Systemic Racism Begets More Systemic Racism

Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential choice highlights one of many aspects of systemic racism: systemic racism has prevented many of the best candidates for the #blacklivesmatter movement from having a winning track record in a swing state.

Someone doing a purely political calculus regarding whom Biden must pick to win might think, “He needs to pick someone who has carried a statewide race in a swing state in recent history. That way he can bring home a swing state.”

And:

“He needs to pick someone progressive so that he can pull in all of those of us in the party and all the independents who are reticent about his sometimes neoliberal establishment tendencies and way of talking.”

And:

“He needs to pick a black woman to send a strong message to the country about race and equality and to bring black voices to the table and amplify them.”

I think it’s a good idea to have as many black women in power as we can. However, in the past six years, I’m unaware of any black woman who has carried a statewide race in a swing state. Racism and system rigging has kept them out of those roles. So already systemic racism means that it’s a gamble for Biden, leaving him with a lesser option: pick a white lady or non-black lady who has won a statewide race in a swing state in recent years; such a choice is as close as he can get to a guarantee that of bringing home that vice presidential contender’s swing state.

If he picks Kamala Harris, what does that gain strategically? Setting aside what’s right for a moment, Biden already has California in his pocket. So though Harris has won a recent statewide race, it’s not one that will make a difference in the presidential election.

Harris might not necessarily win over enough black voters either, and now we’re getting into what’s morally wrong and right as well. With police violence coming to such a head, Harris’s history as an Attorney General could be unappealing to both black voters and woke voters.

While Harris at times made criminal justice reforms, she also perpetuated criminalization, include criminalization of blackness. Below are just a few examples. First, she rejected civil rights advocates’ entreaties to investigate fatal police shootings of young black men in California. Moreover, she neglected to pursue exonerating evidence in the cases of a couple of wrongly convicted men, and she declined to support body cameras’ bills. Some have criticized her for failing to address systemic problems leading to over-criminalization.

Many people of all races may also feel pretty persuaded by the recent NPR segment about redistributing police budgets to social services and may have negative feelings towards those with law enforcement connections.

That also brings us to another problem with picking Harris — tokenizing candidates and positions. Trump seems to have tokenized Ben Carson. He picked Carson to head Department of Housing and Urban Development despite the fact that Carson was a retired neurosurgeon who was inexperienced running a bureaucracy and whose only experience with housing is that he is a black man who took Trump on a car ride through an impoverished Detroit neighborhood. As a retired neurosurgeon, Carson might have been more appropriately suited to oversee an agency devoted to health or medical care. As leader of the HUD, Carson’s administration has seen a rise in the number of low income housing that fails health and safety inspections and these failing disproportionately impact Black people and other racial minorities.

Rather than symbolically equalizing black people in appointing Carson, Trump carved a path for success for black people only if they join with the oppressors. This calculus is the epitome of racism — using Carson’s blackness as a means of denying Trump’s racist actions and statements and making mostly white racists feel good about Trump’s racism.

However, from the standpoint of pure strategy, this phenomenon may be the political gain regarding Harris. A choice for Harris could be a choice to make less woke people feel good about being less woke.

Yet even this conclusion about Harris raises another problem with systemic prejudices — oppression often forces the oppressed to play by the oppressor’s rules to succeed and pave the way for more of the oppressed. Yet once the rules begin to change in favor of the oppressed, people may view any perceived previous complicity as an Achilles heel. At the same time, popular opinion still judges inexperience and loss-records.

Would Harris have made it so far without doing as she has done? Did she succeed by playing by the rules as they were written at the time and making some changes along the way? Is it possible to find a candidate who is both experienced and in no way complicit?

If we rule out Harris, Val Demings may pose some of the same challenges as Harris since she was Chief of Police in Orlando. OPD has had bad press over the years. We will all have to see what vetting shows once the press and conservatives comb over her record. Moreover, although Demings is from a swing state, she has not won a statewide race in Florida.

So that brings us around to Stacy Abrams. Abrams does not have law enforcement baggage, and she did come close in a statewide race in a state that could potentially swing.

The challenge regarding Abrams from a purely political standpoint as opposed to moral right and wrong is that due to disenfranchisement and systemic racism, Brian Kemp became governor in Georgia. Those same dynamics could mean that Kemp will disenfranchise enough people again for the Democrats to lose Georgia in 2020. Even if the Democrats win Georgia, that’s a gain of only sixteen votes in the electoral college.

So it’s quite a bind. We need to get rid of Trump to do something about the out-of-control racism running through the federal government. We also need something more than Joe Biden to enact real and lasting change. But because of systemic racism, picking the right Vice President to run with Biden remains a challenge. Moreover, setting aside the morally best choice, each vice presidential contender raises questions in a purely political calculus. That same calculus could sway Biden’s decision. However, since every contender has her strategic Achilles heel, all we can hope is that he will pick the one who is best for achieving equality.