"America Never Was America to Me"

I took my butt to bed. I might have even fallen asleep before my son, before my almost five year old. But I woke up at four ish and picked up my phone, like I imagine many of you guys did, saw the news, saw the latest news anyway, the way it's going, and you know, it really brought me back to twenty sixteen. It was very similar. I had gone to bed because I couldn't bear the sadness, and I woke up to a very different reality than I had expected.

And I walked out into my kitchen. Well, first I rolled over and I didn't see my husband, and I saw my son in bed with us, because of course he is because again five years old, and I was like,

where's my enery case. I walked out into the kitchen and was standing there in the middle of a spec like spotless clean kitchen, sparkling clean, and he had cleaned the whole kitchen and the floors were clean and the counters were clean, and he was just standing there and the kind of semi darkness, and I just looked at him and I said, Babe, I can't believe this. I can't believe this. And I just started to cry and I walked over to him and he put his arms

around me. And my husband is very He's not a super emotional, like outwardly emotional guy. I think like a lot of couples who, you know, you have one person who's on the more emotional side. The other person just

like balances them out. And he definitely is that. He definitely mellows me out, and honestly, in the past, it's something that's kind of driven me nuts because I'm super passionate, and you know, I'm very vocal and i feel things very deeply, and sometimes it can feel like I don't have, you know, someone on the other side who like kind of gets my energy and is more like exhausted by it.

But there's there's like these magical moments in our relationship where I just kind of am like, Okay, I understand this is the balance that I need. So he put his arms around me, and he he just said, listen, this is not the outcome that I expected or was hoping for, but for the sake of the boys, please we can't let this. We can't let this. What were his words, something like, we can't let this get us too down. We have to keep going and we have

to stay positive. And he just kept saying, for the good of the boys, please don't let this consume you. That's what he said, Please don't let this consume you.

And I really needed to hear that, to be honest, And it was that kind of quiet support and that quiet reminder of there is something bigger at play here, our children, our family, And what am I willing to How am I How much am I willing to let feelings dictate my actions for the next hour, the next twenty four hours, the next week, the next year, the next four years. How deeply am I willing to let the feelings of dismay consume me? Because they are there,

I feel it. I cannot fucking no, I'm not even going to to say it, because I can believe it, because we did it before. It was always likely that the country was going to go this way again, and so I believe it. When my husband said that, I hugged him back, and we just sort of stood there in the kitchen in the dark for a while. And then he had been up, so it was around four

point thirty. He went to bed, and I came down here and I sat right where I am at in the Brand Ambition studio, and I looked at myself on the camera, you know, bathrobe and no makeup and exhausted, and nothing was going to make me feel better reading any news. Nothing but when I am in a space of like emotional turmoil, and when I'm in a space where I just am looking for purchase, you know, when I am looking for some purchase to hold on to,

some foothold, something to keep me still. My husband's gone to bed now, so I turned to poetry and bea

fam I have no script to follow during this episode. Again, this is not the kind of episode I ever thought I would record, but it has brought me a lot of peace to just kind of sit here read some poetry and remind myself that there's still a lot of fight in me, and there's still so much to fight for, and I don't want you know, one of the campaign slogans of Kamala Harris and the Harris campaign that has been so effective has been this idea of We're not

going back. And I don't want to go back to the emotional wave of depression that overcame me in twenty sixteen after Donald Trump won the first time. I don't want to go back because that, to me, accomplished very little. I think those like that depression, like, I just don't have time to be depressed. I have two little kids. I've got to show up for them. And I also think that we can feel our feelings. But I am very much in like the we need to keep moving forward.

Why do I feel like we need to keep marching forward? Where is that hope? What does brown ambition mean in an age where we just elected this man again? What does it mean? It means? Did we think it was gonna be fucking easy? Did we think if we thought? And I'm part of that generation, You're part of that generation where you've read about the civil rights movement, and you read about Martin Luther King and Shirley Chisholm. If you're lucky you read about it in school. I certainly didn't,

not until later you read about Fanny lou Hamer. You know, you live through the Obama election, in my case, the first election I ever voted in. I can understand how we would end up now devastated when we get an outcome that doesn't fit the narrative that we have been fed as children growing up in a post civil rights era. We have been fed this idea that this is the natural order of things. We are ancestors, our grandparents are great grandparents. They fought these battles so that we would

have a better shot. And the lie or the version of things that we have been believing for so long on all speak for myself, maybe you guys agree, is that the fight was over, and that there was this natural progression in the story where now we begin to win. Now we begin to make gains, and there's this upward trajectory. But here's the reality. Nothing worth fighting for. Nothing as important as democracy and liberty and freedom and the rights

to a dignified, happy and healthy life. Nothing about that should be easy to fight for or easy to protect. We have to understand that it is going to be a struggle. We have to get comfortable with the struggle. We need to get comfortable with the idea that it's not going to be Let's turn this around. Four years, eight years, we've had two elections now where we've gotten really close to electing a woman. We have to keep going.

It's not going to be easy. I wanted the end of the story to stop on that screen of Kamala Harris, My god, what a hero. I wanted to see her with the confetti streaming down, walking away with a victory. I really wanted that too, But the story keeps going. This is a defeat. Nothing worth it comes without suffering. Suffering is a part of life. What we're feeling today is painful. It is depressing. It causes dismay, and you

may be feeling that, and I feel it too. And yet today, right now, I put on my damn lipliner, I put on my mascara, I sat in this chair, I hit record because I am here with y'all, and I understand what I really want y'all to understand too, which is that this is the time, more than ever to push forward. This is what it was like for our generations before, to suffer and to fight and to

claw back humanity, to claw back rights. And now we are being called in the same way to learn how to take these blows, to get knocked down and get the f back up. And I'll tell you right now, Ba Fam, I'm getting back up. In fact, I barely hit the ground. There is no place I'd rather be and than a time like this than on this stage. However, whatever size, this stage is speaking to my ba Fam, because I need y'all to know that I'm not giving up. I am showing up. Okay, I'm doing it for y'all.

I'm doing it for my kids. I'm doing it for myself. I'm doing it for I'm doing it for the ancestors. I'm literally doing it for the generations that came before us, because at the first sign, multiple signs, we've had now the first sign of strife, and this may not be a fair fight, and this may be a bloody knockdown, drag out, multiple round beating, and we have to get

back up and keep going. The enemy the other side they are stronger right now, and yet I don't want The story is not going to end with me crawling back into a hole, with me crying all day, with me not speaking to my family because I was so devastated and betrayed and felt betrayed by them. In twenty sixteen, because many members of my family did and have again voted for someone who stands for everything that I believe is wrong with the world, I choose to walk a

different path this time. I choose to keep my head up. I choose to go forward into the darkness because this is when we are needed the most. Okay, it's when our kids need us. It's when we need each other. Lynn, my neighbor who I go on walks with Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Bitch, we're going for a walk. Okay, I'm about to text you right now because after I'm done recording this, We're going for our fucking walk because we will walk on.

Suffering is a part of life, y'all. And if there's one thing that I have learned this past year, it is that we can survive suffering. We can survive the pain, and we can push forward and keep going. The pain can exist, but our behavior has everything to do with how much power we get that pain. I choose to wake up, like I said, foot on some blipline or

put on mascara and come speak to y'all. And right now I want to share some poetry that I've been sitting here reading and has just been, you know, washing over me. And I hope that some of this provides you some comfort. For me. It's you know, I don't have living grandparents, so I don't have and this is maybe a time when it's so it's a reason to reach out to any elders you have in your life and just look for their support, because you know what our elders know what that fight was like, and they

probably will have some words of support for us. They didn't have it easy. We thought maybe we were on the other side. Well we're not. We got to continue that fight. We have to find that inspiration. We have to find the will to keep fucking going. Maybe ours will be the generation that gets the shit done. But no matter what, there's no way it was never going to be a fight to preserve what we've had to win.

We have to defend what generations before works so hard for and we have to get comfortable with the idea that we are in defense mode. Okay, all right, I'm gonna read, uh oh man, which one? All right? I'm gonna start with Langston Hughes. Let America be America again. I'll post a link to this in the show notes. Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plane seeking a home where he himself is free.

America never was America to me. Let America be the the dreamers dreamed. Let it be that great, strong land of love, where never kings connive nor tyrant scheme, let any man be crushed by one above. It never was America to me. Oh, Let my land be a land where liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath. But opportunity is real, and life is free. Equality is in the air we breathe. There's never been equality for me,

nor freedom in this homeland of the free. Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark, And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart. I am the negro bearing slavery scars. I am the red man driven from the land. I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek, and finding only the same old stupid plan

of d eat, dog of mighty, crushed the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, tangled in that ancient endless chain of profet power, gain and grab, the land of grab, the gold of grab, the ways of satisfying need of work, the men of take the pay of owning everything for one's own greed. I am the farmer, the bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the negro servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean, hungry.

Yet today despite the dream beaten, Yes, today, o pioneers, i am the man who never got ahead, the poorest worker, bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream in the old world, while still a serf of kings, who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true that even yet its mighty daring sings in every brick and stone, in every furrow turn that's made America the land it has become. Oh, I'm the man who sailed those early seas in search of what I

meant to be my home. For I'm the one who left dark Ireland shore in Poland's plain and England's grassy lay, and torn from Black Africa Strand. I came to build a homeland of the free. The free who said the free not me? Surely not me. The millions on relief today, the millions shot down when we strike. The millions who have nothing for our pay, For all the dreams we've dreamed, and all the songs we've sun in, all the hopes

we've held, and all the flags we've hung. The millions who have nothing for our pay except the dream that's almost dead today. Oh, let America be America again, the land that never has been yet and yet must be the land where every man is free, the land that's mine, the poor man's Indians, negroes me. Who made America. Who's sweat and blood, Whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow and the rain? Must bring back our mighty dream again? Sure call me an ugly name

you choose. The steel of freedom does not stain from those who live like leeches on the people's lives. We must take back our land again, America. Oh yes, I say a plain America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath. America will be out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, the rape and rot of graft and stealth and lies. We the people must redeem the land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, and the endless pain, all all the stretch

of these great green states, and make America again. I can't think of a better I can't think of a more beautiful, heartbreaking, defiant poem than this from Lingston Hughes. Let America be America again. That's exactly how I feel. Sometimes poetry is just the perfect way for expression. And

maybe for y'all you find that piece in scripture. And if there are any scriptures that have been you know, or poems or quotes or something that you lean on in hard times, I mean, I'm happy to for y'all to send those to me Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. You can DM me on ig Brand Ambition Podcast. But this poem, oh baby, I'm putting it in a frame. Let America be America again. It's so true, full of strength and hope. But who said free? Not me? Surely

not me. We the people must redeem the land, the minds, the plants, the rivers, the mountains and the endless pain. Make America great again. That was the slogan that they've used to defeat us. Make America again, Langston Hughes says, make America again. America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath America will be Wow. I want to read another poem, a shorter one, also by Lingston Hughes. Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die,

life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow. I was dreams by Lyingston Hughes. Be a fan. We have to hold fast to our dreams. And maybe you need a day to be beaten down. But baby, I'm getting back up. I can't be down for too long. I'm too young. We are too young. We have too much time ahead of us. We have time to fight and to make the world better for our children and for each other. We have to fight.

We have to keep fighting. It was never going to be easy. We can't give up. It was always going to be this hard. Okay. We were playing ourselves. If we thought we were going to wake up, and that was going to be the end of the fight. But that's not how stories get to end in the real world. Okay, it's not a ninety minute movie, it's not a book. We are living through history in real time, and history and our right to survive it is something we have

to keep fighting for. We have to keep fighting for democracy, civil liberties, bodily autonomy, social justice. It's worth it. Education for our children, safe schools for our children, It's worth it. We have to keep fighting. We really do, guys. It was never going to be easy. We cannot feel defeated right now. This is a battle in the grand scheme of things, and we have to keep fighting. We cannot give up. I am petrified that too many of us are gonna be beaten down and pushed down and broken

by what has happened. And I just I need you to know. For me, brown ambition is not that. Brown ambition is the fact that we wake the fuck up and we get the fuck back in the streets and we keep fighting. Brown ambition is everything that we do in spite of the challenges that we face. And I have been sitting here for nine years saying that, and I'll be damned if I'm going to walk back on that message not today be a fam now. Maybe soon

too soon for some of y'all to hear this. But one of the things that I have been thinking sitting here trying to cope with this news, is that it's never been more important for us to show a peaceful transfer of power than in this moment. It really hasn't in a lot of ways. If there had to be a loser tonight, I think that we are the best losers for this moment because we value democracy, we know

how important it is. We were petrified of what would happen if Harris had won and there'd be such a long fight, because they would have said that it was rigged, they would have said that it was fraud, they would have said, don't trust these elections. There would have continued to build on this narrative of how we can't trust democracy, and if we just let this transfer of power happen and we move forward. I just want to leave that lesson.

I want to leave that impression. I want to make sure that we don't take any more chips out of democracy, any make any more cracks in the foundation that we believe in. By fighting this and by not accepting the results and not certifying the election we need, like the peaceful transfer of power is what makes America's democracy something to be revered, and it has been beaten to a

bloody pulp, the idea of democracy in this country. And I just feel, I feel a type of way about what could continue to happen, the damage that we could do if we don't accept this and let there be a peaceful transfer of power. So I really want to read this poem. I know y'all have heard it before. Can you be a woman of color in this country and not have either performed read done a school book report on this poem by the Great Maya Angelou? Still

I rise. You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies, you may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I rise. Does my my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Because I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room, just like the moons, and like suns with a certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high. Still I'll rise? Did you want to see me broken bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops,

weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard because I laugh like I've got gold mines digging in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance like I've got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history shame? I rise up from

a past that's rooted in pain. I rise. I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling. I bear in the tide, leaving behind nights of terror and fear. I rise into a daybreak that's wondrously clear. I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors give. I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I Rise, I rise, levey ba, fam keep going. I'm here for you.

Send me e mail comment see one's social But even more so than just brown ambition, reach out to your friends, your family, your neighbors to day show up, bring them a cup of coffee, bring them something to share, Sit on the front porch, take care of each other, talk, let it out, like, let's feel the feelings, all right, but then we have to get back up and keep moving. There is still too much to fight for. It was never going to be that easy. We have to keep

fucking going, all right, all right? Be a fam. I took. I went for a walk. I went with the walk with my Neighborlyn, And there was something that came to me on our walk that I was like, Oh, okay, I want to I want to let be a fam. Hear this for me, and I hope that we're telling ourselves this. We did everything we could. We showed up, we showed out. We linked arms with one another, we

held each other down. To the incredible, beautiful women, the brave women who started the movement win with black women. To the allies who gathered behind us to support Kamala Harris. To Kamala Harris, you, my Queen, were an extraordinary candidate. You made us so proud. You made us so proud, and you should carry your head so high. You did. That was a flawless fucking campaign. You can't tell me

anything about how that was a flawless campaign. If we were ever going to have a shot in hell of winning, Kamala Harris was the right person. I'm so proud that she got as far as she did. Now here's the thing what this can remind us is how I know that this goes against everything that we have been taught, that we have so much power, that our voice matter, all of that. But the math tells a different story. There are not enough of us. There are more of

them than us. Let the word minorities sink in. Thirteen percent of America is African American. Of that thirteen percent, half of that is women of color, black women. Right, how is six percent supposed to fight? How is six percent supposed to clawback from an eighty seven percent majority? How how the numbers are not on our side? But let me talk to you, the majority. This defeat lays

at your feet. I don't want to hear the well black men, whale, immigrants, well Latinos like we need to stop casting blame at How are little numbers we should be able to afford to have some of our our own have different political beliefs and vote the other direction. And when Okay, So I don't want us to be pointing the finger at one another. The blame lies squarely at the feet of the majority white America. This is what you wanted, that is what you've given us. Yes,

our voices matter, but we can't overcome this wave. We can't overcome white supremacy and the increasing shift of America. I won't even say increasing the shift of America to the right. We can't. Literally, we don't have the numbers to do that by ourselves. We don't win an election like this without the majority, without white Americans, male and female, standing up and doing the right damn thing. And that

is where the blame lies. And I won't stand for a second of us feeling bad about what we did. I saw y'all fighting, I saw y'all volunteering. I saw y'all calling your aunties, your sisters, your cousins. Do you need to ride to the poles, you know, running the car pools, given free uber rides and lyft rides like we put so much skin in the game. We did everything we possibly could. This is not our fault. We have to keep fighting, but let's not get it fucking twisted.

We can't do this shit by ourselves. Allies need to Ally allies need to step the f up. What y'all did wasn't good enough, So let's keep pushing. I want to be sure that when we are sitting down to do this post mortem and decide what happens next, that we are not pointing the blame or saying that it was some lack on our parts, because I know for a fact that we showed up, we showed out. And to the ALLY guy who did do the right thing,

thank you, you did enough. But now the burden of pushing forward and reaching to the majority to get them to come to the right side. That can't fall only at our feet. It won't. It can't. We can't let them think that we're going to clean this up, that black women we can save this election. I call bullshit. We can't do it without the majority. We don't have the numbers. Okay, this is giving me peace. I hope it brings you peace. We have done enough, ladies, We

have done enough. For now. We will keep fighting because what other effing choice do we have. But we can't carry the blame and the burden of progress on our own back by ourselves. M m mm hmmmm. Thank you. Love and peace,