the language of justice, inclusion, representation, and solidarity, only to be met with a gesture of rejection. And I found myself wondering what happens when our slogans collide with our actions. What does it mean to proclaim that Black lives matter, that Black women should be believed, and that democracy requires listening, only to dismiss the experiences of Black women when those experiences become uncomfortable?
And I found myself wondering what happened to all of the slogans.
Where were the lawn signs?
Where were the declarations that Black lives matter?
Where were the calls to believe Black women?
Where was the insistence that democracy depends upon listening, especially when we disagree?
Because democracy is not tested when we hear voices that affirm our existing beliefs. Democracy is tested when we encounter voices that challenge them.
What unsettled me most was not the treatment of Sheriff Witt alone. It was what followed.
What struck me was not disagreement. Disagreement would have required engagement. It would have required listening, asking questions, and taking seriously the experiences that were being shared. Reasonable people can witness the same event and come away with different conclusions. That is not what troubled me. What troubled me was the absence of any real effort to grapple with what Black women and Black elders in my community were trying to communicate.
In the days that followed, I listened as people shared their experiences of what they witnessed. I listened to Black women describe their discomfort. I listened to elders whose commitment to civil rights, coalition building, and community organizing stretches back decades reflect on what they had seen and why it troubled them. These were not people looking for an argument. They were not demanding agreement. They were asking a simple question: Can we talk honestly about what happened?
That is the question I cannot shake. Not because everyone must agree about what happened, but because so many people seemed unwilling to even examine why Black women and Black elders walked away with the same sense of unease. What I witnessed was not a debate. It was a refusal to engage. And I keep returning to the same unsettling thought: What does it mean to invite people to share their lived experiences if we have already decided which experiences are worthy of our attention?
What troubled me most was not just the treatment of one sheriff. It was the realization that many of the same political spaces that insist Black voices matter often appear uncomfortable when Black people exercise independent political judgment. Blackness is celebrated when it confirms the movement’s assumptions. Blackness becomes suspect when it complicates them.
This is not a new phenomenon. Black Americans have spent generations navigating institutions that welcomed our participation while attempting to regulate our autonomy. Historically, this took obvious forms: legal exclusion, segregation, voter suppression, and discrimination. Today the mechanisms are more subtle, but the underlying question remains remarkably similar: Who gets to determine which Black voices are legitimate?
That question has been sitting heavily on my mind because I increasingly see a form of politics that claims to celebrate diversity while quietly narrowing the range of acceptable thought. The expectation is rarely stated outright. No one hands you a list of approved opinions. Yet the boundaries become clear enough. Certain conclusions are rewarded. Certain questions are discouraged. Certain forms of dissent are interpreted not as disagreement but as moral failure.
As a Black woman, I find that deeply unsettling.
I have spent much of my life watching other people project their expectations onto Black bodies. I have watched institutions tell us who we should be, what we should prioritize, and what forms of expression are acceptable. What I did not expect was to encounter a progressive version of the same instinct. Different language. Different intentions. The same impulse to determine which forms of Blackness deserve validation.
Increasingly, it feels as though support is conditional. Representation is conditional. Solidarity is conditional.
We are told Black lives matter, but I find myself wondering whether what is actually meant is that Black lives matter when they remain politically useful. Black voices matter when they affirm prevailing narratives. Black women matter when they arrive at approved conclusions. Once disagreement enters the picture, the celebration often fades.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Movements that speak passionately about dismantling systems of power can become remarkably uncomfortable when marginalized people exercise power in unexpected ways. Organizations that champion diversity often struggle with genuine diversity of thought. Communities that celebrate authenticity can become suspicious of anyone who refuses to perform the identity they have been assigned.
This realization has forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth. The political tradition I inherited taught me that coalition building requires humility. It requires accepting that people who share your values may disagree about solutions. It requires the ability to remain in relationship with those who challenge your assumptions. What I increasingly see instead is a politics of litmus tests a politics where belonging depends less on shared principles than on ideological conformity.
That is what grieves me.
Not that people disagree. Disagreement is healthy. Disagreement is necessary. What grieves me is the growing sense that many institutions no longer know how to hold disagreement without interpreting it as betrayal.
And so I find myself asking a question I never expected to ask of the Minnesota DFL: If your commitment to Black voices disappears the moment those voices challenge you, what exactly is it that you are committed to?
Because there is a difference between supporting Black people and supporting a particular performance of Blackness.
There is a difference between representation and agency.
There is a difference between inclusion and obedience.
The distance between those ideas may be the distance between the party I once knew and the party standing before me today.
