For some, support of Harris was obvious. When T. Campbell of Los Angeles heard Harris might run, she breathed a “sigh of relief.” Harris is a Howard-educated AKA (Alpha Kappa Alpha) who tweets with pride about her fellow sorors and her favorite jams, from Salt-n-Pepa to Aretha Franklin. “I feel that…her running means I will have proper representation again,” Campbell says to Glamour. It’s a sentiment that Victoria Johnson of Ridgeland, Mississippi, shares: “As I’ve watched her over the years, I see a very strong leader, not just a strong woman.” And Tina-Rose Brown, who lives in Brooklyn, is excited not just about Harris’ public persona but about her commitment to marijuana legalization and restorative justice practices. “I believe if elected she’ll have a broad coalition and cabinet to help make the necessary changes to stop the cradle-to-prison pipeline,” Brown said.

Her time in the Senate suggests as much. But her earlier work has turned this into the issue I’m most worried about. Prosecutors have upheld laws and a criminal justice system that disenfranchises people who look like me. The prison system with its relation to black and brown people and the hyper-surveillance of our communities are subjects that need to be addressed head on. Can I trust Harris, who served as district attorney in San Francisco and then attorney general of California, to do this?

Harris has of course accomplished much in her career that would relieve some initial concerns. The Guardian and The New York Times have dug into the era of Harris’ political career that predates her reputation as a progressive leader. She opposed a proposition that would have made it harder to invoke the “three strikes rule,” which can trigger an automatic life sentence for someone convicted of multiple crimes and pushed legislation that would jail parents of truant children. But at the same time, as a district attorney in San Francisco, Harris created the Back on Track program for young first-time offenders that reduced the recidivism rate from 54 percent to an incredible 10 percent in just six years. Later, in her statewide office, she helped expedite the processing of rape kits and made police across the state undergo implicit bias training. In other words: It’s complicated.

What kind of voice would Harris be for us in the White House? And what would it take for us to back Harris’ historic bid?

But what sticks out to me is the fact that while she has said she’s committed to such progressive goals as weed legalization and restorative justice, she’s only just begun to reckon with and apologize for the part she played in strengthening systemic disparities among communities of color. She’s earned the nickname Top Cop for a reason. In the era of the Black Lives Matter movement and countless articles and books that document police surveillance and brutality toward black and brown people, for some black women the question is, What kind of voice would Harris be for us in the White House? And what would it take for us to back Harris’ historic bid?

Odds are Harris won’t be the most conservative candidate on criminal justice reform in the Democratic primary. But for some black women, that’s not quite the point. The issue is personal. Mass incarceration as a weapon of the state has disproportionately affected black families. Black people are imprisoned at a rate five times higher than that of white people, and 15 percent of African American men have gone to prison (as opposed to 6 percent of all adult men). “I’m surrounded by black men—uncles, nephews, grandparents—[who] have some kind of connection with the prison system,” says Courtney Humphrey, a media consultant based in Bowie, Maryland. Like Harris, Humphrey is an AKA, but their shared past makes her more disappointed in Harris’ mixed record. “I don’t feel like any of the things I identify with her [about] is enough to get me to completely ignore her politics,” she says. Humphrey isn’t sure who she’ll support in the primary, but she’s interested in Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has called American criminal justice policies racist.