Kamala Harris is not making her race and gender the focus of her campaign—although, if she wins in November, she will be the first woman of colour to reach the White House. Her race and gender make her bid for the presidency historic, but she is not focusing on either as she tries to win over voters. She doesn’t have to.
Already, her candidacy has generated incredible excitement among important Democratic party constituencies, especially women and black voters, now the keystones of the party’s base. Right before the Democratic convention, Politico noted that black women “have historically been the single biggest driver in the gender gap between parties,” and that their enthusiasm for Harris outstrips even “what the country experienced during [Barack] Obama’s campaigns.”
So, it does not really matter how much Harris talks about the historic nature of her candidacy because black and female voters are already the pillars of her campaign.
The racial and ethnic composition of Democratic voters has changed profoundly in the last decades. More than four in ten Democratic voters (44 per cent) are Hispanic, black, Asian, another race or multiracial. Since 1996 their share has almost doubled. The Republican party, by comparison, is nearly 80 per cent non-Hispanic white. Women identify as Democrats in far greater numbers than men and turn out to vote in larger numbers than men, especially after the 2021 US Supreme Court decision that erased the right to have an abortion.
Anyone watching the Democratic convention, especially on Tuesday night, when Barack and Michelle Obama had star billing and received an ecstatic reception from the delegates, could see the emotion and excitement on the faces of the many black women cheering on the floor of the Chicago arena.
The prospect of Harris’s ascendancy to the presidency has special meaning for the delegation from the state of Mississippi, whose population is 36 per cent black, the highest percentage of any state. Although Donald Trump is almost certain to carry the state in November, as Republicans always do, this Democratic convention marks an important anniversary. It was exactly 60 years ago that voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, whose grandparents were enslaved, implored the Democratic leaders gathered for their 1964 convention not to seat the all-white delegation from Mississippi and instead recognise the mixed-race delegates from Hamer’s Mississippi’s Freedom Democratic party.
Though she was not successful in this effort, her searing testimony about being savagely beaten when she tried to register to vote and her rallying cry of, “Is this America?” gripped the nation. Soon after, in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, and black people in Mississippi were voting in droves. Hamer, who died at 59 in 1977, became a civil rights icon. She herself ran for the Senate in 1964, but was easily defeated.
Harris recognised Hamer’s importance and cited her bravery in her convention speech in 2020, when she was nominated as vice president.
If she were alive to see it, Hamer would surely savour Harris’s campaign, according to several black scholars I interviewed this week.
One is Anita Hill, a Brandeis University professor who supports Harris and views her ascent in American politics as part of Hamer’s legacy, and the realisation of Hamer’s dream of black voters gaining their rightful power. Hill was a girl, only eight years old, when Hamer addressed the Democratic convention, but as a young black woman growing up in rural Oklahoma, she identified with Hamer’s background in rural Mississippi and found her story “extremely powerful.” Hill, who testified against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the US Senate in 1991 and accused him of sexual harassment, also knows that it takes courage to speak truth to power.
Professor Keisha Blain of Brown University wrote a recent book about Hamer, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America. She told me, “I think Fannie Lou Hamer would celebrate this moment—even though I am confident she would remind us that the work of building an inclusive democracy is far from over.” Blain also stressed that Hamer saw the Democratic party “as an avenue for all Americans to be treated with dignity and respect.”
While Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday will surely be the high point of the Democratic convention, the week’s proceedings have been a veritable showcase for black women stars. A glitzy opening party at Chicago’s Field Museum honoured Minyon Moore, a close Harris confidante and senior Democratic party official. On Tuesday night, Michelle Obama brought down the house with a speech that both embraced Harris and shredded Donald Trump, without naming him, as the exemplar of “the affirmative action of generational wealth.” This part of her speech was particularly devastating:
Harris, Obama said, “understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No.” Then, she added this killer line: “We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No. We put our heads down. We get to work.”
The reference to the escalator was clearly meant to evoke Trump’s trip down the golden escalator of Trump Tower in New York City where he announced his 2016 candidacy for president.
Unlike Fannie Lou Hamer, Harris is not the descendant of enslaved Americans. Her mother was born in India and her father is Jamaican. Both were immigrants. Born in Oakland, California, she describes herself as solidly middle class, while Hamer knew abject poverty and grew up in a shack without indoor plumbing. She was savagely beaten and threatened for her work trying to register black voters in Mississippi.
Donald Trump shamelessly tried to drive a wedge between Harris and people like Hamer, whose ancestors were enslaved, by questioning Harris’s blackness in an appearance earlier in the summer at the National Association of Black Journalists. His slur drew audible gasps when Trump said, “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?” Mostly, his bizarre speech cemented his own reputation for making racist comments.
Surely Trump’s diatribe only helped deepen the commitment of black voters, some of whom looked likely to abandon President Biden, to make history by electing Harris.
Identity politics can be tricky and controversial. What has so excited black women about Harris’s candidacy could turn off more conservative and independent white voters whose support she also needs. So, watching how much—and even if—Harris stresses her race and gender will be a fascinating aspect of the election.
