Who says Harris will be a good representative for Black Americans?
The selection of Kamala Harris as Democratic vice presidential nominee by Joe Biden tells the American electorate one thing with certainty: The Democratic Party’s path to victory in 2020 is through the Black Belt, the provinces of Black American voters.
On the surface, Ms. Harris seems easily suited to bring Black voters to the polls. She is a charismatic graduate of Howard University and an Alpha chapter initiate into the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. She considers tens of thousands of college-educated Black women across the globe her “sisters.” Noted for her beauty and strong opinions, Ms. Harris has attained an extraordinary degree of success and national visibility.
But would Black Americans have picked Ms. Harris over Georgia’s Stacey Abrams or Mayor Atlanta Keisha LanceBottoms, or Florida Rep. Val Demings? Perhaps not. The problem is that more than any other possible example, Ms. Harris, the junior U.S. senator from California, represents the wealthy 1% and its trappings. (There is not a small overlap between the “QAnon” phenomenon of the right-wing “fringe” and its anger over the Deep State’s pork bureaucracy and the leftists disgruntled with the same state over its police-military state buildup.)
Only her studied example of “blackness,” a portrayal she adopted from her Indian mother, and which can be gleaned mainly from her attitude and style, prevents her from being indelibly associated with America’s rich.
She is the daughter of a Berkeleytrained economist and a nutritionist and endocrinologist, a two-Ph.D. home. While there are many African Americans with Ph.D.s, they are mostly doctors of education, divinity and theology, not nearly as often economics or scientific fields. Her parents were brown immigrants, and in news articles abroad her Jamaican father has gone out of his way to emphasize his upper-class social views and racially mixed ancestry.
What may serve in Jamaica for him as necessary truth-telling and complexity can play here as effective distance from the poor who must trace their roots to enslavement.
Ms. Harris has rarely taken the road less traveled. Unlike Stacey Abrams, an adherent to the philosophy that Black Americans needed to demonstrate being “twice as good” to level the uneven playing field, Ms. Harris did not sacrifice her time to win admission to a leading academic law powerhouse.
Unlike Ms. Demings, she did not prioritize direct, dangerous, impactful public service or raising a family in her early or mid-career. Ms. Harris moved swiftly into the upper echelons of California political circles by forging close personal ties with Democratic Party managers. She took a job as a prosecutor, the classic pathway into politics, though obviously her skill and finesse enabled her rise to the highest-ranking enforcer of California’s laws.
Ms. Harris, married only six years, is wife to a wealthy white entertainment attorney from Los Angeles. Her strength as a politician is connected to her ability to score points as an interlocutor during hearings, clips which are easily harvested for the evening news. On the presidential campaign trail, she distinguished herself mainly with a series of ad hominem barbs. Joe Biden had wounded her personally by opposing busing in 1971. She fought off billionaire Michael Bloomberg as a “little dude.”
In the contest for the White House, people have been inclined to see Ms. Harris’ tactics as evidence of her spunk and resolve. But, as a governor, indeed, as a president, what assurance do voters really have that she has more going for her than a deep sense of entitlement related to her lifelong privilege?
How can voters, particularly African Americans, be certain that she will do anything other than represent her class? How can voters be reassured that she will do more than simply look different from Donald Trump, or, for that matter, Mr. Biden, on one of the many days we might anticipate when he will misspeak or have a lapse of ethical judgment?
Win back the presidency, the Democrats may well do. But the Biden team needs a stronger signal than just vice presidential candidate Harris that they are serious about the economic future of their most important voting constituency, whose yet-relieved trials began before the Civil War — the little people of American democracy.