Shirley Chisholm…Barbara Jordan…Carol Moseley Braun…Kamala Harris
I do not own the copyright to any of the videos included here, I do not intend to use them for the sole purposes of making money. I am using them as part of a teaching demonstration.
Black women have always valued the democratic political process, though they have not always been portrayed as politically astute.
When we read Phyllis Wheatley, mother of the Black belletristic tradition, do we think of her as a politically astute writer? Do we see her as a fiery intellectual? Would we even think to read her that way? What about Sojourner Truth? Yet, African American women have always been political beings. We have always been FORCED to be aware of how the political attitudes and the policies crafted by powerful people, who seem far removed from our kitchen tables, affect the food that we place on our kitchen tables, the quality of the food that we place on our kitchen tables, the price of the food that we place on our kitchen tables, the taxes that we had to pay for the food placed on our kitchen tables, whether or not we had to go to the store up the street or catch two buses and a subway car and go way downtown to a store ten miles from our neighborhood because we live in a food dessert, and how we pay for the food we put on our kitchen table (if a person checked us out or if we had to use the self check-out). Political attitudes and policies even affect the people who are present to receive the food that we place on our kitchen tables. Political attitude and policies affect the people who are absent and CANNOT receive the food that we have prepared, because maybe they were stopped by the wrong cop or maybe they got sick and couldn’t afford healthcare and they died unnecessarily because they could not afford the transplant or maybe a pandemic is on and our state simply didn’t have enough resources to care for them or maybe a child went for a pack of Skittles for his little brother and a vigilante took it upon himself to police the neighborhood and took his life and will suffer no consequences due to sign and drive Conservative legislation or maybe a child simply went jogging or was simply standing on a street corner trying to breathe or peacefully protesting without arms and armed forces showed up with tear gas and high-powered rifles. So, yes, Black women have to be politically astute whether we know it or not. Every day.
Yet, do people see African American women as political or just whimsical and colorful? My fear with Maxine Waters is that people do not see her as a competent member of Congress, or does she add “colorful” entertainment? And don’t get me wrong, this is no reflection on Maxine Waters, but I am speaking here on America’s refusal to acknowledge women’s competency and Black people’s intelligence. Period. I am thinking here of Kamala Harris’ nomination and an old article that I wrote while I was still an undergraduate at a Predominantly White Institution. I talked about the political achievements of Barbara Jordan. The backlash that the paper received was ASTRONOMICAL. Of course the editors of the newspaper thought it was great. The readership was up and the paper received attention from the community at large. What struck me, however, was the venom that young, white males used to downplay Barbara Jordan’s accomplishments as a Black woman Texas politician. For every accomplishment I listed, there was a deliberate down play and some of it was quite nasty. Of course, there was no mention of her as the keynote speaker at the 1976 Democratic National Convention or her impeachment speech during the Nixon investigation.
Listen to the way that the Honorable Barbara Jordan both investigate and teaches here. She is acutely aware of the way democracy works. She was not there to add to the entertainment value or to simply be a political tool.
Yet, I fear that in this cartoonish, Fox News, “alternative facts” era that we live in, the value of women PERIOD, whether they are Black, white, Latino, or otherwise has been reduced to entertainment. Their voices are being reduced to nothing and only their hair, makeup, and dispositions are being commented upon in the media. And this is quite disturbing. I am tired of hearing how this person is “nasty acting.” I am tired of the very words that journalists and male politicians use to speak about women politicians. Since when did the word, “ambitious” become an insult? I guess when it is used to describe women’s attitudes and dispositions? I think of the number of times I have seen male politicians cry on tv. Yet, the word “emotional” was not used to describe their tears as a sign of weakness, and it was certainly not used as a reason to stay home from the voting booths. I can’t tell you how many idiots I heard say in 2016 that they wouldn’t vote for Clinton, because women are too “emotional” to have access to the nuclear code, yet every time I turned around some man was on tv shedding tears.
And if one more person speaks of Kamala Harris as if she just appeared out of nowhere! Have we forgotten about Shirley Chisholm? Wait. This is America. Of course we have. Shirley Chisholm, who became known as “Fighting Shirley Chisholm,” announced her bid for candidacy in 1972. At the time, Chisholm noticed the gender discrepancies within the Democratic Party: men ran for public office while the women did the ground work and raised the money for their candidacy. Women did not run for office, their political platforms were not taken seriously, and their views were shunned as mere “women’s issues” within the Democratic Party. Shirley Chisholm ran for political office, not as a candidate solely for African Americans (though she was a proud African American), not as a woman candidate (though she was a proud woman), but as a American who was tired of the divisive, paranoid political rhetoric coming out of the White House at the time.
Chisholm honestly believed, as a woman, that women had the ability to invest in human resources. Women, as people who do the work daily, have the experience and intelligence to make significant policy contributions and not just pay lip service to investing in human capital. Women are not just consumers. Women are not just “emotional” beings. We have brains. We can use them to enlarge this country and bring empathy to its domestic policies. Who knew? Okay, it’s difficult to actually convey sarcasm in writing, but I was being sarcastic there. Chisholm let the world know that women are intelligent, we are more than fundraisers, and she crafted a political fundraising model in which large numbers of donors gave small dollar amounts to her campaign in order to keep special interest, mega-donors from taking over the messaging of her campaign. She would be the voice of the seemingly voiceless millions of Americans. Does that model sound familiar. Yes, it does. With the Chisholm Trail, it was “Yes, we can make America large again.” Chisholm wanted the people to know that they would pay for campaign and she worked for the people and not special interest groups. Again, does that sound familiar at all?
In 2000, Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman Senator, announced her bid to become the Democratic nominee for president. Like Chisholm before her, Moseley Braun ran because she felt that women, particularly women of color, have unique voices to bring to politics. Not only do their voices matter, but their have unique policy expertise to offer to all things concerning the human welfare of the United States. These things include policy matters like health care, the environment, social services, policing, immigration, education and school improvement, housing and housing discrimination, jobs and the economy, social welfare and entitlement programs, care for the elderly and social security, and etcetera.
These are the kinds of policies that women would care about, because women perform them every day. Women are mothers to young children and caretakers to aging parents. We see children come into the world and care for our parents as they suffer the ravages of cancer, high blood pressure and diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. Often, women work all day, come home to cook dinner and help with homework, attend parent-teacher conferences, worry over our children, and sometimes split duties with siblings to care for aging parents. Yes, we do also care about foreign policy, but we acutely feel the neglect of domestic policies here at home.
Kamala Harris is the product of a long line of Black women who have been politically astute and unafraid to challenge the divisive politics, harmful rhetoric, and downright vicious policies that hurt our families and seem to erase our country’s empathy towards one another. She did not “just appear” out of nowhere. She stands on the shoulders of everyday Black women who were tired of divisive rhetoric and the failure of men to address crumbling domestic issues. They unafraid to challenge the status quo. And hopefully, she will be fearless, too.
