President Joe Biden approached the 2024 presidential election with a historically low approval rating, and despite his desire to seek reelection, he was forced to drop out of the race, passing the torch to his Vice President Kamala Harris with the goal of keeping the presidency away from former President Donald Trump.

It’s no secret that Biden’s trouble with the Black community affected his decision to depart from the race. He couldn’t have made enough visits to Black churches and Black radio stations to reinvigorate Black voters. Many of his poor decisions—namely his handling of the economy, failure to truly tackle voting rights, and his funding of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians—have taken a toll. His historically bad debate performance, in which he appeared more cognitively declined than aloof, was the easily identifiable catalyst for his departure. But his policy decisions also played a part.

Meanwhile, Harris’ entrance onto the presidential stage has created excitement, hope, and an identifiable future for Democrats—if for no other reason than her younger age. In her first full week as the presumptive nominee, she’s raised $200 million. More broadly, Harris’ insertion into the 2024 campaign rejuvenated the Democratic base—particularly Black voters. With Harris potentially poised to become the first Black woman president, many Black voters believe they now have something to vote for. 

But do they? 

Admittedly, the excitement in the Black community is palpable, as evidenced by the 90,000 Black women and 53,000 Black men who have already raised $2.8 million for the Harris campaign in respective Zoom calls. But not everyone is excited about the vice president, and conservatives are going the extra mile to convince Black people not to vote for her. 

One tactic of Republican lawmakers is to claim Harris is a “DEI hire.” But the joke’s on them: Those kinds of statements will only piss Black people off and further inspire them to vote. Last week during his appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, Trump tried another tactic, defaulting to his usual brand of lazy racism by weaponizing representational politics and calling into question Harris’ Blackness. While it screams of white supremacist race science, this strategy has been used against Harris in the past. 

Another easy target is the vice president’s “tough on crime” record during her time as a prosecutor and attorney general. But even this tactic has proven lackluster; criticism of Harris’ record isn’t sticking the way it did in 2020. 

These concerted efforts to dissuade Black people from voting for Harris will never be as effective as the longstanding Democratic strategy of giving Black people nothing real to vote for. As an educator, I know that the opportunity to elect the first Black woman president or urging young people to vote because Black people died for the right doesn’t have the impact one would hope. Black people died for the right to vote—not the mere ability to vote for any one political party or candidate.

Public policy that supports Black people isn’t guaranteed because a politician has Black skin. “All skinfolk ain’t kinfolk,” or so the saying goes. If Harris wants to sway Black voters, she will have to give us something real and tangible to vote for, not merely the promise of someone who looks like us versus someone who’s not like us. Because the argument can be made that anyone who fails Black people from a public policy perspective is not like us.

Harris’ status as VP during the genocide also complicates the argument that we must vote for the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils philosophy ignores the fundamental problem that there are two evils. If our options for president are two evil campaign choices, democracy is already lost. W.E.B. DuBois said it best back in 1956: “I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”

Democrats, like Republicans, are a party of empire. By that, I mean the U.S. is an imperialist state, occupying numerous territories and exerting diplomatic and military influence internationally. The most glaring current examples are the funding of Ukraine’s war with Russia, enabling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, and intervening in Haiti vis-à-vis the United Nations. Yes, Trump is a xenophobe and racist who has said vile things about African Americans. However, if truth and justice matter domestically, they should matter internationally. But our government routinely chooses hypocrisy in exchange for gain.

So what is Harris saying to young, Black voters? As of right now, not much. If Black voters matter, they must be engaged—and the best way to engage them is through policy. Policy that will help Black people or policies that will overturn the many recent efforts to harm Black people. Even among the most politically engaged Black people, a majority don’t believe that politicians take them seriously. What else are they to make of the asinine attempts to secure their votes with visits to Black radio shows to discuss hot sauce and the Black Church pulpit to shield genocide? How does it serve them to have Megan Thee Stallion perform at a campaign rally?

What we really need is for someone to provide a concrete economic plan for the people that poet Langston Hughes called the “low-down folks.” We need universal income and a commitment to end the police murders of Black folks like Sonya Massey. We need to protect voting rights by striking down voter ID laws and fighting against all forms of gerrymandering. We need to adequately fund historically Black colleges and universities, protect Black K-12 students from disproportionate discipline, and secure the teaching of Black history.

Instead of guilting Black people about whom they should vote against, we need to give them policies they can vote for. Harris has three short months to embrace this lesson—a lesson Biden never seemed to learn.