The right woman at the right time to be America’s first Black vice president
17th August 2020 · 0 Comments
A collective sigh of relief could be figuratively heard from many Black Americans, as former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, chose U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), on August 12, 2020, to be his vice-presidential running mate. Harris was chosen by Biden from a diverse field of women candidates, 12 in all, to fulfill his commitment to pick a woman as his vice president.
Biden’s choice of a woman of color to be his running mate was the result of hundreds of America’s Black men and women who signed letters urging Biden to pick a Black woman as his running mate. The request was clearly a demand, a first step in addressing the racial disparity in politics that has existed since the formation of the grand experiment known as American democracy. This first step is literally not about the symbolism, tokenism, window-dressing, or Dubois’ theory of the talented tenth.
No. This demand is about having a seat at the table for the Democratic Party’s core base, Black women, who have, decade in and decade out, elected a plethora of people to the halls of Congress. In 2020, 401 years after enslaved Africans arrived on these shores, this is a demand to have a voice and a hand in making decisions that will benefit the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituents, Black people. This is the first down payment for what reparations will look like in the 21st Century.
It’s time to pay up. The Black electorate of the 21st Century is not carrying the same moderate, quiet-spoken, humble, patient Black loyalists of the last century.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made the case for not waiting in his 1963 book, “Why We Can’t Wait.” In a chapter titled “The Days to Come,” Dr. King said African Americans must struggle for economic and social equality. He also hinted at reparations and affirmative action measures and argued for a more radical vision of equality. Fifty-seven years later and the 21st Black electorate is rising up to say, we want economic justice and we want it now.
Only the second Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, Harris has shown why she is the right person at the right time to run at the top of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket.
In her remarks on being selected, Harris spoke of the failures of the Trump administration and the work that lies ahead. Most importantly, she sliced and diced Trump with surgical precision, using facts like a machete. She said Trump “inherited” the longest period of economic growth in U.S. history from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, and he did what he did with the inheritance he got from his father, “He ran it straight into the ground.”
She also blamed Trump for causing the deaths of thousands of Americans because of his refusal to handle the coronavirus pandemic.
“This virus has impacted almost every country, but there’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation. It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start,” Harris said last Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware, during her first joint appearance with former Vice President Joe Biden since she accepted his offer to become his running mate on Tuesday, August 11, 2020.
“His refusal to get testing up and running, his flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks, his delusional belief that he knows better than the experts – all of that is the reason an American dies of COVID-19 every 80 seconds,” she said.
Even before being selected as Biden’s running mate, Harris had been pushing for free COVID-19 testing and free masks as well as legislation aimed at addressing health care disparities in communities of color as the virus continues to rapidly spread throughout the United States. The senator from California has called for a slew of changes aimed at protecting Americans, including federal laws barring landlords from evicting renters and monthly checks for people who make less than $120,000.
Of Biden’s choice of her as his running mate, Senator Harris said, “Today, he takes his place in the ongoing story of America’s march toward equality and justice as the only person who served alongside the first Black president, and has chosen the first Black woman as his running mate.”
Trump’s response to Harris’ selection was immediate and predictable. He called her a string of ugly names, including calling her a “nasty” woman.
A torrent of criticism was also unleashed on social media by the extreme radical right, Trump supporters, some Indian Americans, and even some Black people who questioned Harris’ ethnicity and her claims of being a Black woman. Some pointed out that Harris is not an African American.
Last year, questions also surfaced on social media questioning her roots. In a 2019 interview with DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God on their radio show, “The Breakfast Club,” Harris answered questions on the “legitimacy” of her Black identity: “I am Black, and I am proud of it… I was born Black and I’ll die Black and I am proud of it. And I am not going to make any excuses for it, for anybody, because they don’t understand.”
We think that anyone who questions Harris’ racial identity doesn’t understand history, genetics, and the fact that all life began in Africa. “Modern humans arose in Africa at least 250,000 to 300,000 years ago, fossils and DNA reveal,” according to Science Magazine. “Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago,” according to “Human Evolution,” an article from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
Sen. Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, Calif. Her father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Clearly, they both have African genes, as do all humans. Her mother’s dark skin proclaimed her African genetics and while her father is light-skinned, his hair texture illustrates Mother Africa’s influence in his gene pool.
Harris’ mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, who died in 2009, was a prominent cancer researcher. Her father, Donald Harris is a former professor of Economics at Stanford University.
Both of Harris’ parents came to the United States to earn doctorate degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. The two “met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement,” according to Harris’s autobiography, “The Truths We Hold.” Harris credits her mother with raising her to be “a strong Black woman.”
During the 20th century, anyone who was judged to have had even one ancestor of Black ancestry was considered Black in the United States. In the United States, the “one-drop rule” – also known as hypodescent – dates to a 1662 Virginia law on the treatment of mixed-race individuals.
So, by that metric, Harris, and everyone else born in 20th century America with Black ancestry are considered to be Black.
Even in 2010, a study showed that people still look upon biracial people as identifiable with the Black side of their ancestry. Harvard University psychologists found that we still tend to see biracials not as equal members of both parent groups, but as belonging more to their minority parent group. The research appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
However, as Senator Harris says of what her mother taught her, “You don’t let others define you…you define yourself. And Harris defines herself as a Black woman and that is how we view her.
We expect great Black girl magic from Harris, a Howard University graduate and member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. We believe the future of the Black community has a torch-bearer in vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris.
This article originally published in the August 17, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
