Borrowed Political Power

When Representation Is Not Solidarity

There is something I have been wrestling with more lately, and I need to get it off my chest. Perhaps I am speaking to the choir. Maybe I am just speaking to myself. Either way, I am increasingly irritated, perplexed, and, frankly, pissed off when I see Black and Brown people enthusiastically supporting political movements that seem openly hostile to the communities they come from. Like, seriously, WTF?!

I understand that people of color are not politically monolithic. Cool. I get it, and nor should we be. We can disagree about taxes, immigration, policing, education, abortion, foreign policy, or the proper size of government. Political independence matters. But there comes a point when disagreement about policy becomes something deeper, particularly when a movement begins questioning the rights, histories, dignity, belonging, or FUCKING existence of entire groups of people. Deep sigh. ?

Perhaps what troubles me most is watching people confuse proximity to power with actually possessing power. How are so many people fooled into believing they have somehow cracked the code? I have a term for some of these folks: WPW. I will define and unpack that another time. For now, understand that being invited into the room does not mean you built the room, control the room, or will be protected when the rules of that room change. Sometimes access simply means you are useful at that particular moment. It does not mean you have been lovingly accepted by the people whose power you are helping legitimize.

History gives us plenty of examples of marginalized people being welcomed into powerful spaces because their presence serves a larger purpose. I could link articles here, but I encourage you to do your own research. Representation certainly matters. I have written and spoken about its importance throughout my professional career. But representation without responsibility can become little more than decoration and window dressing. A Black or Brown face standing beside power does not automatically make that power more inclusive. Get a clue.

The Price of Belonging

I have spent much of my professional life in spaces where I was one of relatively few Black men in the room. I know what it feels like to wonder whether belonging is conditional. I know the instinct to overprepare, carefully choose my words, read the room, and occasionally wonder whether the same idea would be received differently coming from someone else. Those experiences have taught me something important about access. Access can be intoxicating. Privilege, even when watered down and diluted, can be an intoxicating elixir, particularly for people who historically have been denied it. But access becomes dangerous when maintaining it requires distancing ourselves from the very people whose struggles helped make our presence possible.

That is why I keep returning to a simple question: What are we willing to trade for belonging? There is nothing wrong with ambition, success, wealth, influence, or political power. I want more Black and Brown people occupying powerful spaces, not fewer. But there is a difference between entering spaces that historically excluded us and adopting the worldview that created the exclusion. There is also a difference between challenging our communities and abandoning them. We should absolutely criticize bad ideas within our own communities. Loyalty should never, ever require surrendering our critical thinking. But criticism should come from a desire to make our communities stronger, not from a belief that separating ourselves from them somehow makes us more worthy.

Power Has Conditions

This connects directly to something I have written about before. The current attacks on difference and the teaching of uncomfortable American history are not merely arguments about terminology. They are part of a larger struggle over who belongs, whose experiences matter, and how much of our history Americans are willing to confront. My academic writing similarly argues that restrictive political environments force marginalized professionals to navigate institutions carefully without abandoning their values, while recognizing that law and policy are experienced differently depending on one’s relationship to institutional power.

So when members of marginalized communities help advance those efforts, I cannot dismiss it as ordinary partisan disagreement. Nah, bruh. I cannot and will not. That does not mean every conservative person of color has betrayed their community. Not at all. That argument would be intellectually lazy and unfair, and that is not what I am arguing here.

People arrive at political beliefs through religion, economics, family, geography, personal experience, and countless other influences. But intellectual independence also requires intellectual accountability. If we demand that White Americans examine how their political choices affect marginalized communities, Black and Brown Americans should not receive an exemption from that same examination simply because we share those identities.

I am speaking to the Stephen A.’s, Officer Tatums, Candaces, Shermichaels, Parises, and Clarences of America, although Clarence may occupy an entirely different level of internalized contempt that is beyond the scope of this post. But I am also talking to everyday folks who somehow convinced themselves they would be exempt from the consequences of the politics they supported. Like the Haitian restaurant owner who reportedly supported the people currently in power, only to watch his business suffer after his workers were affected by changes to Temporary Protected Status. Bruh. The policies did not skip you because you voted for them. Proximity did not protect you. Support did not exempt you. You weren’t in the club. You were useful to it.

Ultimately, I am less interested in telling people how to vote than in asking what their politics require them to ignore. Borrowed power can disappear quickly. Conditional belonging lasts only as long as the conditions are being met. I want representation in powerful rooms, but I want something more than representation. I want people who remember how they got through the door, recognize who remains outside it, and understand that getting a seat should never require helping someone else remove the chairs.

Reflective Questions

1. At what point does political disagreement become participation in policies that harm the communities from which we come?
2. What parts of ourselves, our history, and our responsibility to others should never be negotiable simply for access to power?