If you’re interested in sharing your opinion on any cultural, political or personal topic, create an account here and check out our how-to post to learn more.

____

The presidential election had me so stressed that I had to run my a*s across the border to the beaches and palm trees in Mexico to save my sanity. Thankfully by the time I’d landed, we had a new president-elect in Joe Biden and the first ever Black, female vice president-elect in Kamala Harris.

I don’t think a lot of people understand how bad Black people were suffering under the Trump reign, which is why 87% of those of us who voted, showed up to give his a*s the boot.

To be clear, most politicians have never adequately represented or advocated for our needs, but Trump made it abundantly clear — he really didn’t give a damn about us. This is true, but there’s something else we should clear up: Don’t mistake Black turnout for JoeMala as renewed faith in the Democratic party. They owe us bigly.

I am not a person who holds someone’s past mistakes or policy stances against them, but when those policies and inaction cause generational and communal harm, an apology alone is insufficient. This is called accountability, and Black people need and deserve apologies coupled with accountability.

Biden apologized and admitted that some aspects of the 1994 crime bill that contributed to mass incarceration — especially in the Black community — were a mistake and Harris regrets her involvement in past school truancy laws that led to parents being fined and jailed. But we must make them finally walk it like they talk it, especially where education is concerned.

While on the campaign trail, Biden said that he would eliminate student loan debt for people who come from families making less than $125,000 a year. That will definitely help break links in the chain of generational poverty in Black communities.

As a first-generation college student who knows the struggle of only making $28,000 and having Sallie Mae blow up my phone demanding $650 monthly student loan payments, I know that this promise could be huge. But the policy promise should be retroactive to include as many people as possible.

Considering that higher education is the new poverty pimp in marginalized communities, Biden must fulfill this promise.

I am not anti-college, but sending millions of Black kids to institutions of higher education when they’ve been underprepared and overall failed by “lower” education (the public K-12 system) is not only s**tty, it is a form of predatory lending. I say this because this system traps Black people with debt that is difficult to pay back.

And for those of us who do have some degree of success, we often still make less money than our white counterparts, yet are saddled with such high degrees of student loan debt that default is not only possible, but likely.

For these reasons, Biden must make good on the pledge to ease student loan debt so the promise of prosperity, yielded through education, can be a reality for all.

We also want this administration to choose a secretary of education who’s committed to providing a quality education for every child in America — someone who is beholden to the greater well-being of students. With that said, Randi Weingarten — President of the American Federation of Teachers — is an automatic “no” for me.

There have been conversations about potential candidates and Weingarten’s name has come up. Her professional resume is of little consequence to me. We do not need anti-school choice (which is anti-parent choice), teachers’ union gatekeepers, whose main priority is to protect educators, who aren’t doing their damn job well — whether that be performance-wise or in doing a disservice to Black kids because they can’t see past their personal prejudices.

We need someone who truly understands the plight of public education and has been or is connected to the communities that are most impacted. We need a leader who promotes and enforces equity, someone who understands the necessity of teachers of color in classrooms and is intentional about making this happen.

Lastly, what would really make Black people celebrate the current administration is if they thoroughly addressed and dismantled the school-to-prison pipeline.

The point of all of this is simple: If we’re making history in giving Joe Biden the most votes ever received by a presidential candidate and Kamala Harris being the first woman and woman of color as vice president, then let’s keep this energy going by having this administration give Black people what we need and want from this country and party, whose false claim to fame and office has been representing the 99%.

Afterall, the Democratic Party owes Black people — bigly.