Opinion Harris’s caution on racial issues is frustrating but perhaps necessary
“Since she became the Democrats’ presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken very optimistically about America, made frequent mentions of her personal connections to the Black community, and generally avoided saying anything bold or memorable about racial policy issues. That’s the same three-pronged strategy that Barack Obama adopted 16 years ago and one also used by the very few Black Americans who have been elected governor or senator.
This approach might be the only way for Harris to win the presidency in a country that hasn’t yet elected a Black woman governor of one of the 50 states, never mind the Oval Office. But this tack has a real downside: Prominent Black politicians end up downplaying past and current anti-Black racism and instead present an overly rosy picture of the country, stunting honest discussions of America’s racial realities and why they still need to be addressed.
Obama’s two presidential victories have obscured how hostile the United States has been to Black politicians serving in top offices. There have long been dozens of Black mayors and U.S. House members, often elected in majority-Black areas. But only seven Black Americans, including Harris and Obama themselves, have been popularly elected to the Senate in U.S. history. Three Black men have been elected governor: Virginia’s L. Douglas Wilder, Massachusetts’s Deval Patrick and Maryland’s Wes Moore.
It’s hard to say much about just 10 politicians. But there is something of a playbook for a Black politician to successfully campaign to a heavily White electorate, particularly in a general election. (Harris in 2020, like Obama in the 2008 cycle, spoke more openly about racial issues during the Democratic primary.)
Following Perry Bacon Jr.
These politicians emphasize their patriotism and use glowing rhetoric about the country. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America,” Obama said in the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech that brought him to national prominence. In Harris’s speech at the DNC last month, she called being an American “the greatest privilege on Earth” and referred to the history of the United States as “the most extraordinary story ever told.”
They seem very aware that many White Americans are eager to hear from a Black person that the country is improving in terms of race relations. “Only in America is my story even possible,” Georgia’s Raphael G. Warnock (D) said during his Senate campaign. Harris echoed that phrasing in her convention speech: “On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.”
They generally avoid blunt talk about racism. Harris said “next question, please” to change the subject in a recent CNN interview after being asked about former president Donald Trump’s comment that the vice president “happened to turn Black” for political purposes.
These politicians are leery of proposals pushed by Black-led civil rights groups, such as major reforms of policing, that might get them cast as too supportive of Black Americans and hostile toward Whites. They also don’t lean into race-neutral but heavily redistributive policies in the mold of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). That might trigger fears that they want to shift too much money from White Americans to Black ones.
“I do not intend to be a national leader of the Negro people,” Massachusetts’s Edward W. Brooke told Time magazine after becoming the first Black person popularly elected to the U.S. Senate in 1966. “I intend to do my job as a senator from Massachusetts.” Obama used similar language during his reelection campaign.
These are not “post-racial” politicians, though. For Obama, Warnock and now Harris in particular, inspiring sky-high Black support and turnout, even more than a typical Democratic candidate, has been a key part of their campaign strategy. “The African American vote can be a game-changer in all sorts of states,” Obama said in 2008.
So, instead of focusing on policy, these candidates nod to parts of their biographies that might particularly resonate with Black voters: Obama’s childhood without a father at home; Warnock’s mother’s days picking cotton; Moore’s membership in a Black church.
These politicians regularly make reference to the civil rights movement and hint that they are its successors.
“Two of the things that have had a profound impact on who I am today are my incredible mother and extended family who helped raise me and my time at Howard University,” Harris wrote in a letter released by her campaign last month that was addressed to students attending historically Black colleges. “At an HBCU, you’re empowered to be anything and do everything without excuse. You are constantly reminded you are young, gifted, and Black.”
This three-part strategy (extolling America, avoiding racial policy, emphasizing personal connections to Black Americans) might be the only way for a Black person to be elected statewide or nationally in a country where only 14 percent of people are Black. Black politicians who push very progressive policies and are more frank about racial inequality in America often either lose elections in majority-White areas or aren’t even nominated by a Democratic Party that is always judging politicians based on their perceived “electability.”
There is a “‘silent agreement’ — a wink-and-nod — between race-neutral black candidates and black voters,” Columbia University professor Fredrick Harris wrote in his 2012 book “The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics.” “This agreement entails black voters giving race-neutral black politicians a pass on discussions about racial inequality in exchange for the candidates’ successful elevation to high-profile political offices.”
But there are two big downsides to this approach. First, when these Black candidates are running, Black activists and voters are denied the opportunity to trade their political support for policy benefits, in the way that politics usually works. In 2016, Trump promised to appoint very conservative judges to ensure he received enthusiastic backing from conservative Christians. Four years later, Biden made explicit pledges, most notably to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, to strengthen his Black support in the 2020 Democratic primary and general election.
Harris is making policy-based appeals to many groups in the electorate. She is supporting legislation that makes it easier for workers to organize to solidify her standing with labor unions. Her calls to hire more border agents are essentially a race-based appeal to moderate and conservative White voters.
But in front of Black voters, she lists standard Democratic Party positions, while sometimes noting their particular benefits to Black Americans. And many Black-led groups and activists are reluctant to make specific demands of a Black candidate.
“The wink-and-nod exchange between Obama and black voters came with a cost. The agreement made it virtually impossible for black leaders — and black voters — to place issues that were particular to black communities on the political agenda,” Harris wrote in 2012. (“Black” was not often capitalized a decade ago.)
The other problem is that some of the country’s most famous Black people, prominent politicians, are not being candid about the state of America. When Obama was in office, White writers would complain that their Black counterparts such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones were being too pessimistic about the country and didn’t sound enough like the incumbent president.
But the massive Black-White racial gap, much higher rates of death during childbirth for Black mothers and other data show that Coates, Hannah-Jones and others were describing reality. This remains a country where race matters.
White politicians are often very patriotic and optimistic, too. The difference, of course, is that the history of White people in America, while full of discrimination against Jewish Americans, Catholics, Irish, Italians and others, does not include slavery or Jim Crow.
Again, I’m not sure Harris, Obama or other Black politicians who have won statewide could have advanced any other way. And it’s not just them. When I’m around Black people in top roles in journalism and other fields, we often talk about avoiding discussions of racial issues that might discomfort non-Black colleagues and about presenting ourselves as happy and enthusiastic about the companies we work at.
And I don’t want to be too pessimistic, even though it’s disappointing that Harris and her campaign seem to have assessed that they can’t be much more forthright about racial issues than Obama was 16 years ago. White Democratic voters are increasingly progressive on racial issues. So it’s possible that a Black politician who isn’t as Obama-esque, such as Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), could win in a very blue state.
Second, these Black politicians sometimes break from race avoidance once they feel politically safe. After winning reelection in 2012, Obama was more vocal about racial disparities in the criminal justice system.. Warnock has become one of the Senate’s leading figures in pushing voting rights legislation.
If social movements, activists and others create a climate where, say, reparations or major police reforms are popular, I’m confident these politicians would support such policies. What these Black politicians are trying to avoid is being cast as too Black-friendly compared to mainstream opinion at a given time.
I would love to see Harris win, both because she is not Donald Trump and it’s long overdue for a woman, a South Asian and a Black woman to be elected president. But until Black politicians with big ambitions can speak honestly about racial issues without fearing defeat, it’s vital that we also have prominent Black non-politicians who tell the truth about America. I don’t think America is the most extraordinary story ever told, and I’m not sure Harris really does either.“
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