The headline of a recent New York Post column deriding Vice President Kamala Harris says, “America may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president.” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, later used that same language, telling Fox Business that Democrats have “got to choose between a mentally incompetent president and a DEI vice president.” At a speech at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Florida on Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump said: “If Joe had picked someone even halfway competent, they would have bounced him from office years ago. But they can’t, because she’s got to be their second choice.”
This disrespect for the vice president isn’t a surprise. Neither are the racist and sexist attacks that aren’t so much dog whistles as they are deafeningly loud barks.
Democrats suggesting an open convention or looking past Harris as they imagine who might run on the top of the Democratic ticket if Biden can’t are also (in a less offensive way) demeaning Harris’ political skills and competence.
This disrespect for the vice president isn’t a surprise. Neither are the racist and sexist attacks that aren’t so much dog whistles as they are deafeningly loud barks.
In 2020, Biden selected Sen. Harris of California as his running mate after their contentious debate exchanges and after her hopes of winning the presidential nomination then quickly faded. It seemed obvious that he was selecting Harris to appeal to the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting bloc: Black women. They are the voters who have supported and lifted up the party in races across the country. In his speech announcing Harris as his pick, he said, “This morning, all across this nation little girls woke up — especially little Black and brown girls who so often may feel overlooked and undervalued in our society — but today, maybe they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way: as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents.”
Biden made it a point to say that Harris would bring a level of energy to the ticket that he lacked.
That’s what presidential candidates have routinely done. They choose as their running mates people who can appeal to or excite parts of the electorate that they don’t. When he ran for president in 2016, Trump picked Indiana Gov. Mike Pence because he had the white evangelical bona fides that the thrice-married former casino owner needed to appeal to religious conservatives.
When a young, energetic Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he chose Biden as his running mate because Biden had decades more experience in Washington and ties to the Democratic establishment and he could allay the concerns of those who worried that Obama was too inexperienced. In 2020, Biden — an old, white Washington insider — similarly chose the much younger Harris, who’s Black and Asian and had been in Washington only three years, to run by his side.
Diversifying a ticket is good politics, but the New York Post column and Rep. Roy would have you believe that Biden’s decision to appeal to his party’s most loyal voters was something sinister.
Harris isn’t new to politics, nor is she unfamiliar with the insults hurled her way. As one of the more “objectively attractive” politicians, she has had to deal with insinuations that former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown “made” her career, that her degrees from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of Law somehow left her insufficiently qualified to be California’s attorney general, a U.S. senator or vice president. Now we’re hearing talk that even though she has been vice president more than three years she’s unqualified to be president. Let’s be clear (as Obama likes to say), the idea of Harris, a child of two immigrants, at the top of the ticket makes some people downright apoplectic.
As vice president, Harris has had big issues, including the border crisis, Covid, voting rights and civil rights, on her docket. I wrote years ago that such a large and diverse policy portfolio was a trap. Meaning if Harris didn’t solve the myriad of crises placed within her purview, and fast, then in conversations about her ascending to president, critics would try to shroud their racist and sexist beliefs under the guise of “policy concerns.”
I was right and wrong. We are seeing critiques of Harris’ not “accomplishing” what was set out for her. But the racism and sexism toward Harris isn’t shrouded. It’s blatant. With Trump at the helm, Republicans have learned that parroting his racist and sexist language is a way to appeal to their base. As more Black women and women of color ascend in the electoral politics space, questions pertaining to their “qualifications” are ever present … as are denigrating comments about their hair, their clothes, their weight and their speech patterns. Just think back to some of the egregiously offensive comments made about Georgia lawmaker Stacey Abrams during her runs for governor, including the 2018 robocall that began “This is the magical Negro Oprah Winfrey asking you to make my fellow Negress Stacey Abrams the governor of Georgia” and went on to refer to Abrams as a “poor man’s Aunt Jemima.” As more Black women and women of color ascend in the electoral politics space, questions pertaining to their “qualifications” are ever present. Think of the mischaracterization of Rep. Val Demings of Florida as an anti-cop radical after a nearly 30-year law enforcement career that included her serving as chief of the Orlando Police Department. North Carolina Chief Justice Cherie Beasley, who was running a Senate campaign, was maligned as being tolerant of child molesters. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who rightly called out Rep. Roy’s description of Harris as a DEI pick, is considered too loud, as evidenced by her House colleagues’ telling her to “just calm down” when she is merely asking a question during her allotted time. As for Harris, in a New York Times story that included Democratic insiders’ downplaying her political skills and benefit to Biden, a member of her own staff complained that she was devoting too much time to caring for her hair. Little has changed since the days of Shirley Chisholm. We’ve never had a Black female governor, and Harris was only the second Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate in history. Voters have tended to like their Black female elected officials tucked neatly under the glass ceiling. We’ve had a woman of color this close to the most important office in the nation for nearly four years, but since last month’s debate between Biden and Trump, Harris as president has become a much more tangible possibility — or predicament, depending on your perspective. Knowing what we know about Fox News, Trump, the Republican Party and even members of the Democratic Party who are envious of Harris’ position, we must prepare ourselves for the even more racist and sexist barking we’re about to hear, directed not only at her but at the very idea that somebody who looks like her could ever be qualified to lead.
Christina Greer
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; and co-host of the podcast “FAQ-NYC.” She is completing her forthcoming manuscript, “How to Build a Democracy: From Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan to Stacey Abrams.” 
