Biden and Harris arrive at a time when America needs healing

On Jan. 19, 2017, the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, I wrote a letter titled “What might Gandhi say to President Donald Trump?” in the style in which Gandhi had written to other heads of government, including Adolf Hitler. It read, in part:

“I am aware that American elections are characterized by spectacle, but as the recent campaign unfolded, your statements grew into an alarming barrage of verbal violence. Your stoking of the extreme-right’s hatred of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Muslims, and your assault on women’s dignity were hard to accept …. You have an enormous responsibility ...”

The last four years have been one long brutal political winter in America. President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have brought a muchawaited spring to America. Their victory has generated a much-needed optimism and high expectations at home and around the world.

First and foremost, America needs his compassionate words to wipe the tears of the hundreds of thousands of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and grandchildren who have lost their loved ones because of the irresponsibly managed COVID-19 pandemic response.

America needs his less-partisan approach to governing and bringing the country together. Millions of Americans have lost ground in their standard of living and are angry. America will welcome his goal to be president for all Americans.

Other nations want America to reengage with the world. The rest of the world may or may not like America, but they cannot ignore it. The world wants Biden to move quickly on addressing climate change, reducing nuclear weapons, ratifying nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and finding humane solutions for millions of displaced refugees.

America made history by electing the first woman, Black, and South Asian vice-president. Harris’s election will galvanize and empower women and racialized people. America needs her intelligent, engaged, and compassionate approach to the job.

I have saved the most important item for last. Many African Americans may be on the verge of losing faith in America. Slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, systemic racism, police boots, batons and brutality, and broad humiliation over centuries, have threatened their spirit. What it is doing to Black youths is incomprehensible. America needs a second emancipation. Afro-Americans are looking to the Biden-Harris team for their commitment to work toward ending systemic racism in the United States.

I want to close by remembering some more lines from my letter to President Trump:

“There are moments in history when a leader finds himself or herself in a position that can make or break the world. President John F. Kennedy’s role in the Cuban missile crisis comes to mind as an example of the former; Hitler’s in the Second World War as an example of the latter. As president-elect of the United States, you stand at a juncture in history, with the power to change the world substantially, for good or bad.”

There may be disagreement on other matters regarding Biden presidency but there is no disagreement that President Biden and Vice-President Harris have arrived at a critical moment in history, to be the leaders of a wounded nation that needs healing.

Rama Singh is a professor in the Department of Biology at McMaster University and an organizer of the Gandhi Peace Festival. Recently, the Gandhi Peace Festival committee sent President Biden and Vice-President Harris copies of a book featuring photographs from Gandhi’s life, as a souvenir of the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth.