The saying “all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk,” loosely referencing a declaration made by novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston in her 1942 autobiography “Dust Tracks on the Road,” offers a cautionary tale that Blackness and political interests are not always aligned. 

Tracy Chiles McGhee, a Hurston biographer, shared context, noting Hurston unapologetically leaned into her lived experience as an African American woman born 25 years after slavery, infusing her storytelling with Black dialect and the hardscrabble realities of the south.  

“Her actual words: ‘My skinfolks… but not my kinfolks’ was a reminder that racial identity alone doesn’t ensure shared purpose or principle,” said McGhee. 

The Nov. 4 Virginia election highlights Hurston’s warning.

For the first time in history, the state will elect a woman as its chief executive, with a right-wing Black Republican immigrant, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, facing off against a white, moderate national security specialist who served three terms in Congress, Abigail Spanberger.

“For decades many Virginia civic leaders have advocated for more diverse candidates to better reflect the electorate,” noted Krysta Jones, convenor of the Black Women’s Roundtable, Virginia. “This year, the ethnic diversity of office seekers is historic on both sides of the aisle.”

While Earle-Sears is a Black woman, many note that her political positions and goals do not support African American communities or interests.

“The joke of the century is believing that just because a candidate is Black, they automatically represent Black interests,” the voting rights organization and pac Voter Protection Project wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Winsome Earle-Sears stands with MAGA policies that harm Black communities — representation means nothing without values.”

Considered part of the “Old Confederacy,” Virginia is colored by contrast. Bordering the nation’s capital, it has one of the largest populations of federal employees and contractors hard hit by the government shutdown. It also claims three of the five richest counties in the nation, the world’s largest naval base, a robust Bible Belt and a 20% Black population.   

Virginia is conservative and liberal — often swinging from left to center to right over short and frequent election cycles. It is red, blue, purple, white, and Black with a growing immigrant population. Further, Virginia produced the nation’s first Black governor, Douglas Wilder, who served from 1990 to 1994, as the state’s constitution limits gubernatorial tenure to a single four-year term at a time.

As the Virginia election heats up, Penny Blue, program director of Red, Wine and Blue of Virginia, is focusing on issues important to African American Virginians — particularly Black women.

Blue is featured in a video series “What Black Women Want, What Virginia Needs” with a multigenerational group of Black women leaders — all representing 501c3 nonpartisan organizations — speaking to what’s at stake in November and beyond.  

The series highlights the importance of policies supporting reproductive rights, education, affordable health care, public safety, economic justice and being heard by their elected representatives.

“As Black women we are concerned about reproductive rights. Black women suffer from a higher infant mortality rate than white women and other women, so hospitals– especially nearby— are critical,” Blue said, before noting other challenges affecting Black women in order to emphasize the need for eligible voters to exercise their civic duty in Virginia. “Like 300,000 Black women have lost their jobs, so now it’s not a time for Black women to set out with regard to this race.”

Republican pick Earle-Sears is a 61-year-old Jamaican-born immigrant who moved to the United States at age 6. 

A Marine Corp veteran, she is the first Black woman to hold statewide office. 

Earle-Sears served a short stint in the House of Delegates, followed by two unsuccessful bids for the U.S. House and Senate. During the 2020 presidential campaign, she chaired the “Black Americans to Re-elect the President” Political Action Committee. 

Many have expressed concern about her positions on reproductive justice, climate change and employment. In a recent interview, she was corrected by a Fox News reporter on employment data, disputing her lower number of job losses statewide. 

When a CNN interviewer asked her about the purge of Virginia’s federal workforce, she replied: “If this is the way you want to go, then go ahead, but I’m just not going to participate, because I want to talk about real issues.”

Spanberger, on the Democratic side, is a 45-year-old centrist-leaning member of Congress who distinguished herself as a former CIA officer and national security expert. 

Spanberger was in the early push for Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 centered around withholding security assistance to Ukraine. 

She hails from a district that was a Republican stronghold since 1981, narrowly defeating her opponents during her three terms in the House (2018-2024) and demonstrating an ability to win conservative and moderate voters. 

Drawing the ire of progressive members, Spanberger labeled the 2020 congressional contest “a failure” for candidates in swing districts, crediting the Republicans with effective attack ads calling their Democratic opponents, who favored defunding the police, socialist. While the candidate has enjoyed double-digit leads in polling and fundraising, many predict the race is tightening as Virginia’s early voting (from Sept. 19 through Nov. 1) produces an unexpectedly large turnout. 

Blue predicts that Black women won’t sit out the November elections, but offered a caveat as they head to the polls. 

“We don’t need to be fooled by the color of a person’s skin,” Blue said in “What Black Women Want, What Virginia Needs.” “We need to listen to how they stand on the issues.”

Gwen McKinney is a  longtime communications strategist and creator of Unerased | Black Women Speak.