“Trust Black women” tells Black women you didn’t trust us before

Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore in the Alabama race for Senate on Tuesday. According to the CNN exit polls, this is largely due to the massive turnout and support of Black women voters. At only 26 percent of the population of Alabama, Black people represented 30 percent of the electorate, with 97 percent of Black women voting for Doug Jones (compared to white women’s 34 percent). This, in the face of reported attempts at voter suppression, is a display of fierce determination. In multiple articles and social media postings, many championed Black women’s unwavering dedication. #Blackwomen started trending on Twitter.

Mark Ruffalo announced that he has it on good authority that God is a Black woman. J.K. Rowling is of the same opinion. Others are urging their platforms to let Alabama serve as an example of the way Black women can save America. One popular account simply repeated the phrase on a loop, “Trust Black women. Trust Black women. Trust Black women.”

As a Black woman myself, I can’t help but read into the quiet implications of these public platitudes. I can’t help but feel that the Black woman only gets to be God this week because, to many, God is an infinite source of non-reciprocal support. God is an enigma that shows up for us no matter how many times we fail to show up in return.

When I see the words “trust Black women” repeated as a mantra, I fill in the rest of the sentence with “to clean up this mess” or “to do the work.” This has been the expectation of us since our arrival here. And while we ricochet from God to Mammy and back again, we never quite land at fully fleshed human being with needs. These celebrities aren’t urging for the belief of Black women on any other ordinary Tuesday, when we’re trying to save ourselves and no one else. Most days, we’re met with skepticism at every turn.

Black women know skepticism intimately. It’s in the questioning of our qualifications at work. It’s in the public support of the abusers we’ve named. It’s in gender being repeatedly sidelined in the fight for racial equality. It’s in requests for verifiable proof in the recounting of our experiences with misogynoir. Every essay, thread, or Facebook status on our mistreatment is met with: “How do you know that was racism/sexism/what you say it was?” Who believes Black women but Black women?

Last week, I spent the day in bed, immobilized by the way America fails Black women in this respect. I had read Nina Martin and Renee Montagne’s NPR investigation on Black maternal mortality in America, and was rocked with a collective kind of grieving. It chronicled the way the combination of a dismissal by doctors and a societal unwillingness to take seriously the way racism and sexism impact our bodies is literally costing us our lives.

They cite a 2010 study conducted by Arline Geronimus, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, which found that Black women’s bodies are “weathering” at alarmingly high rates from chronic stress. The chromosomal markers of aging of Black women in their 40s and 50s appeared an average of seven-and-a-half years older than white women the same age. As the study notes, Black women are 243 percent more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

But public calls to trust Black women are scarce when it’s about our wellbeing, the quality of our lives, the conditions under which we navigate the world. The issue in America is not that Black women aren’t entrusted with care-taking and saving others. The issue is that no one trusts Black women when we say that we need support the most. When it’s time to pay dues to the church, who’s calling Black women God? Is the world listening to Black women when we’re talking about ordinary struggles, about saving ourselves and not the rest of the world?

When I saw CNN’s exit polls, I didn’t see Black women donning capes and rushing to the polls to save the state of Alabama from Roy Moore. I saw Black women showing up for themselves, because they knew nobody else was voting with them in mind. I saw them choosing the candidate who will best advocate for their interest in their own civil rights, their right to their own bodily autonomy. I saw them showing up to make sure they weren’t represented by somebody with a history of bigotry and alleged pedophilia.

This isn’t to say that we don’t owe Black women a debt of gratitude. But it’s okay for Black women to look out for themselves without carrying the rest of society on their backs and at the forefront of their minds. We can praise Black women without turning them into caretaker caricatures. If white celebrities, activists, and ordinary people want to properly thank the Black women who elected Doug Jones, it requires that they reframe their PSAs. They’ve got to decenter the saving of themselves, and let go of the notion that clinging to Black women’s ankles is the proper way to move into a better America.

The basic task of listening to and trusting Black women must be applied in ordinary life on a small and large scale — in the doctor’s office, on the street, and in the comment section. It must extend into amplifying, lifting up, and supporting us. Black women deserve fiscal, emotional, and systemic support.

We deserve more bodies at protests in our honor. We deserve advocates for fair compensation for our work. We deserve to be backed up and fought for, not just trusted, not just believed. Beyond praising Black women for the way they’ve served Alabama (and America at large), people must begin to ask themselves how they can best return the favor, and then start doing it.

Black women in Alabama didn’t just talk about Doug Jones, they showed up for him in their local voting booths. It’s about time we show up for them, too.

Dominique Matti is an essayist, editor, and cool mom based in Philadelphia.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.