A Graceful Transition of Power
  January 7, 2025 Greetings, Meteor readers, LOVE IS ALIVE! Tom Holland and Zendaya are engaged, and for reasons I can’t explain, I am happier for these two strangers than I have been for any of my real-life friends. But also none of my friends have gotten married to anyone as fascinating as Zendaya. Huzzah!  ZENDAYA CASUALLY TAKING HER NEW FIVE-CARAT ENGAGEMENT RING OUT FOR A STROLL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In today’s newsletter, we consider the subtle messaging around yesterday’s certification of the 2024 election. Plus, new rules for Meta and new music from Bad Bunny. Waiting for my wedding invitation, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONFull of grace: Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris presided over what was for generations a mundane congressional activity: certifying the vote. But this year had a different weight to it, and not because there was another insurrection. Instead, Harris had to hand the country over to white nationalists while rubbing salt in the wound of her own loss. She did so without fanfare or silent protest, with as much grace as anyone could muster, and she was largely praised for it. As Errin Haines wrote in The 19th, in certifying the vote, Harris “made history, this time as a linchpin in the work of restoring our shaken faith in the democratic process.” And while Harris’ handling of the moment is certainly a testament to her fortitude, it was also a reminder of the unmeetable expectations placed on Black women.  SHE ALMOST LET HERSELF FROWN FOR A MILLISECOND. BUT KAMALA HARRIS WILL NOT BE CAUGHT SLIPPIN’. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) People are angry. Women are angry. It is safe to assume that in private, Kamala Harris is angry. But were she to show that very human emotion in even the smallest way, it would undo everything she has worked toward. Kamala Harris doesn’t get to be angry because she has become the avatar for Black women in America in the same way that Barack Obama was an avatar for Black men (although he was allowed some anger, because that is an emotion men have the privilege to express, while Black women must studiously avoid the Angry Black Woman trope). Now this doesn’t mean I wanted her to walk into the chamber and start flipping desks. There is a time and place for decorum. But there’s almost always a way to peacefully fight back. Ask Nancy Pelosi, who in 2020 stood up after Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and tore a physical copy of his speech to pieces. Or Elizabeth Warren, who in 2017 refused to be silenced by her Republican colleagues. (That’s where all those “nevertheless, she persisted” t-shirts came from.) But the rules are and always have been different for the Kamala Harrises of the world, who have been instructed from day one that getting to the top requires a certain degree of “conceal, don’t feel.” For Black women, anger is not a tool that can be used to break the glass ceiling. Instead, their fight can only be composed of, in the approving words of Symone Sanders Townsend yesterday, “grace and grit.” Who is all that grace and grit serving, though? White onlookers? People invested in the status quo? If Black women are forced to conform to the expectation that they can only be gracious, even in the worst and most disheartening circumstances, it just reinforces an ugly but incredibly American idea that Black women must be made to feel small. Even in their own damn House. Yesterday, Kamala Harris provided a masterclass in moving forward even when what you’re walking toward is everything you stand against. And prioritizing the rule of law and the democratic process was, of course, the point: “Today, democracy stood,” she said afterward. Still, the message we should extract from that moment is not, grin and bear it. It’s: Do what you must to live to fight another day. Even if that includes getting angry. AND:
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