Leave Kamala Harris Alone
“Too ambitious.” “Disloyal.” “Opportunist.” Even Joe Biden has to write reminder notes to himself not to hold a grudge against U.S. Senator Kamala Harris.
Let us not forget how Harris commanded attention to the truth during Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing regarding a sexual assault allegation in 2018. Harris made it clear that her part in the hearing was more than vetting a Supreme Court nominee, it was a demonstration on how to handle sexual assault victims in America — no more victim shaming.
This was no Anita Hill redux, even though the exact same circumstances from that hearing— a Supreme Court nomination held up by a sexual assault allegation — existed 27 years later with Kavanaugh’s nomination. It was Harris who proved that America had grown in those 27 years.
She was our hero during the Kavanaugh hearing, but now she’s our foe?
Harris announced her presidential run knowing her melanin alone wasn’t enough to gain the trust and vote of the Black community. Harris was a career prosecutor and we already know the stigma of Black prosecutors in the eyes of most Black voters — they’re traitors unjustly putting their own kind in prison. Her reputation as a prosecutor alone made her presidential campaign an uphill battle. So she had no choice but to go on The Breakfast Club and tell a white lie about blazing Mary Jane to the beat of 2Pac’s anthems. She had no choice but to revive Biden’s four-decade-old bill opposing court ordered busing in an effort to integrate schools. She had no choice but to remind us about Biden’s shameful handling of Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination hearing. How else was Harris going to steal the Black vote from Biden?
There’s no point in getting our panties wadded with the possibility of Harris being Biden’s running mate because it’s not going to happen. Biden is going to pull, what will seem like to us, a magic trick. He will tap an intelligent and well accomplished Black female government official that we’ve never heard of before to be his running mate. Subsequently, we will all clutch our pearls at the thought that we couldn’t see through Biden’s poker face.
Regardless, we need to give Harris a break from our microscopic lenses. She’s not aggressive, she’s assertive. She’s not a traitor to the Black community, she’s a civil servant. She’s not over ambitious, she’s exercising her right to be a strong Black woman. So she may not be your favorite person? Most fearless Black women are not favored. Senator Kamala Harris is the quintessential product of the American dream — mixed race woman, child of immigrants, justice warrior for her state as a prosecutor, and now a legislative luminary serving her country as a U.S. Senator.
Get off her back and show her the respect she deserves.
A version of this article appeared first in ForwardKY on August 1, 2020.
