First of all, calling Kamala Harris a DEI candidate does not align with her deeds. The vice president is known as a progressive, but her endeavors as a prosecutor and attorney general are politically nebulous. What’s more, people mean different things when they say words “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” and we are not sure how Harris interprets those words.
Lastly, the DEI backlash is here, and there may not be any way for her to address it without giving more oxygen to her critics. Harris may not want to spend too much time and energy rearranging the furniture on a sinking ship.
However, Harris has to talk about race in some way, if only for her base. To do it right, Harris may need to take a page out of Obama’s playbook.
Perhaps there is an argument that, given this country’s history, comparing the issues of whites and Blacks in the way Obama did in his speech is a false equivocation, but that does not matter. The only thing that matters is that Obama said it, and it established his ethos as a candidate.
The country saw a Black presidential candidate insist that we can and should transcend race because, as Americans, we are better than that. The accuracy of the statement was less relevant.
What’s more, Obama relied heavily on the idea that, as a multi-racial candidate, he was a personification of America. Obama’s story was “a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.” Obama’s identification with Americans as a whole was his attempt to erase any kind of us-versus-them thinking. Harris needs to do something similar.
Perhaps most interestingly, Obama’s take on virtue and responsibility sounded more conservative than liberal by today’s standards.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans: the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.
And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
This quote is a far cry from much of the language of contemporary antiracism, in which despair or cynicism are badges of honor. For Obama, victim mentality is detrimental; it squashes both individual and group agency.