In the contest to be Kamala Harris’ running mate, it’s raining men. And while Harris’ candidacy is a “first time in history” moment, her vice president may not be as groundbreaking. The all-male lineup of contenders is, to borrow from the White Dudes for Harris fundraising call, “a rainbow of beige.”

Harris’s first rally with her vice president pick will be held on Tuesday in Philadelphia, her campaign has said, fueling speculation that she will select Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to be her number two. Also making the reported shortlist: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who hails from Indiana. White men are roughly 30% of the U.S. population, but apparently 100% of Harris’s potential vice presidents.

Not that one can really blame Harris or her team. The “Kamala and a cracker” lineup, as historian and writer John Ganz has coined it, is a prudent and probably necessary choice, not unlike Barack Obama’s careful selection of the moderate, familiar, and very white Joe Biden. But it’s also a revealing one.

Conservatives have long denigrated successful women and people of color as DEI hires and woke identity politics beneficiaries. Harris’s veepstakes are just another example of how successful this racist and sexist narrative has been, and how often the identity calculus actually cuts the other way–that is, to the advantage of white men. Except that when it’s white men who benefit from their racial and gender identities, it’s largely invisible.

If Harris wins, she would break the centuries-long streak of male rule in the US, which is no small........

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