Though I dutifully binged The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the day it came out, it’s taken me a few weeks to verbalize my thoughts about it. I wasn’t quite sure at first what this newest iteration of the Sabrina comics was arguing; in my confusion, I read several pieces, including one that appeared in The Atlantic, which I now realize were incorrect and led my thinking astray.

The article in The Atlantic argues, more or less, that this Sabrina, rather than being a revenge fantasy in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is about how women should use power once they attain it. Supposedly this makes the new Sabrina more palatable, because however powerful she might be, there are still ethical checks on her power. Nothing is as terrifying as the idea of a woman with unlimited power, apparently.

I struggled with that Atlantic article for a while before realizing that my real thoughts on Sabrina had absolutely nothing to do with the misogyny-tinged argument the Atlantic had made. Rather, what makes this newest imagining of Greendale great is exactly what the Atlantic writer disliked, its vision for unfettered, inclusive female power.

After rejecting the Church of Night and refusing to sign the Book of the Beast, Sabrina is offered what her lawyer describes as “a type of dual citizenship”: continued attendance at the mortal high school, as well as mandatory magical education. That notion of dual citizenship is the central struggle of the series: how to balance the demands of two cultures, each equal components of Sabrina’s identity. The series argues again and again that she is neither one nor the other, but emphatically both. Her attempt to save Tommy Kinkle is one of the most cogent examples of this: she can bring his body back from the dead because she is a witch, but can also (try to) bring his soul back because she is a mortal, and thus can enter the mortal limbo to which his soul has been banished. Sabrina the Teenage Witch was about the misadventures of a witch in a mortal high school; The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is about a girl trying to navigate the conflicting demands of her dual identity.

The show’s depiction of multiculturalism struck a chord with me. I’m German-American, with dual citizenship, and I attended a French high school. Each of these is an essential component of my identity, but they are often in conflict. In Europe I feel too outspoken and individualist, but in America I feel judged for my continental social mores. I’m both too much and not enough: too American, and yet not wholly American; too German, but also not German enough.

I imagine Sabrina’s situation struck similar chords with other immigrants and children of immigrants. When you leave your country behind, you don’t leave your culture; it stays with you, even as you assimilate, making bits and pieces of the new culture yours, too. The new Sabrina looks in many ways like the new America: the owner of multiple identities, all of which she is equally proud of and holds equally dear. Her reticence to sign the Book of the Beast is a reticence to abandon one of her identities; it is a refusal to assimilate. Her dual identity is what makes her special and unique, something Sabrina and the show celebrate, just as immigrant cultures should be celebrated rather than tossed aside. It is a poignant message in our current political climate.

However, the Church of Night doesn’t only forbid Sabrina from maintaining a dual identity; it also forbids women from having power on their own terms. In order to access power, women must promise their undying service and devotion to a man, in this case Satan. Their power is conditional on participating in male-approved institutions and structures. They must sign away their names; their names, and identities, become contingent on his, like Madam Satan. Sometimes they must even give up their bodies in service to these male institutions, like the queen during the Feast of Feasts (note that it is always a witch being asked to sacrifice herself during the Feast, never a warlock). Witches’ power is thus great, but it is also constrained by male frameworks; to access that power, they are participating in their literal dehumanization.

The Atlantic claims that this newest iteration of Sabrina exists in a post-racial universe, in which questions of race are irrelevant. I would argue, however, that questions of race are very much at the forefront of the show. Witches, for example, cursed the women of the Walker family, like Sabrina’s friend Ros, to go blind. In other words, white women actively participating in and propping up a patriarchal system used their power to hurt black women– just like the white women who voted for Trump, Ted Cruz, and Brian Kemp, and the maternalists of the 19th and 20th centuries who claimed political power by exerting control over colonized peoples, and the suffragettes who claimed the right to vote at the expense of enslaved people. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is not, in fact, making an argument against unfettered female power; it is making an argument against white women using their power to enable patriarchy while simultaneously disenfranchising minorities.

The newest Sabrina is a radical character because she refuses to participate in a patriarchal system that demands subservience and monoculturalism. The show is not a revenge fantasy that imagines what women would do with power once they get it; it rightfully perceives that women already have power, and are too often misusing it. The show is in fact attempting to navigate real-world patriarchal institutions, holding up Sabrina and her friends as examples of the way forward, through multiculturalism and intersectionality.