From the Underground Railroad to Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement to solidifying voting rights in Georgia, black women have demonstrated their commitment to equality and human rights throughout American history.
That kind of devotion was on display on July 21, the same day President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the Democratic presidential nominee. 44,000 Black women rallied via Zoom and raised more than $1.5 million for Harris in just three hours.
During the conference call, participants called on black women to unite behind Harris, but at the same time warned listeners not to prepare for sexist and racist attacks against them.
These bigoted attacks have arrived.
“I wanted to be on the call because I knew what it was about: the fact that this Black woman was stepping into this role that she was basically pushed into, and that there was going to be a lot of backlash, a lot of racism, negative reactions to her as a person — all of the things we’re experiencing right now,” Ashley Janelle, UX designer and founder of UX training company Empathive, told TheWrap.
“It was time for all of us to come together and think about how we can support them, but also how we can take care of ourselves.”
TheWrap spoke to several black women and experts about Harris’ historic campaign, all of whom said they expected the current racist backlash. No sooner had Harris vowed to “earn and win” the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination than the heated reactions poured in. Now black women are bracing for an uphill battle, personally and politically.
“From a psychological perspective, you can’t get rid of the things we deal with and experience ourselves when you go into the workplace,” says Patrice Le Goy, a psychologist and licensed marriage and family therapist. “It’s still there, and in some cases, when things are so public, it gets discussed in the workplace.”
From a purely electoral perspective, black women are important in November because they vote regularly. According to the Center for American Progress, they voted more frequently than any other group, regardless of gender, race or ethnicity, in 2012, when Barack Obama ran against Mitt Romney. In 2016, 94% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton in her presidential election against Donald Trump.
But political commentator Wendy Osefo, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University and founder of the 1954 Equity Project, put it succinctly: Attacking Harris’ race or gender is a losing strategy.
“This is very bad for business,” Osefo said. “This kind of attack on a candidate will turn against him. It will only inflame other people’s anger.”
Déjà vu attacks
Several white conservative pundits and politicians are already relying on racism and misogyny in their campaign strategy against Harris.
In an interview with CNN, Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett called Harris a “DEI candidate.” Wisconsin Rep. Glenn Grothman said Democrats felt compelled to elect Harris “because of her race.” And conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly said Kamala Harris “sleepwalked her way into politics.”
Kamie Crawford, co-host of MTV’s “Catfish,” was one of several influential black women who responded online to Harris’s presidential bid, sharing their predictions about how Harris would be treated. Crawford said the offensive remarks from Republicans were just a reiteration of the same racist tactics that have been used against black people – including herself – for years.
“It’s always the same old story. We’ve heard it, we’ve seen it, we’ve lived it,” Crawford said. “I was crowned Miss Teen USA at 17 and I was told it was because of positive discrimination. I got the job as co-host of one of the biggest shows on MTV and I was told the same thing, that I was somehow contributing negatively to the diversity of the show – that there were more black people on the show because I was on the show, but in a bad way.”
The attacks on Harris are, for many, a déjà vu of Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns and his eight years as the country’s first black president. And as with Obama, political opponents have questioned Harris’ citizenship because she has immigrant parents.
Unlike in the Obama era, however, some Republican leaders were quick to call on party members to stop the discriminatory attacks on Harris. Three experts told TheWrap that this condemnation had less to do with morality and more to do with electoral math — they can’t win an election by alienating people of color.
The Republican shift is reminiscent of the moment in 1981 when Republican political consultant and strategist Lee Atwater declared the strategy of weaponizing racism in politics. The Republicans’ discriminatory remarks are just a new way to cover up their racism, Todd Boyd, the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair in Race and Popular Culture Studies and a professor of film and media studies at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, told TheWrap.
“(Atwater) says, ‘When I got into politics, you could say ‘n–a, n–a, n–a’ and say that had changed,'” Boyd explained. “You couldn’t say that anymore, so you had to find a way to express that through politics, through your political program. You had to find an alternative way to say something racist without saying it directly. Racism was prominent during Obama’s two terms, but that didn’t stop him from becoming president. There was a time when that would have stopped him.”
Boyd said some Republicans realize that such attacks will not produce the same results as before because America will be more diverse in 2024 than it was in 2008.
“Smart people on the Republican side … realize that more than racist and sexist slurs are enough to achieve their goals,” he said.
Boyd also pointed out that Obama won both the Electoral College and the popular vote twice, and that he did so without winning over the majority of white voters.
“That says a lot about everything that happened afterward,” Boyd said. “You didn’t have to win the majority of the white vote to become president of the United States. That says a lot about the country we live in.”
The voting power of black women
Despite the hurdles placed in their path, black women have consistently voted. And in 2008, there was a surge in black voters, led by black women and young people. According to a 2009 Census Bureau survey, black women voted more frequently than any other racial, ethnic or gender group, and for the first time, younger black voters were more likely to vote than their white counterparts.
This will be a way of attacking a candidate and antagonizing them. This will only inflame other people’s anger.
Political commentator Wendy Osefo
Black women make up 7.7% of the total U.S. population and 15.3% of American women. However, this year, 67% of Black women are registered to vote. A KFF poll of women voters found that about 77% of Black women ages 50 and older said they were “absolutely sure” they would vote in the 2024 election. Among Black women under 50, 49% said they would definitely vote, and 32% said they weren’t sure whether or not they would vote.
“When you attack Kamala with sexist remarks, you’re not just insulting the Democratic Party,” Osefo said. “This is an insult to all women and also to all people who are in the minority class… You’re saying the only reason they got what they got is because there was a quota that had to be met and not because of their professional skills or their academic acumen? No, that’s a slap in the face.”
Ashley, Crawford and Osefo are black women and all said their emotions are torn between excitement and fear when it comes to Harris’ candidacy. Although her candidacy symbolizes progressive change in the country, they believe hateful attacks are imminent.
Le Goy advises black women to focus on themselves in the face of this situation.
“Women and women of color have to do a lot of extra work in these environments where the workplaces are predominantly white,” Le Goy said. “We have to know where we are in our journey. I can be happy, I can celebrate that, and I can also say, ‘Maybe I need a break from that, maybe I’m not going to watch that clip because it’s going to upset you and it’s not going to motivate me.’ That’s a line I have to draw.”