Kamala Harris and the race thing
Issue #730 The Choice, Thursday, September 18, 2024
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During his embarrassing appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists National Convention in July of this year, Donald Trump thinly implied that Kamala Harris wasn’t really Black and that she only recently discovered her Blackness to gain political points, mostly with Black people. He said he didn’t know she was Black.
So yeah. Ridiculous. But it’s Trump. So whatever.
Later, the Vice President was asked to respond to Trump’s comments during her first full interview with the media via CNN. Her response was basically to shake her head in mock “poor baby” sadness and say that Trump was operating out of the “same old tired playbook” of racial division. And that was the end of that. The interviewer tried to push for more, but Kamala was done. Move on already.
It was a good response, and for that particular interview, it was probably enough. To be sure, Kamala does not want race to be a defining aspect of her campaign, and she for damned sure doesn’t want to be dragged into the race debate on Donald Trump’s terms. Because all Trump wants is a mud fight. I think we can all agree Trump has no interest in an intellectual, enlightening debate on the issue of race in America.
But race in America is one of America’s most glaring issues that has been at the forefront of America’s identity ever since this nation was founded on racial discrimination and exploitation. Because just to be clear, there would not be the United States of America as we know it if not for racial discrimination. This nation was effectively stolen from the Native Americans by a United States government that never honored a single treaty that a white man was bound to respect, and slave-picked cotton, picked by exploited African laborers for free, became the foundation of America’s powerhouse economy. An economy built to amass power and wealth for white people, and that was so successful it made America the most powerful nation on Earth.
So race matters. But race is also a political quagmire, especially for Black politicians. And especially especially for Black politicians who want to become President of the United States. Because that particular Black person has to walk the tightrope (over burning coals with a windstorm swirling around them amid hail, thunder, and a rainstorm, too) of being Black but not too Black. The Black candidate must comfort white people that he/she does not seek revenge or restitution for centuries of exploitation and oppression that continue to this day. Still, he/she must also signal/wink to Black people that he/she knows the score. He/she must convince mostly white people that he/she is determined to be a President for all people, not just Black people and that Black people will get no special consideration – not even if they should.
Given all these potential traps and impossible balancing acts, it must certainly be tempting to avoid the racial question at all costs. As Rodney King famously asked, after getting the hell beat out of him by the Los Angeles police for no real reason, “Can’t we all just get along?” Because that would make things so much easier if we could.
But reality is a bitch. President Barack Obama, who perhaps exemplified the level of Black perfection required to successfully become elected to this nation’s highest office, learned the hard way that, one way or another, the race question will find you and demand an answer. The first time it found him was on the campaign trail when he was forced to distance himself from his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, one of the most prominent and widely respected Black pastors not only in Chicago but in the country, because of what was widely being portrayed as racially inflammatory remarks he had made during a sermon some years prior.
What was lost in that manufactured scandal was that Rev. Dr. Wright, a retired Marine, was actually a real medical doctor (and anesthesiologist) and was in attendance when former President Lyndon Johnson underwent surgery in the 1960s.
As usual, being the best or almost the best in your field while being Black matters little to the 40-some percent of Americans who believe in white supremacy.
Ultimately, the painful decision to pull away from Rev. Dr. Wright to save his candidacy caused Obama to write and deliver one of the most compelling and passionate speeches on the issue of race in America ever delivered by a presidential candidate – or a president.
The second time race came calling was by the name of Trayvon Martin, the young Black man who was slain by an overeager white man in Florida in his own neighborhood on February 26, 2012 as he walked home because the white man didn’t think he looked like he belonged. Once again, Obama had to confront the issue of race on national TV as he delivered remarks specifically in reaction to the slaying, and once again he handled it well. He pointed out how if he had a son that Trayvon Martin could easily have been a young man who met a similar fate, only because he was a young Black man in America.
“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.”
Beautifully said. But both times, President Obama delivered his most passionate thoughts on the issue of race as a response to an emergency situation and then a tragedy. Prior to that, similar to Kamala’s approach, he sought to elevate himself above the racial divide as best he could, I think maybe hoping that the obvious fact of his Blackness would be enough without having to say it out loud. But he found out otherwise.
Hopefully Kamala Harris will at some point choose to address this issue ahead of a crisis, not afterward. It won’t be easy, but it needs to be done. That alone would be an important step forward for the issue of race in America.
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