Black people are not going to be free by finessing white people into including us, as a people, as beneficiaries of their societal power.

As social justice issues have become more mainstream, the worst and least substantive versions of it have become most visible.

Black people in Maryland, as is the case around the U.S., are a captured electorate of the Democratic Party. The core of the party, which is dominated by an overwhelmingly white donor class (made up of white corporate and political elites and a multiracial gatekeeper class), has benefited more from Black people’s consistent patronage than Black people have benefited from Democratic Party representation.

Voting against Judge O’Malley for AG is not about a rejection of her as an individual, but of the political machine that she represents that has a history of reproducing oppressive systems.