The Changing face of Politics in the United States

By Rebekah Henderson

On Jan. 20, 2021, the United States will have its forty-fifth out of 46 white male presidents. Since the position of vice-president came into existence in 1789 there have been forty-eight vice presidents, all of them white men. If you lined all of their portraits up on a wall, it would be difficult to pick out the nation’s first multiracial vice president: Charles Curtis. According to the Kansas Historical Society, Curtis was the great-great grandson of White Plume, a Kansa-Kaw Chief.

Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris is the first woman and the second multiracial vice president. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, there was talk of a post-racial America; a feeling that perhaps the injustices and inequities of the past were to truly become American history.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 (in spite of what often are viewed as appalling comments about women, racist comments, the subsequent rise of white supremacist groups during his presidency and increased anti-immigrant sentiments), has demonstrated there is considerable work to be done to dismantle systems of oppression in the U.S.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay, a first generation Indian American, is co-editor of the best-selling anthology “Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump’s America.” She is currently Executive Editor at Teen Vogue. Growing up, Mukhopadhyay was the target of racism and antiimmigrant attitudes in her small town located outside of New York City. Mukhopadhyay is feeling hopeful about an administration that includes Harris. She appreciates the historical significance of the first Black and South Asian vice president although, for Mukhopadhyay, this election was about more than the gender or race of any candidate; this election was about saving democracy. On the subject of feeling South Asian pride, Mukhopadhyay is more interested in the interrogation of anti-blackness in the South Asian community saying, “All racial politics in the U.S. is rooted in the oppression of Black people.”

For Mukhopadhyay, this election was about more than the gender or race of any candidate; this election was about saving democracy.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Anti-blackness and misogyny are not unique to the United States, they are worldwide phenomena born out European colonization, slavery and the white male patriarchal societies created by colonizers. Many women of color were activated to dismantle these systems of oppression after the election of Donald Trump.

Saira Rao, a first generation Indian American ran for Congress in 2018 on an anti-racist platform. She attempted to unseat a powerful incumbent and due to the nature of her online antiracist rhetoric she ran afoul of the alt-right and became a target; forcing her family to leave Colorado for an extended period without disclosing their location.

Rao’s run for office came with a heavy price, she is just one of many brave women of color who ran, including the, “The Squad,” four women elected in 2018 to the United States House of Representatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Rao is impressed with the positive impact these four women have had on the nation and she attributes President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of Harris to them as well. “I certainly think that they paved the way to make it a political imperative for Joe Biden to pick a woman of color as his running mate,” she says. Rao didn’t win her congressional race, but nothing is lost when community is created. Rao is hopeful that her new venture, Haven, “a collective of BIPOC womxn rooted towards abolition, liberation and healing through art and storytelling” will be part of creating a more just world.

Saira Rao

Both Rao and Mukhopadhyay are considered somewhat radical by conservatives and Harris is considered moderate by those on the far left. Mukhopadhyay and Rao both understand these critiques and find many of them valid. However, it doesn’t take away from the importance of having Harris in the second highest elected office in the nation. Says Mukhopadhyay, “this is a huge moment, a shattering of the glass ceiling of American politics, we’ve never had a woman in that role.”

Harris’ gender plus her racial and ethnic identity will undoubtedly continue to be a topic of discussion long after the inauguration. Harris is a tantalizing vision of what American politics could be without misogyny and a racial caste system that places Black people in the lowest position, even after eight years of having a Black president. Biden choosing Harris to be second in command gives anti-racist Americans something that has been in short supply since Obama left office and the onset of the global pandemic: hope.

In his “The Atlantic” article “My President Was Black,” Author Ta-Nehisi Coates speculated that Obama’s upbringing gave him a faith and trust in white people that most Black Americans of that time did not experience. Author and professor Tressie McMillan Cottom disagrees with this theory in her “The Atlantic” response, “The Problem With Obama’s Faith in White America.”

She writes that, “It didn’t matter that Obama had faith in white people; they needed only to have faith in him: in his willingness to reflect their ideal selves back at them, to change the world without changing them, to change blackness for them without being Black to them.” The truth of his success likely falls somewhere in between Coates and McMillan Cottom’s theories. Obama didn’t win his election simply because he understood and knew love from white people, he also won because he’s brilliant, eloquent and perhaps most importantly, he’s cool.

If Obama gets his ability to stomach American politics from growing up with a loving white family, what is Harris’ secret? Her multiracial Black and Indian blend doesn’t include white, with the exception of slave-holding ancestors. Harris and Obama have a certain ease and control maneuvering in a political environment dominated by white men. They have a cultural fluidity that undoubtedly has assisted them both in ascending to the very top of the political American landscape.

Third Culture Kid (TCK) and rising American political star Colorado State Senator Leslie Herod, served as Obama’s Deputy Political Director in Colorado during his 2012 Re-election Campaign and she co-chaired Harris’ Colorado primary presidential campaign. Her mother was an officer in the United States Army and Herod attributes her ability to work with conservative lawmakers to her upbringing as a Military B.R.A.T. having been exposed to so many cultures in her formative years. Herod is confident that Harris’ life experience will be a boon to her as vice president, “It just shows you that people with diverse experiences and diverse backgrounds bring something very important to the table. She’s going to be there representing all of her backgrounds, all her experiences.”

Herod is very clear however, on how Obama and Harris are racially categorized in the U.S., “Make no mistake, they are both perceived as Black.” Harris’ mother was a Tamil Brahmin, which means she was from the highest caste in India. For some South Asians this means she has caste privilege, however, due to their phenotypes both Harris and Obama are subject to the same racism and discrimination as any other person descended from the enslaved people that built America, regardless of their parents’ countries of origin.

What has come undone in the U.S. over the past four years must now be rebuilt, but in a new image, and the new image doesn’t look like the 48 portraits that came before. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris represents the best of what the American dream can and will be going forward, a free country where girls and young women of all backgrounds will look at her, and think, one day, I too, can lead a nation.