1 The Observation Effect I decided I wanted to write this book roughly at the same moment I realized I needed to read this book. It was 2020, and the Democratic primary race had begun as one of the most energized and racially diverse fields of candidates we''ve ever seen. And I was proud to be the campaign manager for Julián Castro, the former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was running in a field that included Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Wayne Messam, Deval Patrick, and Andrew Yang. Our campaign turned a lot of heads and accomplished so much in shifting the national conversation and highlighting crucial issues. Still, competition was fierce; and in the end, the field was getting narrower, and the time came to suspend Julián''s presidential primary campaign. It was during the awkward time, when I knew I was going to join Elizabeth Warren''s campaign as a senior adviser but it wasn''t public knowledge, that I was being hounded by reporters who wanted to talk about the race as if I were unaffiliated with any campaign. This time, it was a reporter who wanted to talk on background about a piece he was considering writing about the racial dynamics in the race.
It was an issue that had been touched on often during the cycle but hadn''t been explored adequately as far as I was concerned. At this point, Cory Booker had just suspended his campaign, following closely after our campaign had done the same earlier that month. Andrew Yang remained the sole candidate of color still in the race that initially began with an impressively diverse field. There had been a number of ways that race had impacted that cycle, and I was eager to talk about the unconscious biases and double standards that candidates of color had faced that were underreported. The reporter didn''t know what he wanted his piece to be yet, so we had a wide-ranging discussion. We talked about how race impacted fundraising. Media coverage. Representation in polling.
Perception of electability. And one issue that had kept coming up for me during our campaign, but I had never known how to frame it: authenticity. "What exactly do you mean?" he prompted me. "Like, the candidates of color were considered too authentic?" "No," I explained. "I think the candidates of color struggle with being viewed as authentic." "And why is that?" "Well, a lot of reasons. But I think it''s harder for candidates of color to feel comfortable speaking unscripted and that makes them seem stiff or fake." "But .
that sounds like you''re saying they are less authentic," he noted. I paused. It did sound like I was saying that. "I guess I don''t think that should be the measure of authenticity"-I tried again-"because of how people of color are held to a higher standard, being off-the-cuff comes with more risk. So they''re going to be more cautious with what they say and how they say it." "But does that mean we can''t expect candidates of color to be as candid and straightforward with voters?" "No. Of course not," I assured him with more confidence than I felt. I was confusing myself.
"I guess I just think we have to be thoughtful about what we''re asking of candidates of color. Though . not to say we shouldn''t expect authenticity from candidates of color ." I trailed off and he kindly let me. I was flailing. And that was uncommon for me. I don''t typically have a difficult time talking about race and inequality and the ways that these dynamics can play out. It''s something I''ve gotten pretty good at over the course of my career, from my time as a lawyer and a movement leader in Washington to my time in electoral politics.
While I spent most of my career in social justice movement politics, in 2020, I became only the third Black woman in history to manage a presidential campaign. This means I have had to talk about these issues a lot. But also in spaces where I could fairly assume people agreed with me and also in spaces where I could fairly assume no one agreed with me. But for some reason, on this idea, I was stuck. I was describing something I knew to be true. I watched authenticity get weaponized against our campaign and the campaigns for the other candidates of color. I was convinced that the demands around authenticity were a factor in why the candidates of color were struggling in this cycle. And yet, I had never heard this argument made-and couldn''t really formulate it myself.
Authenticity was good. Voters like authenticity. And yet, authenticity was creating a barrier to equality in the Democratic primary race. And I needed to articulate why. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn''t unique to politics. This was a dynamic I had seen before. It was one of the reasons I ashamedly hated talking about authenticity. Every time it came up, I looked for an opportunity to change the subject.
I couldn''t put my finger on why, but it just felt like a trap. Whenever I heard progressives criticize a candidate of color for not using the same rhetoric as a white candidate, I was baffled. As a progressive, I, too, wanted candidates to be unabashed in the views I shared with them, but I confessed I wasn''t surprised that the most radical-sounding rhetoric was often harder for the candidates of color to espouse. "She obviously can''t say that," I''d say of a position I found to be perfectly reasonable. "No one will take her seriously." Outside of politics, I noticed the same dynamic when these issues came up. Whenever people would talk about having "courageous conversations" with colleagues, when conflict arose, I would listen earnestly. And then I would roll my eyes while silently acknowledging that I would never be able to broach a conversation around a racial microaggression in one of those discussions.
Whenever people talked about finding their "authentic self," I would treat it as a thought experiment, like if someone told me to imagine an alien colony. What authentic self? I would wonder almost laughingly. And then the realization slowly washed over me like warm water that turned suddenly cold: Wait. Don''t we all do that? Aren''t we all . lying? "They''ll think we''re all like that." "You have to prove them wrong." "You have to be twice as good to get half as much." Learning as an adult that other parents of color recited these mantras to their kids as often as mine did was like learning the comfort food you thought you invented is a regional variation and actually a lot of other people enjoy sugar on grits, too.
Our first memories of discovering who we were, for a lot of us, were inextricably linked to being told who we needed to be. Many of us grew up hearing routine advice about the white people who were always watching us. Now, some might think that living a life while being observed-and judged-might affect your ability to live authentically. But the most important thing to understand about authenticity is that it doesn''t exist. Really. In fact, there''s an experiment in quantum physics that proves it. It''s not just me. It''s science.
Physicists didn''t put things in those terms, of course. Some had set out to measure the behavior of electrons-or tiny bits of matter. The electrons were capable of behaving as either particles or waves, so the scientists designed an experiment where they would shoot the electrons at a barrier with two slits and, depending on how they got through the barrier, that would determine if they were acting as particles or waves. If they acted as particles, the electrons would go through only one of the slits in the barrier. If they acted as waves, they would go through both the slits in the barrier, and meet again on the other end. In order to measure the results, the physicists set up an instrument designed to observe the electrons. However, when they were being observed by the instrument, the electrons behaved only as particles. The experiment demonstrated a concept called "the observer effect.
" In other words, it showed that the act of observation changed the observable reality. Despite my being, if it''s possible, the opposite of a quantum physicist, I find myself thinking about this concept a lot. You know how you don''t remember being told about Santa Claus-he was just always there? In the same way kids of color have long known about another unseen but always watching presence: White People. Our parents seemed constantly aware-and made sure we were aware-of the ways that White People were watching us and interpreting the things we did. Our parents stressed that we carried a heightened sense of responsibility because of these unseen observers. Growing up Black helps us to understand so many social limits long before we have the vocabulary to name them. We didn''t have to know what double standards were, only that our parents warned us that even if our friends did something wrong and didn''t get in trouble, it didn''t mean we would be so lucky. We didn''t have to know what respectability politics were, only what it felt like the first time we were tempted to prove to a white person that we were one of the good ones.
There are graduate students studying race and privilege who struggle with articulating the difference between white and whiteness-one word is a descriptor of individual people, the other is a construct that fuels a system of power and oppression. We may have also struggled with explaining these differences, but as Black kids, we understood. There were people who were white, and there were White People. And our parents weren''t worried about individual people who were white-our friends, their parents, tea.