Opinion: The Conflicting Blackness Of Fani Willis’ Testimony

On Feb. 16, John Clifford Floyd III testified on behalf of his daughter, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, who is currently under fire for her admitted relationship with Nathan Wade, the counsel Willis hired to work her office’s indictment of Donald Trump and his 18 co-conspirators on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Floyd testified a day after his daughter’s now-viral testimony in which she took everyone to school ― especially alleged co-conspirator Michael Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who’s seeking to have Willis’ team disqualified from the case on the grounds that her former romantic relationship with Wade is a conflict of interest.
The most interesting part of Floyd’s testimony ― which was tame compared to his daughter’s –– was his explanation of why he keeps cash in the house and has always encouraged his daughter to do the same. He politely explained that the habit is borne of a cultural distrust of the banking system, sharing a story of how a merchant once wouldn’t take his credit card or money order simply because he’s Black.
“Your honor, I’m not trying to be racist, OK, but it’s a Black thing,” he said. “I was trained…you always keep some cash.”
I watched both testimonies with my 71-year-old Black mother, who loved Willis’ incendiary disposition, and Floyd’s demonstration of intelligence and wisdom. Mama, an advanced-degree-holding Baby Boomer from Detroit ― who once sued and settled with an employer over racial discrimination ― related to Willis’ unwillingness to capitulate to her accusers, and her educated father teaching and caring for her daughter.
However, it’s not hard to find Black folks who didn’t at all care for Willis’ testimony…who didn’t appreciate that she told these white folks that a “G” is slang for $1,000, her unsolicited opinion on her love for Grey Goose vodka or the fact that she admitted she didn’t know what continent Belize is on.
These Black folks didn’t appreciate the way Willis cut her eyes, twisted her mouth and raised her voice in naked disdain for Merchant, whom she blames directly for falsehoods spread about her relationship with Wade to the degree that she had to leave her home for fear of her safety.
Those Black folks just didn’t like all that damn Blackness on display for the world stage.
Here rears the divisive head of respectability politics, or the notion that Black folks should seek to better integrate into the “mainstream” by keeping our cultural bona fides muted. If you believe that there’s no way a Black woman who graduated from Howard University and Emory University School of Law should have the temerity to comport herself as she did around these pure white folks who had the graciousness to allow her to breathe their pure white air, respectability, politics likely has you in a bind.
Unfortunately, it also puts you in a Venn diagram overlap with all the Trump fans leveraging Willis and Wade’s relationship to be as racist and sexist as social media will allow, to the point where the lines between critical motivations can become blurry, as is the case with this frightening-looking bastard.
This respectability divide among Black folks is nothing new: As a young man, I was certainly Team Stop Embarrassing Us in Front of These White Folks. The older I became, the more I read and the more absurdly racist shit I analyzed, the more disabused of these sentiments and the more entrenched in my Blackness I became.
Blackness is, and has always been, a rebellious act and a perpetual state of being. Willis’ impassioned response on the witness stand served as an act of defiance against those whom she believes have denigrated her character in the interest of protecting known racists, including Trump and his indicted alleged co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani. There’s nothing Blacker than a clapback.
Blackness is recognizing that Floyd, an 80-year-old former Black Panther who allegedly dated Angela Davis and has likely accomplished more in his legal career than any of the attorneys who questioned him Friday, still had to explain racism on basic terms to a room full of educated people in 2024. Blackness is understanding why a daughter he raised moves the way she does in a society designed so that a Black woman reaching her career level is no mean feat.
Perhaps Willis’ disposition during her testimony won’t bode well for her and her team in the disqualification case considering America’s distaste for her brand of unfettered Blackness. And, if Willis made any error in judgment at all, it’s putting herself in her position by hiring Wade to begin with. Whether she should recuse herself regardless of the judge’s ruling is a topic for a different piece.
But I certainly watched Willis drag Merchant with glee (and maybe I, like Plies, was just a little turned on). It was a cathartic display of Black defiance; if I had my druthers, every Black person would feel the same way.
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