I don’t know about you, but, for me, good black women exude moral authority in a way that, for ...uh...reasons, men simply cannot match, no matter the greatness of their deeds. Our own Denise Oliver Velez has written brilliantly about many of them.
Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Dr. Dorothy Height, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Lena Horne, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordon, and many others have a quality in their visage that I can’t quite put my finger on - a glare of surety and purpose that I, and I assume other lessor mortals, recognize and ever so slightly cringe in response to...like a child caught in mischief.
The L.A. Times has a great piece up now on perhaps our best present iteration of the phenomenon, Rep. for South L.A. “Auntie” Maxine Waters.
In “How Maxine Waters became 'Auntie Maxine' in the age of Trump.” The Times writes that millennials have been caught up in her charisma and respond to it.
Whether lambasting der Gropenfuhrer and his “Kremlin Klan” or taking on the late un-lamented Pinhead King Bildo O’Reilly, Auntie Maxine doesn’t hold back a jot or tittle and speaks truth to dickishness with a clarity that few have matched.
“Rashad Robinson, who leads the New York-based Color of Change, a progressive civil rights group.Maxine Waters has given us the viral videos to go along with our rants.” People are shaking their heads when she talks, and they are saying, ‘Thank God someone said that.’ “I think for many young black folks, they have that sort of auntie or matriarch in their family that sort of says it like it is,” Robinson said.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Maxine has taken on her colleagues across the aisle in Congress, lectured a misbehavin’ Barack Obama for sidelining the dire needs of the black community, and told the tea party they “can go straight to hell.”
Things many have wanted to do, but held back.
Not Maxine.
“But her derision of Trump goes far beyond previous criticism of political foes, and the new, norm-breaking president has energized her in a way other Republicans she’s opposed have not. In an age when the call from many on her side of the aisle is “Resistance,” Waters has become a de facto leader of the charge.”
The times tells of her influence in the Party in SoCal, of her childhood in St. Louis and her early career, her Chairmanship of the Black Caucus, her importance to the drafting of the Dodd-Frank Act, her pilgrimages to the forlorn constituents on L.A.’s skid row... and much more.
Its a fine profile of a dedicated public servant, well worth a read.
“At a time when many progressives are looking for the next head of their movement, Waters said she’s hoping to use the surge in attention to act as a magnet for the Democratic Party.
“I’m not their leader,” she said. “I’m an enabler.”