IHours after Joe Biden decided to end his re-election bid and support Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, 40,000 Black women, leaders in politics, business and entertainment, joined the vice presidential nomination. We gathered on a Zoom call to rally around us.
“From that call, we began to organize our homes, our blocks, our churches, our sororities, our unions” to help black women vote. said Glinda C. Carr, president and co-founder of Higher Heights, an organization that works with political office. “That’s what we did for the 107 days she ran for office. Black women built our organization around women who we knew were qualified and had lived experience. I used power.”
To many, Harris appeared to be the only woman to break through the glass ceiling of reaching the highest office in the United States. Ms. Harris is a graduate of Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (AKA), the nation’s oldest black sorority, and a prosecutor. During her career, she became the first black female vice president. Voters had reached a point where they welcomed a woman, many of whom they considered overqualified, to Donald Trump, California’s attorney general and U.S. senator. More than 30 felony convictions.
“Here we have a woman who has the access to be able to build a legacy and a blueprint,” Carr said. Harris’ candidacy was so exciting because “she literally represents black excellence for black women.”
Harris’ 107-day campaign for the presidency comes 70 years after Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and the NAACP desegregated schools, marking a pivotal breakthrough for black people during the Jim Crow era. It began in a year commemorating the civil rights movement. It’s been 60 years since Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. It’s been 52 years since Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and black person to run for president.
“It gave me so much hope,” said Christian F. Nunez, president of the National Organization for Women and a Gen Xer. She said she never thought there would be a black president, much less a black woman president. “It was like an opportunity and a realization of the wildest dreams of our ancestors. If she were elected, this is what our ancestors dreamed of, and it was an opportunity for women, and black people. I thought to myself, this is what women have dreamed of all our lives.”
That hope is what drove widespread support from Democratic leaders, including former President Jimmy Carter, who voted for Harris just weeks after turning 100. Republicans such as former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, who served as a deputy in the administration of President George W. Bush. Ms. Trump’s active and energetic campaign, with bipartisan support and large amounts of funding from multiple organizations supporting Ms. Harris, marked Mr. Trump’s second election, which saw an expansion of the voting base of black and Latino voters. It wasn’t enough to break it. Trump had received more than 75 million votes as of Sunday night, winning the popular vote for the first time since taking the White House.
“Harris’ candidacy was about unity, democracy and freedom,” said Nunes, 46. “Then another candidate came along who ran a campaign that basically took away freedoms. I felt that this loss was not a reflection on her leadership. It was like saying I was going to show up for her, but not for her.” It felt like a reflection of the feelings of voters who didn’t show up. And it’s also a problem that people can’t trust women and stand up for women, especially black women. I feel like it resonates and shows up in so many spaces, and I think that’s the hurtful part.”
Trump’s victory came as voters who were deeply uncomfortable with American policy welcomed his brash and destructive approach. According to AP VoteCast, a large-scale survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, about 3 in 10 voters said they want a complete change in the way the country is run. Even if they weren’t looking for drastic changes, more than half of all voters said they wanted major changes.
Trump has won support from voters across the country and in key battleground states who are wary of the economy and prioritize more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws. These issues heavily overshadowed many voters’ focus on the future of democracy and abortion protections, which are key priorities for Harris voters, but were not enough to swing the election in her favor. .
In many post-election interviews, ethnicity, race, and gender are rarely mentioned as reasons for not supporting Harris’ presidential bid or favoring Trump, but some Harris supporters have I believe this is the fundamental reason why many people do not accept it.
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Chavon Arline-Bradley, president and CEO of the National Council of Black Women (NCNW), cited Harris’ inclusion campaign and strong support from Black women, the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting base. “We cannot withstand the wall of white nationalism and racism,” he said. Classism, sexism, and misogyny.”
“We could not stand up to the constituency walls that use class, race, and gender to block opportunities for the inclusive society that our country is so-called built on,” she said. “This idea of women in leadership is still incomprehensible to a lot of people.”
New Orleans resident Laurie Akinola-Masaquoi, the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, said Harris becoming the Democratic presidential nominee would mean a more equal and progressive future not just for Black people but for all of America. . everyone.
But when Akinola-Masaquoi, 36, woke up on Nov. 6 and saw that Trump had won the election, she said she was “disgusted, disappointed, just frustrated, really frustrated.”
“There’s no other place where someone else can do the same things he does, say the same things, or have the same track record as him to become president of the United States. I don’t even know how he got this far. No,” she said.
