In 2004in the Democratic Convention in Boston, One of the most stellar and remembered moments was the speech of a young black senator whom few in the country knew at the time, but who would soon change history. It was Barack Obamawho four years later won the party’s nomination and a victory at the polls that made him the first black president of the United States.
That was a political and racial milestone in the country, of special significance to the black community. And paved the ground that now, with the Kamala Harris’s candidacy, The United States is facing another unprecedented advance: the potential arrival in the Oval Office not only of the first female president (something that Donald Trump truncated for Hillary Clinton), but also of the first black president.
“Esperanza“A word that was key in Obama’s first campaign, has returned to the lips of all the Democrats gathered at the convention in chicagowhere Former President and former First Lady Michelle Obama, were the main speakers of the day on Tuesday, which closed Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband who would become the first “first gentleman.” So has another term that is repeated and palpable: “progress”.
“For the black community this says How much we have advanced as a nation”, he explains Willie German Jr., a delegate from Michigan, 62-year-old, who was deputy mayor of the city of Muskegon and chairs the black caucus in his county. “It means and shows that the US is accepting a positive change towards something better. And it vindicates those of us who have been defending diversity, equality and inclusion for some time.”
“Black people can lead”
Just as Biden passed the baton from the old guard to Harris on Monday and Clinton extended the gender bridge to the vice president, Obama is doing so on the issue of race. And although neither the president nor the candidate want to focus on it, their own history as children of mixed families (a father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas in Obama’s case, and immigrants from Jamaica and India in Harris’s case), and their political trajectory in a world that during the beginnings of both was still dominated by whites, is a reality of representation inescapable.
“Harris shows what this country could be and what we could actually represent, how we can create iInclusion and a sense of belonging”, dice DeMareo Cooper, a striking 45-year-old black man who is co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a network of more than half a million activists in 51 affiliated organizations in 35 states and Puerto Rico. “Young black women, my nieces, the girls, are going to see a female president and will do the same thing Obama did for my nephews, for my son, for the young men”.
Cooper also assures that these “Young people need to see that women can lead and everyone needs to know that “Black people can lead”.And she strongly rejects a narrative spread by some observers or press reports that suggests that black men may supposedly have reservations about a woman of color. “We are happy to see a sister nominated“He claims. “And in all the conversations I have with other black men, Harris is seen as better than Trump: smart, capablesomeone who can do the job.”
The activist appeals to his own case to reinforce his argument: “Black men are differently oriented towards the patriarchal notion because many of us were raised by mothers, We are not confused about the power and capabilities of women“My mother, who raised me alone, was one of the most intelligent, creative and determined people I have ever known. And we grew up differently, without questioning ability.”
Stopping Trump’s advances
It is true that Trump is making inroads among some black voters (mostly men), and their efforts to scratch votes in that part of the electorate, as in that of the Latinos, are evident. But it is also true that theBlack voters are the most loyal to Democrats (a loyalty especially pronounced in the case of women). And since Biden decided to drop his re-election bid and back Harris, the polls have shown a brake on the Republican advances.
While a poll by The New York Times and Siena College in October showed 22% support among registered black voters in six swing states for Trump (who in 2020 got only 8% of the black vote), in the most recent poll, already with Harris as a candidate, support for the Republican among the black electorate fell to 16%.
A party, and a country, transformed
Harris’ historic candidacy is allowing the Democratic Partyin addition, andto expose and underline at the convention in Chicago its profound diversity, something that has been achieved after decades of work to ensure that the leadership and elected officials better reflected the multiracial base that sustains the party. On Monday, on the first day of the conclave, the vast majority of those who walked the stage were politicians and black figuresincluding icons such as Martin Luther King’s protégé and former candidate Jesse Jackson or rising stars like the senator and reverend Raphael Warnock.
“Every convention is a moment, one that contribute to our movement”he explained from the stage when opening the festivities Jaime Harrison, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and, like the Convention Chair Minyon Moore black. And he remembered historical figures like Shirley Chisholm, the first black congresswoman who also tried to be a presidential candidate, Fannie Lou Hammer, a black activist who protested the exclusion of blacks from the Mississippi delegation at the Democratic convention 60 years ago and highlighted the ongoing problems in the South for blacks to exercise their right to vote. “All of those moments have led us to this moment of transformation,” Harrison said.
It’s a change that they are now going to defend. And that’s something that Michigan delegate German explains. “Kamala Harris says something that Obama also said before: we are not going back. As we move forward we will make life better not only for black Americans, who have had to fight for so long and who still have things left to achieve, but We will give hope to all of America. And with Harris and Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president, we are in a good path towards systemic change”.
Subscribe to continue reading
