What Kamala Harris’s Candidacy Means for Black Women
More than half a century after New York Representative Shirley Chisholm became the first Black major-party candidate, Kamala Harris could do what seemed impossible in 1972. And while the vice-president’s rise to the top of the ticket has energized the entire Democratic Party, it has particularly thrilled Black voters and especially Black women. Still, Harris’s first week at the top of the ticket has been beset by a recent wave of racist attacks from commentators and politicians on the other side of the aisle.
In 2011, Kimberly Peeler-Allen co-founded Higher Heights, a national political organization dedicated to growing the political power of Black women across the country. Recently, I spoke with Peeler-Allen, now a visiting practitioner at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, about what Harris will bring to the ticket, how her nomination could motivate Black voters, and why fears of a backlash are never far from her mind. She also talked about what the energy was like on a much-discussed Win With Black Women Zoom call that took place after the vice-president announced her run.
Were you surprised at how quickly the party coalesced around Harris, especially given how hesitant many had been about the idea of her replacing Biden?
I was. The wave of support that came within the first 12 hours was really quite overwhelming, because I think a lot of Black women who have been in this space for decades all kind of felt the same way: Are people actually going to support her? The weeks before actually had been really quite painful, hearing people say, “Oh, we need to find a candidate. We need to find somebody, draft somebody” when we had an extremely qualified vice-president sitting right there. If it had been a white man who was vice-president, there would be no discussion. So when the endorsements started coming and the energy around her just really reached a fever pitch, it was overwhelming. It was reassuring. There aren’t even words for it, because I think so many of us were prepared for her to be passed over. Historically, that is what has happened time and time again.
What do you see as the biggest strengths Harris brings to the ticket?
I look at her and I look at how people are responding to her and I see a joy in people’s faces that I haven’t seen since ’08. You see people actually looking like, What are the possibilities that exist? There was some of that around Hillary, but it’s different, and I think that is a huge strength of hers. I think the fact that — though she has not gotten nearly the credit that she deserves — she has been walking lockstep with the president on so many important issues and has been leading and, where she can, charting her own path, particularly on international affairs. What she has done domestically around gun violence and reproductive freedom. She’s done the work, in addition to being an accomplished senator and two-term attorney general and district attorney. Her record is tremendous and her experience is tremendous. And then just being able to see someone, frankly, under the age of 60 running and with that experience and with that energy.
I was watching her speech when she was in Wisconsin. I watched it with the sound off, and her body language and her comfort and her command of the space — I think it is something that will continue to bring people. There’s the initial excitement that will get people there, but that is what will keep people there: her ability to articulate not just why not Trump, but why her and why people need to support her. She presents very differently than she did in 2019 when she ran for president the first time, and I think folks will see that evolution in her and see her as the leader that so many of us have known her to be.
Not long after Harris received Biden’s backing to succeed him, an organization called Win With Black Women organized a four-hour call with 44,000 attendees on it, which raised more than $1 million. How motivating will it be for Black voters to have Harris on the ballot in November?
I think it’s incredibly motivating. There are two pieces of this. I think Black voters were going to come out and do what they needed to do to vote against Donald Trump. Black women, 93 percent of them historically vote Democratic and 80-some percent of Black men. But there’s now an energy of … they’re voting against something and they have something to vote for. Just the energy that we have seen, the conversations that I’ve been in over the last five days and the excitement and the strategy. People are very, very clear that this is not going to be something that will be easily won. That we can’t take this energy for granted; that it has to be really nailed down. We have to lock in voters and volunteers because there are people who don’t really know who the vice-president is and don’t really know her record and don’t know what the possibilities of her leadership could look like. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. In addition to introducing her to the electorate, it will also be pushing back on the myths and disinformation that we know are going to come and have already started flying about her record, about her qualifications. And it’s a constant both offensive and defensive plan that we have to go through.
You were on that call. What was that experience like?
There was a lot of celebration. There were a lot of tears. There was a lot of prayer. There was a lot of inspiration and there were commitments made by people saying, “I’m going to work. My job from now until November is to get her elected.” When a group of sisters come together and just have this moment to process the historic nature of the position that the vice-president is in and what it means for our country, what it means for our children and our future — it was not lost on anyone on that call.
Black voters, especially Black women, have always been a key demographic for the Democratic Party. Now, in Harris, they have a candidate who is an HBCU alum, who’s actually a member of the Divine Nine. What kind of doors does that open up for the party?
It gives the party an opportunity to speak to more of the totality of the Black experience, that there are more people who will see aspects of her life in their own. There’s still a lot of work to be done because of just the multifacetedness of what it means to be Black in America. Whether you are the child of immigrants or the descendent of enslaved people, what it means to be Black in America is a very diverse experience. But I think her record on issues like maternal-morbidity rates, gun violence, and the like will be things that people can point to. It is also an opportunity for her to talk about how she is going to support the economy: a rising tide lifts all ships. Targeting communities that have been left behind and ignored, which had been so often Black and brown communities and poorer communities across the country. And I think that is what her work is moving forward. But I think for some, she will be given more deference because of going to Howard University and being a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Incorporated. There is a shared understanding and expectation of her experience that will definitely bring many Black voters to her.
The main theme of Vice-President Harris’s campaign appears to be this idea of the prosecutor versus the felon, contrasting her years of experience as a courtroom prosecutor, district attorney, and attorney general against Trump, who has been convicted. Do you see this as an effective strategy?
I think it’s an effective strategy to win some voters. I don’t think it would resonate with all voters. Her first campaign ad that came out yesterday saying “We choose freedom” is also a message that will, I think, pick up a lot of other people. Reproductive freedom, freedom to read the books that you want to read and teach your children however you want to teach them. Those are things that will definitely resonate with folks. The freedom to be free of gun violence in your communities. There are some that will definitely push back on her message about the prosecutor versus the criminal. There is definitely some currency with that messaging, but I think there’s going to have to be multiple messages around the totality of her experience and her résumé, and people will pick up on what resonates most with them as their motivating factor of why they come out to vote in November.
There are some concerns that Harris’s backstory as a prosecutor could potentially harm her standing with younger voters and Black voters who might be naturally more skeptical of the criminal-justice system or have had bad interactions with it themselves.
I think there is concern that that will be a deterrent to some voters, and you are seeing a lot of work being done to debunk the myths around her record, particularly when she was district attorney in San Francisco. So I think there is a lot of work that has to be done to really clarify her record and clarify her vision of criminal-justice reform.
Harris has already had to contend with a deluge of racist and sexist attacks, largely from Republican politicians and commentators. Although I wouldn’t say it’s surprising, I think I was struck by how overt these comments were.
I think Republicans are still trying to figure out how to campaign against her and, unfortunately for some individuals, their gut instinct is to race to the bottom. It’s been really disappointing that we have not been able to ascend higher than that. I think there was a headline on Politico saying “House GOP leaders urge members: Stop making race comments about Harris.” The fact that that even had to be said out loud is, frankly, embarrassing for the Republican Party. I would much rather have them go after her on votes that they disagreed with or a policy or strategy, but to go after her human existence is disappointing and embarrassing, and it’s not the best of this country by far.
Do you see this strategy backfiring?
I think it will hurt them. I think there are people who all of a sudden have just started paying attention to this race, and the only counters to the vice-president that they’re hearing from the right are racist, sexist tropes. I could see that as causing a huge backlash. It is disappointing that we are not having a conversation based primarily on policy, but it is what it is.
What would a win for Harris in November do for furthering the cause of Black women’s political power in this country?
Oh, it would do so much. It would do so much. I just have a huge smile on my face just even thinking about it. It goes back to Shirley Chisholm, who ran for Congress in 1968 and then ran for president in 1972. We had Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman to be elected to the Senate, and then Vice-President Harris as the second. And then we had Stacey Abrams and her historic run for governor of Georgia. We have people like New York attorney general Letitia James and Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Campbell and a record number of Black women serving as mayor of the top 100 cities and a record number of Black women serving in Congress. We can get that brass ring. It’s not just that we are taking our seat at the table, but that the expansion of Black women’s political power in this country is real and has no limit. We still haven’t had a governor yet, but hopefully we’ll get one after Kamala becomes president, and we’ll have two Black women in the U.S. Senate serving simultaneously, Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester. [Editor’s note: Both are currently favored in their races, but Alsobrooks still faces a strong Republican challenger in the fall.] But it really just will solidify the possibilities that exist, particularly for Black women, for women of color. I think it really will blow open the perspective of Americans, of what leadership can and should look like, how diverse leadership works and how it is actually good for all of us.
But, at the same time, we know that when President Obama became president, we had the rise of the Tea Party. We have the MAGA Republicans who have continued that mantra. So we know that as much as we will be stepping forward in a tremendous historical way, it will almost be harder to continue that energy because the forces pushing back against it will be even more energized. We were just talking about the racist and sexist tropes that Republicans have been lobbing against the vice-president. We know that will continue and that as power shifts, there will be backlash. One of the things that also came out of that call on Sunday evening was a note of fear of what this will mean for other Black women running, that people who are not happy about the position of the vice-president may take it out on their local candidates or go seek out a candidate of color for violence, threats, or harassment. So, there’s definitely trepidation. There’s a lot of joy, but there’s also a realism about the fact that, because of the history of this country, this could be a very challenging time. Joy and sorrow simultaneously.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.