One would be hard-pressed to think of a vice president in recent memory placed under as much of a political microscope as Kamala Harris. She can hardly sneeze without someone, somewhere analyzing or dissecting her every move. And let’s not get started on how some of her critics attack her supposed “strange” laugh.
Some on the right have insinuated Harris slept her way to the top. Some, including Donald Trump, falsely claim she’s not really Black because her father is light-skinned and her mother was from India. The founder of Pastors for Trump, a group of supposedly Christian pastors, called Harris a “Ho.”
Shortly after Harris was sworn in as vice president, two White so-called Christian pastors derided her as a “Jezebel,” a term with a long, racist history. It symbolizes a return to America’s racist and misogynistic history of casting Black women as uncontrollably sexual, which served to grant slaveholders the license to sexually violate slave women. Though in terms of sheer politics, it’s probably not the wisest course of action for the Trump campaign to focus on any rival candidate’s relationship history.
Black women seeking the office of the presidency is not new. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968, attended a Baptist church in New York City and declared her candidacy. Chisholm was a distinctive entity in American politics of the era. Her ardent support of civil rights and abortion rights demonstrated that was a crucial political bridge between the interests of Black Americans and the emerging, largely White, abortion-rights movement.
Although she was a pioneer, Chisholm’s campaign — pitted against a predominately White male field of candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination — was seen as mostly symbolic and not taken seriously.
The Congressional Black Caucus, which was in its genesis stage at the time and of which Chisholm was also a founding member, declined to endorse her. Many of her fellow Black colleagues supported George McGovern, who became the eventual nominee. The reasons for doing so were political as well as pragmatic. As the caucus saw it (sad to say, correctly so at the time), the nation would not support a Black woman, and the more effective strategy would be to support a viable candidate.
Many Americans have never been comfortable with Black women in leadership positions. It is not accidental that we have only had two Black women elected to the U.S. Senate: Harris and Carol Mosley Braun of Illinois. Sen. Laphonza Butler was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Dianne Feinstein.
As a woman of color and a biracial one at that, Harris has to deal with the twin evils of “Jim Crow and Jane Crow.” The term was espoused by pioneering legal scholar Pauli Murray. The intersection of race and gender has undoubtedly contributed to much of the derision toward Harris from certain segments of society.
This reality of Harris as the first Black female nominee of a major party for president is an image that upsets the stomachs and emotions of a large number of right-wing Republicans, and, if we are being honest, a segment of neoliberal and faux Democrats as well. A Black woman being elected president before a White woman would likely be a tough pill for many to swallow and seemingly almost impossible for many Whites across the political landscape to comprehend.
Harris remains immensely popular among Black women, the Democratic Party’s most dedicated voting bloc. Her fierce speeches at HBCUs, visits to Planned Parenthood clinics, and passionate speeches on reproductive rights have garnered her admiration among a growing number of people, in particular, younger millennials and Generation Z’ers.
Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Freeman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Mary McCloud Bethune, Rosa Parks, Daisy Bates, Septima Clark, Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Barbara Jordan, Fannie Lou Hamer. One can only imagine what they and so many other faceless, nameless unsung Black women who fought for progress would think of the political events surrounding this current moment.
A Black, biracial woman who, in certain parts of the nation, was not even allowed to vote until 1965, is now poised to make history by possibly becoming the first female president of the United States. Progress, indeed.
Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. His columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. He is also an author and public speaker. Jesse Jackson is on leave.
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2024
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