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Christina Greer
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The FRONTLINE Interviews
Christina Greer
Author, Black Ethnics
Christina Greer is an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. She is the author of Black Ethnics and co-host of the political podcast What’s In It For Us?
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on August 14, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Harris’ Story is the American Story
Before we go and talk about all the details, your perspective on her whole life, if there's something that stands out to you, as like a really important thing to understand, and then we'll go back and explore.
Yeah.Well, there are a few things.One, in many ways, her story is an American story.I mean, you're the child of immigrants.That's a story of millions upon millions of Americans, so in some ways, her story is not very unique.Is she a descendant of Black Americans? No.And U.S. chattel slavery? No.So we can talk about sort of she and Barack Obama as these sort of two national figures that actually don't have the same specific history as the vast majority of Black Americans and what that means for white people, and I think that that actually is something that does matter to some people.But someone who, in Kamala Harris, she identifies as a Black woman.
I do think region matters.I mean, the vast majority of Black people are on the East Coast and in the South.So there's, as an East Coaster, this idea of West Coast Blackness is something that's kind of known and unknown at the same time.But there's a long history of Black people in literally all 50 states.And don't forget, we have five generations of Black people in Alaska.So her story, to me, well on the one hand, sure, it's unique, but on the other hand, in the grand scheme of American immigration, it's just the regular story.
Growing Up in the Bay Area
That's great.So let's start right at the beginning.As she tells it, these two parents, from different countries, both of them sort of—certainly her mom is probably the more unusual journey to America, meeting in the midst of the 1960s and protests out of Berkeley.What do you take from that story of her parents, of their meeting and how it might have shaped Harris and what it tells us about where she came from?
Yeah.Every politician has an origin story, so the origin story has to make sense in the larger narrative of American democracy and American inclusion.So her origin story, as a West Coast story—and so, as a Democrat, don't forget, nationally we tend not to elect people west of the Rockies., so this is already just a unique narrative that we have for someone at her level of the federal government in the Democratic Party.
But you have a lot of Black activists on the West Coast.Don't forget, there's Angela Davis.You've got the Black Panther Party.You've got their work with children and schools and breakfast programs.You still have this westward migration of people who were going not just to California, but continuing up to Washington state for better jobs.You have people leaving California to go into Washington state to work either in factories or part of the US military.So there's a lot happening, in a capitalist way, but also in an activist structure.
And if we think of, say, Boston as one of the northeastern centers for academia and intellectualism, we can also think of the Bay in a lot of ways because of the universities that are there, the larger universities, but the Black people who were in and around those universities.And we can't ignore, also, the importance of a city like Oakland that has produced so many I would say not just revolutionaries, but thinkers and people who think about America in, I would argue, a unique fashion, because you are so far away from the seat of power in Washington, DC, the seat of finance in New York City.And their perspective is somewhat different than, say, Northeast Black folks and Southern Black folks.
… Can you help me understand that time and place of the late '60s, early '70s, when she would have been in the Bay Area, what it would have been like, and what message you think she would take from all of that?
Well, I think the Bay has always had an activist spirit, and so we can think about not just civil rights and civil liberties and those struggles.We can think about the LGBTQ fights that had happened on the West Coast and in the Bay.We can think about people sort of thinking about climate change and the environment.Back then, it wouldn't have been called climate change and the environment.But the Bay was also at the forefront of conversations about land grabs, as I jokingly say, as someone who is a college professor.Universities, by and large, are real estate companies that teach kids on the side.We were starting to see the emergence of larger universities operating as corporate entities, spreading into communities and pushing people out.This is also the very, very, very beginning of kind of this tech world and what could that mean.
So we have a confluence of different people, some of whom are native-born, many of whom are immigrants, coming into this very particular part of America that is far away from Washington, D.C., it's far away from New York City, but still being leaders in their own ways with civil rights struggles, with environmental struggles, with Native struggles, with immigration struggles.All of these ideas, sadly, that we're still fighting over today, and we still have yet to resolve, were issues that were at the forefront of people's minds in the Bay Area during the late '60s and early '70s.
Shyamala Harris, Kamala’s Mother
… She talks a lot about her mom as the primary influence on her.Her mom leaves India as a teenager to come to Berkeley, gets a Ph.D. as a cancer researcher.What do you think about her mom's story and what impact that might have on her, or what message that tells you about where she came from?
Yeah.In some ways, her mom's story is the American story, coming here, sometimes alone.What I always try and remind my students—and I'm a proud board member of the Tenement Museum in New York, and we talk about these stories all the time—there's a gender component to immigration that we oftentimes don't talk about, right?So we say, “Oh, well, people's grandparents came here.Their ancestors came here.”But so many of these stories are women traveling by themselves in a world that has not been kind to women or easy for women, by themselves, to come to a brand new country, for some people learning a brand-new language and starting.
Adding to that, as someone who's gotten a Ph.D., which is a lonely and difficult endeavor, and I did it in my own country; I didn't do it in a foreign country.Kamala Harris and her sister, watching their mother negotiate this space, as a woman, in academic space, in a research space that tends to be very gendered away from women, away from women of color, seeing that level of perseverance, seeing that level of someone who's working incredibly hard to not just make life better for their own family, but also to make life better for other people, that's something that—I think about my relationship with my own mom and her career, and as a young girl, seeing your mother work like that, imprints you in ways that you fully don't understand until you're much older.You realize that you work and do things for others.And you choose career paths that aren't necessarily like your parents', but specifically your mom, but it's not until you're a woman yourself that you realize some of those sacrifices, some of that hard work, some of that—the grind of trying to be who you are, in, quite frankly, a patriarchal society, an anti-Black society, a white supremacist society, a society that—a society that caters to capitalism, as bell hooks has told us about those four legs of the table.
So seeing that growing up, seeing her mother and the work ethic and what she had to sacrifice in many ways to do for Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, but also for other people in their community, I think that definitely lays a foundation that makes sense for the person we're seeing today.
And there's also—there was an expectation she might return, and maybe there would be an arranged marriage.And she gets married, and it ends in divorce.And apparently by the time Kamala Harris is 5, her dad is not really around, and divorced when she's 7.What does that tell you, that part of—I guess that’s part of her mom's story, too.
Well, I mean, you know, having talked to lots of friends who grew up, whose parents divorced when they were children, it obviously affects you.But it also gives you a different idea of what family can look like, right.A nontraditional sort of mom in the house, dad in the house, two kids, and a dog, that, in many ways is what a lot of politicians are still stuck on.But that is not the reality for the vast majority of Americans.
And so, not growing up with two parents in the household, I think going back to how Kamala Harris views her mother, is a way to see, in a gendered context, how women can work and not just survive, but thrive.And I think that's a big difference between how we frame kind of growing up with a father who's not necessarily in the home.
Harris Faces Racial Discrimination
And it's interesting, as we go back and read about her talking about her early childhood, it's clear sometimes that she dealt with racial discrimination.She's talked about the neighbors whose kids weren't allowed to play with her, and we've talked to some of her friends, who said she received slights, criticism from both sides of her not being Black, for her South Asian side, and then we've talked to friends who were biracial growing up, who said that that was just something there.But she doesn't talk about it a lot.What do you make of her experience growing up, and the fact that it's not really something she—she obviously mentions it in her autobiography.
Well, I think in some ways, part of her narrative has been, and continues to be, and definitely is now that she's running for the presidency, forward movement only, right?So did she—let's just put ourselves in the mind of Kamala Harris really quickly.Did I experience discrimination? Yes.What person of color in this country hasn't, right?As a biracial person, did I sometimes feel as though I didn't belong in one set of groups or both groups, right?We know colorism is real.We know classism is real.We know geographic locale, whether you live in a neighborhood that's too nice or not nice enough.
So this push-pull of “Where do I fit in?How am I accepted?,” that exists for so many people, especially people who come from two rich cultural households.So knowing that, her choice to go to Howard University in Washington, D.C., makes sense, solidifying sort of a particular Black identity.Pledging a Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., makes sense.Having the relationship that she has with her sister, which is incredibly close, makes sense, because that's the one who can understand and identify sort of what they experienced.
Let's be honest.To quote Barack Obama, she's also a very attractive woman by societal standards, so there's that.1It is difficult to be both attractive and smart and sort of having this push-pull of multiple identities, where it seems as though everyone has a statement or a critique as to who you are.And so finding that footing was something that I think coming to the East Coast was probably very helpful for Kamala Harris to develop an identity.
And being in a Black environment—you know, Historical[ly] Black Colleges and Universities, there is, yes, on the outside it looks like homogeneous entity, but when you go to an HBCU, you recognize there is wild class diversity; there is geographic diversity; there are people who are biracial, but not just Black and White.So you have Afro-Latinos.You have people who are South Asian and Black.This is a much larger and complicated conversation about who is Black.
In the HBCU, the answer is, “We are.”And so finding a community, and then finding a sisterhood in her sorority, of people who accept her for who she is, I think is really fundamental to who she then becomes.
It's interesting.I was going to talk about it later, but she talks about it in the way that you're describing it, which is that there's some sense of being able to be yourself, of not being in a box, is a phrase sometimes people say, that Kamala Harris doesn't want to be in a box.Do you think that's something that you would get from being at Howard?
Yeah.I think, for a lot of—I've talked to a lot of my friends over the years who are biracial, and there's always this pressure to choose: Choose a box.And for many of them, even phenotypically if they look one particular way, they don't feel comfortable choosing just one box.And so for a lot of people, going to an HBCU is the first time in their lives that they can just be free.The shadow of white supremacy in this country is long, and we don't need to be reminded that you don't have to be white to uphold white supremacist ideas and values.
So going to an HBCU, I think, even though it's not a perfect panacea, it's not a utopia, but it is a time and place, if we think about the role of a university, for that particular age group of young people to explore, to have conversations, to be with people who are both like and not like you at the same time.I would think that, in that moment, for Kamala Harris, what's going on in the world at the time, what's going on in our own country at the time, to be in Washington, D.C., with other Black people in a relatively safe space, says a lot about sort of some of the ideas and values that she has espoused over the years.
Harris Raised With a Strong Understanding of Her Black Identity
So let's go back to her childhood, to a topic that's very related, which was she's being raised by her mom, Shayamala, who is from India but recognizes that her two daughters are going to be seen as Black girls and that it's important for them to be raised inside that culture, to be exposed to that community inside Berkeley.How important was that decision by her mom?
Well, I think it's really important when women who choose to have children with Black men, in particular in this country, understand that their children may not be seen the way they're seen.This was the big conversation when Barack Obama checked off Black on the census, and everyone's like, “How could he do that?”And he's like, “Well, that's how I'm seen in the world, and that's how I see myself.”
And so you can have a mother who, on the one hand, teaches you about cooking and values and traditions from her culture, which she has, but also recognizing that her children are going to move through the world and have certain biases against them because they are Black, in a country specifically and explicitly that is very anti-Black.
And so I think providing children with not just a foundation, but a level of confidence that is going to be needed to live in this country and be in this world, and also a citizen of the world, as a Black woman, is a conscious decision that certain women make when raising Black children and they themselves are not Black.
And because of her mom's decision, she goes to Ms. [Regina] Shelton's day care, where on the walls there are pictures of historic African American figures.They go to the Rainbow Sign every Thursday, and she's written about what the little sort of luminaries who she saw there.What was the message that she would be getting from growing up in a world like that, with the Rainbow Sign and Ms. Shelton's day care?
The message would be very clear and very succinct for children to understand, that it is not just fine to be Black, but you should be proud to be Black, and you come from a long lineage of Blackness and Black people in this country who have done and are doing great things.And so, if that is not your mother's history, she can say it, but it's one thing to make sure that your children see it and that your children are surrounded by it, so that it's not something that seems ethereal or over there.It's tangible, and it's a part of who they are.And I say “they” as in Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, in their lived experience and identity.
And I think that's a conscious choice, again, that some parents make, when they themselves are not Black but understand that their children will be living in a world and in a body that, quite honestly, they have not experienced and they don't fully know.
Is the message that you can be anything, that even Kamala Harris—there's no indication she ever talked about being president of the United States; it sounded like Joe Biden did.But did those messages give her some kind of confidence that you see play out through her life?
So as someone who grew up as a young Black girl, you can't underestimate the power of images and the power of your parents putting images in front of your face as a young person, imprinting upon you sort of the greatness that you come from and the greatness that surrounds you, because the rest of this country and the rest of the world, by and large, doesn't show you that, especially in the '60s and the '70s and the '80s, and dare I say, even presently, right?
Let's zoom out 30,000 feet.This would have been a time where Black dolls weren't readily on the shelves; Black and Indian dolls definitely weren't on the shelves.You couldn't see a doll that looked exactly like you.And I'm not trying to go back to the Kenneth Clark studies, but we kind of have to if we fully understand you didn't have a ton of Black television shows at the time; you know, the Norman Lear television shows come a little bit later in the '70s.
But like, what you're seeing, the images that you're seeing in media are not necessarily images that show you as a leader in this world, in this country, right?So when Kamala Harris is born, Shirley Chisholm is not yet elected to Congress.Barbara Jordan, the second Black woman, isn't elected until '72.Shirley Chisholm is elected in '68.They're one and two, right?So in the seats of power, in the halls of power, you don't see it.There were some Black men definitely making strides politically in Oakland, but not Black women in the same ways that you would see it.
So you have to surround your children with pictures and images so that they don't think that they're just from a downtrodden group of people, right?I mean, there have been thinkers and writers and artists and publishers and businessmen and all the things, despite all that has gone on in this country and in this world, so these are the images that her mother is deliberately putting in front of Kamala Harris and her sister, to make sure that they understand, even if Mommy doesn't look like you, there are still all these other people who you can look to and see yourself in them as well.
Do you think this was one of the unique places where somebody like her could grow up?We talked to one of her friends who said she would go and visit her friends and cousins in Bakersfield, and it was a completely different world than they were growing up with in Berkeley.
I don't—I know that Oakland and Berkeley are unique places for Black liberation and a lot of the intellectual conversations we've had, but I don't know.I mean, I think about so many successful Black people in this country who may have grown up in all-white environments and didn't see many Black people.We’ve seen very successful Black people who grew up in all-Black environments that were underresourced and underserved.So I'm not sure if—for Kamala Harris, yes, this locale makes sense for her and her family's story and who she is.But I think that's what she's trying to articulate to a lot of Americans: The beauty of America is, it kind of—it matters and it doesn't matter, right?You can be from anywhere and have parents from anywhere and find yourself making it in this country.That's the promise of the American dream that sort of is dangled in front of so many immigrants when they come here.I mean, it literally could be, and for many people it has been, “I came here with $200 and a dream, and now look at me and my life.”
Shirley Chisholm
You mentioned Shirley Chisholm.She writes about that in her autobiography, and she makes references when she runs in 2019 that there's sort of parallels in how they do similar literature.What lessons would she have learned from that campaign, from '71 and '72?
Yeah.Well, I think it's interesting when Kamala Harris ran for the presidency, she used the colors of Shirley Chisholm.You know, the font was a little similar.I have my students collect mailings that come to their homes, and so we look at ads based on, if you live in Long Island versus Manhattan, what types of ads are coming to your home versus my home, depending on race and class and all the things.
And so they were so curious as to why everyone else had literature that was red and white or blue and white and white and blue, and why hers was this purple and orange, right, or purple and gold sometimes.And so looking at old Shirley Chisholm paraphernalia and seeing purple, seeing orange being used, I was like, it's a subtle nod.So Shirley Chisholm wasn't the first Black woman to ever run for the presidency, but she was the first Black woman to run for the presidency on a major party ticket.
And so, what Shirley Chisholm learned was she didn't always have support of Black leaders, because they thought, well, if a Black person should be it, it should be a Black man.She didn't always have support from white women, because they felt if it should be a woman, it should be a white woman.And so she found herself, in many ways, on an island, trying to get support from people within her own party.And some of the greatest support she had was from the Bay Area, right—a young Barbara Lee, working on her campaign, a single mom who's really dedicated to trying to get this Black woman over the finish line.
So Shirley Chisholm went to Northern California to really think about her campaign, and Ron Dellums was a close friend from her congressional days.So understanding that we've only had four women ever sort of in the number one or number two spot on a presidential and vice presidential ticket, right—Geraldine Ferraro in 1984; Sarah Palin, 2008; Hillary Clinton, 2016; Kamala Harris, 2020—so we don't have a very large in, and we definitely don't have a large in of women of color.But that doesn't mean that there weren't other women tilling the soil who never made it onto the ticket, and I think that lineage of Shirley Chisholm is incredibly important to understanding the trajectory of Kamala Harris.
A lot of people are making the connection between 2008, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris.But we can't understand Kamala Harris if we don't understand Barack Obama, sure.We can't understand Kamala Harris if we don't understand Jesse Jackson in '84 and '88, 1984 and 1988.But we definitely can't understand Kamala Harris if we don't understand Shirley Chisholm and her presidential run in 1972.
Comparisons to Obama
Thank you.You mentioned Obama.You mentioned at the beginning that there's a comparison, but there's differences in their life stories and in who they are.What's important to understand about that, the ways that they're similar, in the ways that they're different?
Yeah.So let's say some of the ways they're similar.They're both children of immigrants, right, immigrants from countries that white people feel comfortable with.So Barack Obama is not from Nigeria; he's not from the Congo.He's from a country that either people have heard of, right?He's not from Djibouti or Chad, right?He's from a country where people are like, “Oh,” either “I've been to Kenya,” or “I want to go to Kenya,” or “I know about Kenya because there's excellence in marathon runners.”So there's very positive perception of Kenya in the minds of white people.
And he also has sort of a white mom and sort of Kansas values, so for a lot of voters, read: white values.Kamala Harris, again, didn't lean as much into that origin narrative as Barack Obama did, because in many ways, that soil has been tilled in some ways.One of the biggest differences is that he's a man, and so there's still people who feel very comfortable with male leadership, even Black male leadership.Ask Hillary Clinton, right?She had been in politics much longer than Barack Obama.Now granted, she came from a situation where a lot of people were exhausted by the Clintons, but there was a gender component there that I think becomes more and more evident as we—even as we move deeper and deeper into the 21st century, we understand the calcification of gender in a lot of ways, when it comes to executive leadership, considering we've never had a Black female governor in this country, ever.
So are they both great politicians?Yes, but in different ways.We know that Barack Obama is much better sort of the oration and the big crowds.But anyone who's ever heard Kamala Harris speak knows that she's, in many ways, like Hillary Clinton, fantastic in a smaller crowd, really makes you feel as though she's talking specifically to you, can only hear what you are asking, and is really genuine in that sense.
And so I think that they have different skill sets when it comes to politics, but I think they have different challenges also when it comes to the perceptions of leadership.Does Barack Obama's eight successful years with no major scandals besides the tan suit help Kamala Harris?Yes.But can some people just never fully see we're one of the last democracies that's never had female executive leadership?There is still, for a lot of men, and sadly a lot of women, who just don't feel comfortable with women in charge, and definitely don't feel comfortable with a woman of color in charge.
Harris Attends Howard University
We talked a little bit about it before, but it would make sense that Howard would be the place she would choose to go after.
Right. Right.Choosing Howard is a place where you can be with people who, on the one hand, are very much like you as far as they identify as Black people, but also come from very different parts of the country, parts of the world.Don't forget HBCUs have always had a robust relationship with the continent, with the Caribbean.And so you can be with diverse types of Black people, but you can still be with Black people.That's the key.You can be with Black people, even if they're all different types of Black people.
When we've talked to other people, two of her classmates from Howard, and they talked about what it was like to be there in the 1980s, they talked about the way that they dressed, which is sort of business casual, and she has a briefcase.They have a phrase, “Black excellence” and the importance of being thorough.What were the messages that she would be getting during her years in college?
So there's a longstanding history of Black professors who take their jobs so seriously, teaching at HBCUs, and that's not to say those of us who teach at non-HBCUs don't, but recognizing that they have to arm their students with a certain level of confidence but also excellence in a world that is going to assume that they are not excellent, in a world that is not going to give them second chances, in a world that is going to make some real harsh decisions about their future if they're not on point, right?And this is why I think, you know, Bill Cosby's spinoff of <i>The Cosby Show</i>, <i>A Different World</i>, resonated with so many families, because it was this articulation of something that many people knew, right?I'm from several generations of people who have gone to HBCUs.But then it was also an introduction to some people who were first-generation.It was a shortcut for them to understand what college was.Because of <i>A Different World</i>, so many people went to HBCUs.
But also, don't forget, Howard University is in Washington, D.C.This is when Ronald Reagan is president, right, and all of what that meant.I mean, we're still sort of detangling the things that Ronald Reagan did to harm Black communities specifically.But there had to have been conversations about who he was, just down the road.There had to be conversations about what does this future look like with him in leadership.Being in D.C., what does power look like?You know, don't forget, this is—D.C. is not a state.They don't have two senators, right?They don't have a governor.So looking around D.C., and the lack of resources that are there, for some people in this time period, thinking about trying to get Marion Berry elected, who's very active on the city council, and a great civil rights icon.Unfortunately people only know the latter Marion Berry, but, you know, his leadership in Washington, D.C., so D.C. as a place where you would have not just had your cocoon and your incubator of Howard University, but you're also looking around at the city itself and seeing how we could be one of the richest nations in the world and then seeing how this majority-Black city—oftentimes D.C. is called Chocolate City—how this Chocolate City could be so underresourced and so segregated and so left behind by the seats of power that are literally in the same exact city.
Harris Becomes a Prosecutor
And she says that when she decided to become a prosecutor, her mom was against it, and she had to defend it like a thesis, is how she says.And she writes about, “I'd rather be on the inside, opening the door, than being on the outside.”Do you have a sense of that debate that she's having, even with her mom, and how she would come from the Bay Area and the background that she has to make that decision?
Right.So you're coming from this place that's known for radical politics and progressive politics and people who were outside of the system—protest politics.But I'm also sure, during this time, we know in the '60s and '70s and '80s, so many of those activists were being thrown into prison or—thrown into jail for short periods of time, but thrown into prison for very long periods of time.
If you see that, to me, it makes total sense that you would think, well, I want to make sure that if all these people who don't look like me can so easily throw away folks who look like me, why would I not want to be one of the levers of power that can slow that down?Having many friends and colleagues who have chosen to go the prosecutorial route, it's like, well, why would I just cede this very important occupation to people who don't look like me, who aren't from my community, some who don't care about anyone from my community, or someone who doesn't care about who I am or people who look like me, why would I cede an entire occupation to others?Why would I not actually try and work on changing the system from within?Because, again, if you watch sports, we can sit here and watch telly all the time.It's not that you're on the field that you make change.
So I think a lot of Black people who make that choice to become prosecutors, whether as a DA or federal prosecutors, which is a little more rarefied air, it's not a choice that many people make lightly, because you do have to incarcerate people at times.We are, as we know in our history, highly—we're not just a bellicose nation, but we do like to incarcerate our citizens at greater rates than almost any other democracy.So knowing that, but knowing that you could possibly be a part of slowing that down ever so slightly for people who are from your community is something that a lot of people of color who choose to become prosecutors take very seriously.
… How hard would it be for her, in 1990, to walk into the world of law enforcement, dealing with prosecutors, not only a white space, but male space?How much of it—how difficult would that be for her?
Right.So walking into this space as a prosecutor, the intersection of race and gender, as Kimberlé Crenshaw and so many others have helped us understand, as a woman, as a person of color, as a woman of color, right, not as a victim, not as a defendant, she is walking in, representing the U.S. government, which is also a complicated thing to wrap your mind around, because at the time, it would not have been very common to see not just female prosecutors, but prosecutors of color, and definitely not female prosecutors of color.
And so I'm sure that there were some tensions not just with your own colleagues, but still grappling with the system.There are institutional structures in this country—I don't need to explain to a lot of people watching this—but there are institutional structures in this country that are, by design, to disproportionately affect poor people and people of color and absolutely poor people of color.
And so working to make sure that we don't just sweep all those people off of the table en masse is a really difficult job, because you're essentially working against hundreds of years of an institution essentially built to do just that.
She also has to deal with—she does not talk about it, but we've talked to people, that she has to deal with these sort of insults that can be as small as somebody not talking to her, but talking to her assistant in a meeting, or even explicit gender or racial phrases, and her approach to that seems to be, yeah, that’s how some things are and to keep moving.Can you help me understand why that would be her approach in a situation like that?
As a woman of color in power in this country—and when I say in power, that means having a job where you are, not sort of a subordinate, so in this instance, she would be a woman of color in power—to digest every single slight that you receive on a daily basis would have you descend into madness.You can't process it.It is wholly unhealthy to do so.So I know that I can speak for millions of Black women in this country when I say if we even allowed our brains—this is the beauty of the brain—to process the racism and sexism that we experience, micro or macro, on a daily basis—not every year, on a daily basis—if I actually sat there and thought about each single time—I can tell you three things that happened this morning before I even got here.
So what does that then do?I would be paralyzed.So it's a choice to move forward, because you don't want to just survive this country; you want to thrive in this country.And so you recognize that (a) people have been through worse; (b) I'm actually stronger than I think; and (c) me doing this thing helps all these other people that will come behind me.That is fundamentally, if you look at the career of Kamala Harris, how she has essentially—she's chipped away at ceilings and walls and all these things over the years, and other people have actually come through some of the doors that she's chipped away at.
So to know that she's disrespected at the workplace, shocker, right?Shocker to no one who's a woman of color—maybe to some men, maybe to some white people.But it's not; it's America.And I think, to live in this country, is to understand this country.And, you know, we read James Baldwin and Maya Angelou.But like, at a certain point in time, it's like, this is the air that is the air.These are the cards that we have.That doesn't mean that we can't work to change said cards, but to sit here and to think about all of the ways that Black women are disrespected, on micro levels, on a daily basis, she would never get past being a DA.She'd leave being the DA after a week.
So you move forward.You persevere.You move on.It is—sadly, it is what it is, and then you do your small part to change what is for other people so that they don't have to go through the nonsense that you go through.
And she decides that she's going to get into politics, which is going to bring some of these things to the forefront, and she does it in the Bay Area, where there is some history of other women in politics.People have told us that it's also a pretty brutal place to go into politics, because it's Democrat against Democrat, and it's a knife fight in the telephone booth.But what do you make of her decision to make that leap into electoral politics and to do it in San Francisco?
Yeah.Well, it makes sense to make the leap into politics in her hometown makes sense.You’ve got to go back to your origin story.But I think there's a difference in the framing, because I would say some people get into politics and some people get into public service, and I think that, in Kamala Harris's perspective, it's a public service that she's getting into.And it's a different way to look at it.No, she didn't run for city council or mayor, but public service is doing something for the collective good.And dare I say, being a district attorney or an attorney general, knowing rates of incarceration in this country, knowing how Black people, and Black men in particular, and Latinos in California, adding them to the group, are treated by a series of groups of people, I would say that it's more of a political service shift as opposed to just a politics shift.
Harris Defies Labels
There's a lot of questions about how she sort of frames herself, talking about boxes and labels.Was she a progressive prosecutor?Was she liberal?And she in that first race runs against a more liberal district attorney and runs on being able to increase incarceration rates, but she runs to the left of another person.What do you make of her, of who she is as a politician and the attempts of people, especially looking backwards, to try to say, what was she?Where does she fit on the ideological scale?
Right.Well, when you look at—so I'm thinking of more recent DAs' races, district attorneys’ races.Black politicians can't be seen as too liberal because then it's you're soft on crime, and you're just going to open up all the jails and let out all the Black people.You can't be seen as too harsh because why would you do that?We know that Black people are disproportionately jailed, so you just want to lock up all of your people.
So it's a very peculiar needle that needs to be thread, where on the one hand you want to say, “I want to change the system,” but you also know that you'll be branded as someone who's either super soft on crime or too draconian.We've seen Kamala Harris, over time, be branded as too draconian, but when you actually read the record, that's not the case.But the branding works.
And so we have seen, obviously, politicians of color overcompensate in way or the other, to satisfy white audiences more particularly.And so when she's running, she has to, on the one hand, as a woman as well, to make sure people don't think that she's not tough enough, but she also can't be seen as too tough, because then you're seen as anti-Black.So this is how she has to become a savvier politician very early on, because we know, in places like Northern California, it is more of a one-party town, and so the real fights actually happen at the primary level, when you're going against other Democrats.
Harris in the U.S. Senate
… And what kind of politician do you think she is in the end, as she gets closer to national politics?
I think that Kamala Harris is a very savvy politician, and I think that because her presidential run in 2020 wasn't terribly successful, because I think she, again, is not an Obama orator that a lot of people sort of wanted her to be or assumed that she would be, there was this sort of write-off of like, “Oh, well, she's obviously—she's not good at this.”
You don't get elected statewide in the largest state in the country as attorney general without being someone who understands politics and policy.You don't become the second Black woman who's a U.S. senator of the largest state in the country without understanding politics and policy.Do you know how many people want that job?Do you know how many men want that job?Do you know how many white men with more money and resources than she want that job?So understanding the coalition building that she has to build, not just in Northern California—there are not enough Black people in the state for her to have a robust sort of population of Black people.They can't take her over the edge, so she's got to build coalitions across several constituencies in this massive state of California that isn't super blue.Every four years it's blue, but if you look at the map district by district, it's not blue.No state is blue.So understanding how to articulate a vision to many, many, many constituencies lets me know that by the time she ends up on the presidential debate stage in 2020, and some people write her off as a failure, you have to ask yourself, how did this little girl from Oakland and Berkeley get to the presidential stage in 2020?
And her rise is pretty meteoric when she arrives in Washington.Can you help me understand who she is?She's elected the same night that Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton, and so she comes into Washington at that moment.And she apparently rewrites her speech to say, “I say we fight.”Can you help me understand who she is and why she was seemingly cemented to that moment and sort of the rise that she had?
Right.Well, don't forget, once she comes into Washington, D.C., as the second Black female senator in the history of the nation, we have Donald Trump immediately with the Muslim ban, right?We have sort of the cast of incompetent characters coming through, and so we see her shine in sort of her Senate hearings that are now televised.We see her using her legal talents from her DA days and AG days to essentially say, “OK. So as the framers intended for the Senate, Congress more broadly, to be some of the stopgaps, to make sure that the executive branch does not go off the rails, I'm taking my job very seriously, and we are actually going to have these conversations, and I'm going to be”—Don't forget: Carol Moseley Braun only served one term.So Carol Moseley Braun leaves Washington, D.C., in 1998.There has not been a Black woman as a U.S. senator from 1998 until 2016, or 2017, when she's sworn in and starts work, coming into the halls of Congress.
So just phenotypically, it is an adjustment for certain people to look over and see their colleague from California not just sitting there, but asking hard questions that Republicans are not prepared to answer.
… As the image of her is being sent around, especially among Democrats, she's at the end of the panel, as you say, low in seniority, and grilling the nominees from Donald Trump.She's becoming heroic on that side.And on the other side, she's becoming a caricature on Fox News, on right-wing media.How is she portrayed?What is she dealing with in the different ways that she's seen?
Right.So Kamala Harris is dealing with the sort of confluence of racism and sexism du jour on networks like Fox and Steve Bannon's podcasts and sort of the rise of this very visceral right-wing, anti-Black, white supremacist agenda that was ushered in with Donald Trump.And so, again, can you be distracted by it?No.You know what's going to happen.It's just a more extreme version of the racism and sexism that she experienced throughout her career.
But is she going to not do her job at Senate confirmation hearings, because someone on Fox News thinks that she has a weird laugh, or is she really American, or does she deserve to be there?Those are conversations that women of color in positions of power are so accustomed to.At a certain point in time, it's like, this playbook is tired.Aren't you tired of this playbook?It doesn't move her in any way.It doesn't make her demure.It doesn't make her less confident or less bold in her assertions of what is right for the American people.If anything, it emboldens her to do more, because clearly, something is amiss.Clearly, the Republican Party, and as she sees more and more of her colleagues who were once upstanding Republicans—differences in politics and policy, sure, but people who still loved and cared about this nation.As you start to see Republicans one by one drop off and become part of this white supremacist agenda, following Donald Trump, for fear, for money, for whatever the reason, I think it just makes Kamala Harris dig in her heels to recognize that someone has to make sure this country does not go completely off the rails if we see once seemingly good men abdicate to the whims of the president at the time, which was Donald Trump.
Harris’ 2019 Presidential Run
… So not only does she not back off, but she decides to run for president in 2019, and people who were involved in that campaign have told us she wasn't running for it to be vice president or to just put her name out there, but she thought she could win that nomination.And it starts out with a rally with tens of thousands of people in Oakland and her at the top of the discussion in Washington.Can you help me understand that moment?You talked about the Shirley Chisholm campaign and the sort of support she got.Is this a different moment?And who is Kamala Harris at this moment?
Yeah. I think that there's a very different moment from running in, say, 2020 and then what we're seeing now, in 2024.2020, there were still vestiges of a lot of women who were hurt and disappointed that this country just could not put Hillary Clinton over the finish line.Even as the popular vote did, to be clear, the Electoral College didn't.And so trying to galvanize on that energy, you’re coming from the largest state … in the country, you know, why not?You know, you've gotten some great press within the party.You're a leader of the party now because of how you were able to sort of dismantle so many people in the Trump administration when they came before the Senate.So the era of good feelings for Kamala Harris was there.
Joe Biden is a much more seasoned politician.He was a dutiful vice president for eight years under a Black man.That meant a lot of things to a lot of Black people.There was a lot of misinformation and disinformation about Kamala Harris and her service as attorney general and district attorney, which chipped away at primary voters and public opinion about Kamala Harris very early on, and was calcified.And no one can ever cite the reports, but it was like, “She locked up all the Black men for marijuana.”Where, right?Where's the citation?There was none, but it carried on.And it still—there's vestiges of that to this day.
So that was a lot of 2020 that she just could not get out from underneath the DA reputation, the AG reputation, and sort of for some people, who is this woman?Where are we?And then I think, not to get too inside baseball, but I think the structure of a campaign does matter.And so who is helping you run it?You know, communication styles, all those things.It's your first time running, right?It's the first time at this rodeo.There are some people on that stage, they had done it before.So that puts you at a disadvantage.
The difference between 2020 and now, one, Kamala Harris has three and a half-plus years of being a vice president, not just on the national scale, on the international scale.There's a loyalty to Joe Biden that she exhibited.And there was a competence in—they were always very clear: It's the Biden-Harris administration.And so, on the one hand, even though certain things in her portfolio, I personally wrote about, which just seemed like a trap, like how was she supposed to solve immigration when we can't seem to figure it out for the past 100 years?But this Black woman is supposed to solve it in the next 30 days.
So—but she was given a portfolio.And the beauty and the curse of the vice presidency is that there's no manual.Everyone uses their vice president for different things.And so what has helped Kamala Harris immensely is that because Joe Biden's Catholic and a woman's right to choose is an incredibly important issue to women across this country—and hopefully more and more men across this country—but Joe Biden gave that topic to his female vice president, to go around the country and articulate the vision of reproductive justice, say the word “abortion,” and talk about a woman's right to choose.
Now, fast-forward, Joe Biden is hopefully going to go spend some time with his grandkids, much deserved, after 50 years of public service to the American people.Kamala Harris has one of the most important topics that she's been crafting a message for for the past three-plus years, talking to voters in small and large spaces across the country, so there's a certain level of comfort that she has about traveling around the nation.She has obviously honed in a lot of her political skills, those kind of Obama-esque skills that I think she did not have necessarily in 2020 but is much better at in 2024.So she already had the smaller skills, the small-crowd skills, like Hillary Clinton, and now she's got the massive-crowd skills.
But this is an issue that Democrats, and Kamala Harris as administrator in particular, are just now starting to stop using Republican talking points and articulate it as an economic issue, moving beyond morality, articulate it as, “Do you want the government in your bedroom, in your life, in your home, women?And men, get your heads in the game; this affects you, too.”And so this is a message that she has been able to craft for quite sometime, and it's now—this is the moment that it's on the ballot in several states that actually matter, key states that have Electoral College votes in the double digits.
So it seems, we're not yet at Nov. 5 at the time of this taping, but it seems like there's a confluence of her skill sets as the 34-time convicted felon versus the prosecutor.So that weaponizing of her background as a prosecutor doesn't have the same negative connotation when you're running against someone who's got court cases in four different jurisdictions, right?This idea of a woman's right to choose and reproductive justice, it's on ballots across the country, and now women and men are like, “This seems like an overreach.”Do you all understand how a woman's body works?Like six weeks, women don't even know they're pregnant, right?So you're going to let a woman die on the table just to save a baby?Like now we're getting in extremistville, so independents are like, “This sounds like a little too much, right?”This idea of Project 2025, that Democrats have now picked up on, and they're going point for point.
So it seems like, in this moment, we have—now lots of people are fired up.There's a difference between being fired up and ready to work, two totally different things.We'll see if people will actually do the work to help get her across the finish line electorally because of the Electoral College that right now favors Republicans.But in this moment of this taping, the energy around having a woman at the top of the ticket when we're talking about issues that so many of these issues affect women directly—housing, education, climate change—women are disproportionately affected.
When we have a person of color who's saying, “I'm the child of two immigrants.I don't want us to be a country where we do mass deportations.Yes, we need to be sensible about the border and immigration reform, but here is a more nuanced perspective as the child of two immigrants.Oh, and by the way, aren't all of you children or grandchildren of immigrants, by and large?,” which many Americans are.
So I think the 2020 Kamala Harris candidate looks very differently in a lot of important ways than the 2024 candidate.
It sounds like different times.It also sounds like there wasn't—was there not that clarity in 2019 from her about who she was that you're describing now?She has a message about abortion.And was that what the problem was in 2019?
Well, you know, when Kamala Harris runs in 2019-2020, you're running as a senator from California.Yes, you spent time in D.C., but she didn't have a signature issue.The country was reeling.I mean, it was also a different time, where the country was just sort of like, “We need—we need, like, essentially, Dad to like get in the car and drive us to our destination.”I think that's what, especially, when we look at the demographics of voters who actually bothered to turn out, people wanted sort of an older white man with civility, who understood America, who had already served in some ways, to sort of get us back on track.And for a lot of people, they thought Joe Biden would just be the bridge candidate.He would run one time, and then Democrats would have a big, wild primary, and what happens, happens.
And that's not how it played out.He did right the ship in a lot of ways, but then decided, “Hey, I've got so many hits, let's run again.Let's keep the band together.”And so we know that that didn't work out for him for an additional term, but I think that having those three-plus years of working on policy, a much more broader portfolio of policy, but being given reproductive justice as part of your policy portfolio and having that be such an important topic in states across the country in this particular election cycle, works to benefit Kamala Harris and articulating that vision and then moving out more broadly.
Harris as Vice President
That job that she walks into as vice president that you wrote about, getting the root causes of migration early on, as what just seems like a daunting, impossible task, what is she walking into as far as the expectations on her?And what is actually possible in the role of the vice president to somebody like Joe Biden? How difficult is it?
So walking into the vice presidency under the Biden-Harris administration, I wrote in I think it was June 2021, I wrote a piece for <i>The New York Times</i>, an op-ed, and said, “It's a trap,” because I was like, “So wait a minute.2Let me get this straight, Black woman.You are now in charge of COVID, police reform, immigration, the border, voting rights, I mean, abortion.”I was like, “And the list goes on.”And I sort of jokingly, you know, when I was talking about the piece, I was like, “So the only thing that's not on her docket is peace in the Middle East.”So now we see, hey, that's on her docket now, too.
2
The New York Times: Dear Kamala Harris: It’s a Trap!
So we know that the portfolio that she was given, on the one hand, my fear was that if she's not able to solve the ills of America in this short period of time that no one else has been able to solve, then it's “Oh, she's a failure.Look at this.She couldn't figure out the border crisis.”It's like, well neither have the past 25 presidents.So here we are.That's not to say that we don't keep working, but how is she, as the vice president, supposed to solve these major conundrums that we can't seem to detangle as a nation?
On the one hand— On the other hand I mean, if she was able to sort of chip away at them, then it's like, “Oh, great.Good for you.Good for America.Everything works out.”So here we are, with this portfolio that is, on the one hand, incomplete, but what is beneficial to now the Harris-Walz ticket is that she's actually been thinking about these ideas, critically, for quite some time.So it's not as though Joe Biden gave her flower arrangements and soccer stadiums or something like that.He actually gave her real, robust policy to think about and to work with other scholars and policy experts on, so that now that she's walking into the presidency, although the campaign may feel like a very short runway, her understanding of a lot of these issues is actually much longer and organized than people fully understand.
That's what people who worked for her in the White House have told us, that she was learning throughout those years, and she was even going out, doing local events, and she was sharpening her skills.But the portrayal in the media, pretty much after the Lester Holt interview, moved on and said, “She's got voice salad.Where is Kamala Harris?She's sort of missing or gun-shy.”When you saw that portrayal of her after her first six months, what did you make of that?
So, on the one hand—well, let's be clear.Kamala Harris, as a politician—again, I consider her a public servant, but as a politician, she's not Obama-level, Bill Clinton-level, sort of like this super sharp politician that kind of can give you those sound bites and talking points in the 30-second sound bites that we're accustomed to by seasoned politicians.
That being said, I thought the demands as to “Where is Kamala Harris?” were somewhat ridiculous.Did we know where [former Vice President] Mike Pence was for four years, besides with Mother, right?Did we know—yes, Joe Biden did foreign policy in certain ways in eight years under Barack Obama, but do we know anything that Joe Biden did as vice president?Do we know anything—[former Vice President] Dick Cheney, we knew he was working.I'll give him that, right?He was running the show.But [former Vice President] Al Gore, what was your thing?Something about the environment, something about taking credit for the internet.Who knows?Dan Quayle—where were the demands on [former Vice President] Dan Quayle, right?So I just think that, again, we have to understand that how we talk about Kamala Harris always has the shadow of racism and sexism baked into many of the initial assessments of Kamala Harris.
And so anytime that she has not been perfect, then it's “Oh, you know, she's incompetent.Can you imagine?”And this is one of the strategies that we see that Donald Trump is trying to employ, but it's not sticking the way that it has in the past, and it's not sticking the way it has for just women in the past, because there are far too many women who are just like, “I am so exhausted by incompetent men having the unmitigated gall and audacity to say that I don't deserve to be here when we all know that there is no way you deserve to be here.And just because I'm not perfect, how dare you say that I'm incompetent?”
So I think a lot of these attacks on Kamala Harris are just kind of falling flat, because people are looking at her policy portfolio and saying, “Actually, she's a part of some of these hits.”And she's been going around the country, actually tilling the soil, and building this foundation that has not only helped Joe Biden, but now it's actually helping Kamala Harris.
It's remarkable, if you go back only six months, or a year, six months, and people were saying, “Should he replace her on the ticket?”And then the Biden team saying, weeks ago, he can't drop out because there's nobody to replace him, and she's sitting there in the office of the vice president.
Right.But two things have happened since we've seen this conversation of, who would replace Joe Biden?One is obviously the fateful debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, where I think folks were like, “We are ready to move around this Titanic in the bathtub if we have to.Like, something's got to give.”That's one.So then we see the emergence of Kamala Harris, and now we're seeing the big attacks and the entire strategy of Donald Trump was, “This guy is old, and if you vote for him, he might—something might happen to him, and then this crazy Black woman is going to be in office.”That's the strategy.So I'm going to choose this guy that I didn't vet, and we're just going to cruise back into the sunset and be elected in 2024 and not worry about things.
Well, so after the debate, somehow Joe Biden, by the powers that be, and we'll find out one day in someone's memoir, exactly how that happened.But then Kamala Harris comes into being, so it throws off Donald Trump's strategy, and now he looks like a rambling old man, because we're seeing not just his age, but because this is the first time—we know Donald Trump does not do well when dealing with women, and definitely women of color, specifically Black women.We know that that is not in his wheelhouse at all, and so it's thrown him off.The anger and frustration and desperation is now coming to the fore, and he is literally looking at the prospect of losing, which is now derailing his campaign.
Now, we don't know how Nov. 5 will work out, but it is one of those things where his decline, cognitively, is palpable.And Kamala Harris being a quicker study, now that she's no longer the understudy, is quite evident.And so in some ways, it's—if you ever did a recital or something like that, it's like—I did theater for a short period of time.Sometimes you can't nail something in rehearsal.You keep trying, and you keep trying, and it's like, well, the big show's tonight.So I'm going to go out there.I've never been able to do it before, but we'll see how it goes.And then the opening night, you nail it.And it's almost like you needed the pressure of a real audience, not the fake audience.You needed the pressure of the real stage to be there to show that you can do it.It never happened in practice.
And that's what a lot of folks are feeling with Kamala Harris.It's, when she was the understudy, it was like, “OK, she's good.You know, it's good.We can make this work.”But now that she's at the top of the ticket, it's like, “Oh. All you needed, really, was to be where you naturally need to be, which is at the top of the ticket.”
Biden Steps Aside and Harris Steps Up
You’re right about the big moment, because people have told us, when she goes on CNN right after that debate, and she is defending Biden, but she's so much more eloquent in doing it than he had been, that there was almost like a sudden, like, “Oh, we've sort of forgotten about Kamala Harris.”
Well, if this were a romcom, it would be that moment of anagnorisis, where it's like, “Oh, you were here all along,” right?No one had seen—she's literally hiding in plain sight, as we like to say.So there was a—I think political scientists and journalists and historians will be writing about that debate night and the summer of 2024.Whatever happens on Nov. 5 is going to happen, but the summer of 2024 is something that we will be excavating for many, many years to come, because there is this pivotal moment for a lot of Democrats, and Americans writ large, where after that debate, when people saw a Joe Biden that has served his country for 50-plus years, is, many people argue, a good man just in his core, people who know him, who cares about politics and policy, who can work across the aisle, all the things, but that his time has come to a close, politically.Like it is time.We have to move.We have to change.
And no one likes to switch out their quarterback in the middle of the Super Bowl, but sometimes it has to happen.And we saw that shift very quickly.Now, there was a little bit of rumbling as to who should then be the star quarterback, but somehow, Joe Biden says, “You know what?While you all are debating that, I'm just going to go ahead and endorse my vice president,” because realistically, would we have this conversation if the vice president were a white man?I don't think we would have the same conversation as to like, “What should we do?”The role of the vice president is to be in position if the president can't do it.That is literally the definition of the vice presidency.
So the fact that there was all this hand-wringing about, “Well, I don't know.Like, how do we do this?”When you voted for Joe Biden in the primary, you voted for the Biden-Harris ticket, so she's next in line.Fair is fair.So I'm glad that the Democrats didn't have this long, drawn-out Carter-Kennedy 1980s-esque primary, where everyone comes out bloodied and bruised, and we ultimately go with Kamala Harris in the long run.Some people might have hurt feelings that we didn't have a longer process.We'll figure that out, because guess what?If we don't get Nov. 5th, 2024, right, then there won't be an election in 2028, as promised by Donald Trump.
So it was wise of the Democrats to get themselves collectively in order the summer of 2024, because the election is just a few months away.
It's amazing, that tightrope walk that she must have had to navigate being loyal, showing her competence, being ready to go the moment that he announced he's not going, is pretty amazing.
Well, that's the role of the vice presidency, right, I mean, is to never over-shine the president, which is why Joe Biden, in the minds of many Black people, is always going to be all right in their books, because he had eight years, and he never once tried to undercut Barack Obama or assert himself as being the man in charge, at least outwardly.The inner workings, that'll be in people's memoirs one day.But the level of respect that he showed Obama as POTUS is something that did not go unnoticed by millions of Black people who had been disrespected by white people on a daily basis.
So similarly, with Kamala Harris—now we have an age gap—she never once said, “Well, I'm just the younger, faster version of this ticket.”She didn't do that.But her job is to be ready.That is the job of an understudy, to be ready.That's the job of a vice president, to be ready.And so that CNN debate right after—Kamala Harris's CNN debate right after the Trump-Biden debate, where she showed that, for a lot of people who were looking for the first time, that she was ready.Some people felt that it was the equivalent of like, showing up to your ex-boyfriend's wedding in a red dress.That wasn't the same, because I don't think that it was done in an underhanded manner.It was really an interview to assuage the fears of Democrats and some other Americans writ large to say, “No, no, no, we have it under control.”But ultimately, I think there were a lot of people who were just too afraid that maybe Joe Biden didn't have it fully under control, and this is why we are in unprecedented times in the summer of 2024.
What is the Choice on the Ballot?
So the last question that we ask everybody is, what is the choice in your view?What's the choice on the ballot in November that voters are facing?
So, so—to me, it's so clear.Donald Trump has been very clear as to what his vision of America is.I think his first term, we saw him not understand how the levers of power worked, how executive orders worked, how the separation of powers and checks and balances worked.We saw the cast of characters coming in with his administration.
This time he's already cased the joint, so it's no longer a smash-and-grab presidency.He knows what to do, and he's been making money, and his family has been making money in the meantime.So this time, it will be a much more methodical dismantling of American democracy.Now, this country is far from perfect, but we have actually made quite a few strides in the past several decades.
To me the choice is clear.Either we go towards the future with Harris and [Tim] Walz and actually incorporate diverse Americans into our society; we respect our relationships, domestically and abroad; we actually respect a woman's right to choose; we respect LGBTQ+ individuals who are in this country; we respect the fact that climate change is real; we respect—you know, the list goes on and on: Inclusion, inclusion, inclusion, inclusion.
And Donald Trump is exclusion, exclusion, exclusion.Let's just go back to the days where white men ran things, and we don't have a board of directors; we don't have to answer to anybody; girls in cute skirts get me coffee, and like, what's the problem?And I think that that kind of messaging is attractive to a lot of people, because it's the visceral Archie Bunker feel of “My country is slipping aside,” and instead of blaming oligarchs, they're just blaming immigrants.
And so the focus of the ire is completely off.It's really hard to convince people that—let's see—that actually having a more diverse, robust America is literally better in every single way.It's better in education; it's better in finances.I mean, like literally, that's the better route.But this perception of scarce resources that Republicans are playing in on reminds me of my favorite LBJ [Lyndon B. Johnson] quote, which I paraphrase all the time for my students, which is, he said, “If you can convince the poorest white man that he's better than the Negro, then you can pick his pockets all day long.”
And that's been the strategy of the Republican Party, and trying to combat that, to help people sort of (a) sort of deprogram themselves in some ways, because of the Trump phenomenon has been so powerful and cultlike, to get them to see what is actually happening in their own lives—and it's not immigrants that are taking your things away; it's Republicans with tax breaks—I think that's been frustrating to see.But the two visions of the country, to me, in my estimation as a political scientist, couldn't be more clear and more dichotomous.
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Koo and Patricia Yuen
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