Kamala Harris and Black women redefine what’s normal

By Erika D Smith

Two months ago, few would have believed that millions of Americans would suddenly become obsessed with electing a Black woman from California president, raising millions of dollars for her campaign on hastily arranged Zoom calls and driving hours to attend her raucous rallies, sometimes waiting in triple-digit heat.

I know I wouldn’t have believed it.

But as Democrats descend on Chicago this week for the party’s national convention, what once might have been the stuff of Shirley Chisholm fan fiction is now undeniably real. Vice President Kamala Harris could very well be the first woman and second person of color elected president, alongside her also suddenly popular running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

It’s thrilling. It’s historic. And for Black women, who have been dreaming of and organizing for this moment for decades, it’s overdue validation.

“We have been the backbone of this Democratic Party, and we’ve elected people of all backgrounds forever,” California Representative Barbara Lee, who for more than two decades has represented the Bay Area district where Harris was raised, told me. “And so, finally, finally.”

I have no doubt that the Democratic National Convention will turn into a celebration for Black women. To remember those who paved the way, from Chisholm — who was the first Black woman to serve in Congress and run for president and who Harris met as a child — to Harriet Tubman to Fannie Lou Hamer.

But I also can’t help but wonder whether this celebration will be a one-and-done affair. Is Harris’ candidacy merely a blip brought about by the urgent need to prevent former President Donald Trump from reclaiming the White House with his running mate, Senator JD Vance?

Or — and I hope this is true — is this the beginning of empowering more younger, more diverse candidates in political leadership, regardless of whether Harris wins in November? Is the sudden adulation of Harris a sign that Black women won’t feel like they must fight alone to get other Black women elected?

In her memoir, the vice president talks about her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, taking her to meet “extraordinary” people who showed Harris and her sister, Maya, “what we could become” as Black women.

In speeches, Harris often quotes Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher who immigrated to the US from India, as saying: “You may be the first to do many things. Make sure you’re not the last.”

Ours is a nation that regularly traffics in racism and sexism (and all sorts of -isms) and opportunistically gloms on concepts like “diversity” and “equity” before ditching them at the first sign of inconvenience. Glass ceilings are real. But at the same time, with this presidential election, something has changed.

Somehow, Harris went from an unpopular political afterthought to a beloved political rock star within hours of President Biden dropping his reelection bid and endorsing her. Even thousands of White women and “White dudes” — not usually known for showing up for candidates of color — raised millions of dollars for the Harris on Zoom calls while also talking about how they need to show up for non-White candidates.

To explain what’s happening, many have looked to former President Barack Obama, arguing that Harris is merely rebuilding the coalition that put him in the White House. But that’s overly simplistic and not new.

Harris worked on Obama’s first campaign and was cast by many in the Democratic Party as his political successor, even while serving as California’s attorney general and US senator. She surely believed in “hope” and “change.” But Black people know the promises and the disappointments of the Obama years all too well.

In fact, just a few miles from where Harris will deliver her speech at the convention on Thursday, Obama acknowledged it himself in his farewell address in 2017. “After my election, there was talk of a ‘post-racial America,’ and such a vision, however well intended, was never realistic,” he said. “Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.”

Indeed, as Lee told me, dismissing the Obama comparison, “You can't say that we dealt with racism and sexism in this country just because of one candidate who’s a woman and who’s a woman of color.”

Still, something has changed. Many have said it’s Harris — that she’s a better candidate than she was when she ran for president four years ago. That she is more authentic. More confident. More comfortable. Better at getting her message across to voters.

While all that might be true, it’s also remarkable how consistent she has been.

In her speech at the Covid-era Democratic National Convention in 2020, for example, Harris announced to a mostly empty room, save a few reporters in masks, that: “I’ve fought for children and survivors of sexual assault. I’ve fought against transnational gangs. I took on the biggest banks and helped take down one of the biggest for-profit colleges. I know a predator when I see one.”

That’s not all that different from her current stump speech, in which she touts her bona fides as a prosecutor eager to go after Trump, the felon.

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds — predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type,” Harris says.

Americans didn’t hear her four years ago. Or maybe we just weren’t ready to.

So more than Harris, I think it’s we, the American people (or at least Democrats and hopefully a few independents), who have changed. Every year, the US becomes more diverse, with more people of color holding elected office. Representation matters insomuch as it makes diversity and, more importantly, inclusion normal.

That has made Trump, who also hasn’t changed and insists on lobbing racist and sexist attacks at Harris — who hasn’t made her race or gender the centerpiece of her campaign the way she did in 2020 — seem weird.

“I think a lot in politics is right place, at the right time,” Los Angeles County Supervisor and convention delegate Holly Mitchell told me.

In America, we tend to focus on firsts, and Harris has been a first many times over. But perhaps it’s the seconds and thirds and fourths who matter more.

So perhaps a Black woman can be president. Perhaps the masses will support her the way Black women have long done for other Black women. Perhaps this is the new normal.

Weird.