She made it clear in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, again at her televised debate with Donald Trump a few weeks later, and in all her interviews since. Vice President Kamala Harris, if or when elected the 47th United States president, will continue the centre-right policies of her recent predecessors, especially her current boss, President Joe Biden.
This likely means that efforts to address income equality and poverty, to abandon policies that beget violence overseas, and to confront the latticework of discrimination that affects Americans of colour and Black women especially, will be limited at best.
If Harris wins this election, her being a Black and South Asian woman in the most powerful office in the world will not mean much to marginalised people anywhere, because she will wield that power in the same racist, sexist and Islamophobic ways as previous presidents.
“I’m not the president of Black America. I’m the president of the United States of America,” President Barack Obama had said on several occasions during his presidency when asked about doing more for Black Americans while in office. As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris is essentially doing the same. And as it was the case with Obama’s presidency, this is not good news for Black Americans, or any other marginalised community.
Take the issue of housing.
Harris’s proposed $25,000 grant to help Americans buy homes for the first time is a blanket grant, one that in a housing market historically tilted towards white Americans, will invariably discriminate against Black folks and other people of colour. Harris’s campaign promise does not even discern between “first-time buyers” whose parents and siblings already own homes, and true “first-generation” buyers who are more likely not white, and do not have any generational wealth.
It seems Harris wants to appear committed to helping “all Americans”, even if it means her policies would primarily help (mostly white) Americans already living middle-class lives. Any real chance for those among the........