By Ryan Coleman
Special to the AFRO
The vice presidency was described by the first man to hold the office, John Adams, as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
Credit: Courtesy Photo
Originally, the runner-up in the presidential vote — to be carried out by the decidedly un-democratic Electoral College — was to be named vice president.
The idea of a distinguished politician being vice president for nearly two hundred years, and a series of hacks and non-entities occupying the vice presidency became the norm, rather than the exception. If I polled average Americans on three legislative accomplishments directed by the last three vice presidents, Mike Pence, Joe Biden and Dick Cheney, I feel confident that 90 percent of them would barely be able to name two.
This is for a reason. The vice president’s role is to stand in the background, to be the tie-breaking vote for the Senate, and to be the ambassador to foreign nations, but never to overshadow the president. So what is different about Kamala Harris? Her identity – as the first female, Black vice president – led to an unprecedented level of scrutiny. The fact that an intelligent Black woman is one step away from being the president is too much for some to handle.
Born in Oakland, Calif., Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California- Hastings College of the Law. She has held positions in the office of the district attorney of Alameda County, the San Francisco DA’s Office and the City Attorney of San Francisco. In 2003, she was elected DA of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014. Harris served as the junior U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021.
As a senator, Harris advocated for healthcare reform, the DREAM Act, strict gun control laws and tax reform. She gained a national profile with her intelligent questions during the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh.
Harris has shined for fighting the causes of under-represented Americans. Recently, the vice president has emerged as one of the administration’s leading voices pushing Israel to do more to limit Palestinian casualties in its war against Hamas and to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.
On the campaign trail, Harris is connecting with voters who are less than excited about the Democratic ticket. She has been defending Biden’s mental acuity, calling the special counsel’s depiction “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.” In a speech on February 2nd at South Carolina State University, a historically Black institution, she spoke of threats to democracy posed by Donald Trump and said that the former President “has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain.”
Harris is also the campaign’s strongest voice on abortion, the issue that, since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, in June 2022 has likely galvanized more voters— including women in Republican-led states—than any other. She began a recent fundraising email by declaring, “I’m furious,” and launched a national tour in Wisconsin on the fifty-first anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
“These extremists want to roll back the clock to a time before women were treated as full citizens,” she said, standing near a big banner that read “TRUST WOMEN.” Recalling Trump’s comment that he was proud to appoint three Supreme Court Justices whose votes were critical to overturn Roe, she asked, “Proud that women across our nation are suffering? Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? Proud that doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for their patients?”
In Republican audiences, though, Harris is readily mocked and dismissed. At a Nikki Haley event at the Thunder Bay Grille, in Davenport, Iowa, —Haley said, “We cannot ever have a President Kamala Harris. She’d send a chill up your spine.”
What, exactly, is so terrifying about Harris wasn’t clear, but Haley hit the note of Biden’s frailty again in a recent CNN interview, seeming to suggest that Trump, if nominated, would lose to Biden and that Biden would not finish a second term. “There will be a female President of the United States,” she said. “It will either be me, or it will be Kamala Harris.”
Some Republicans and others have wild conspiracy theories and racist overtones as a result of her race and as a result of her gender. They lie to themselves to hide their racist and sexist disposition. The truth is they are scared of change. They are scared of the true story — that Black Americans are equal to White Americans. Kamala Harris is an excellent vice president.
Human nature leads us to avert our gaze when confronted with situations that disturb us. Part of our nation’s ongoing struggle with race is that too many look away and too few look deeply. For those of us who consider ourselves Christian, this shows up in the continued refusal to see the face of God in others and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Racism can never be defeated under such circumstances. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr says it best, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the White people of America believe they have so little to learn…resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook.”
Ryan Coleman can be reached at randallstownnaacp@gmail.com
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