Celebrating Kamala Harris’ historic victory

Valerie Dudley, director of multicultural education and training at Temple’s Institutional Diversity, Equity, Advocacy and Leadership  (IDEAL)

I’m extremely ecstatic and excited. She’s the first woman of color to be able to rise to this level in U.S. politics. She’s a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority so my sorors and I, all of us, were ecstatic to see her even getting the nomination. To see her win was just awesome. 

She represents for African Americans and other people of color a sense of Black excellence. She went to an HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] and I’m also a graduate of another HBCU. In the work that I’ve done in higher education, sometimes in predominantly white institutions I’d be working with faculty and they would say, “Oh, this person went to an HBCU” and would act as though having a degree from a historically Black college was lesser than. I think in her role she embodies a lot of significance. 

Right after the election, on social media, they had a picture that really resonated for me. There was a picture of her as the vice president and then all the other vice presidents that preceded her. And all you see is a sea of white men. Race being one thing but men on top of that as well. When I think about young kids, especially young girls, she is now a role model like Michelle Obama was a role model for young Black girls, who would see her and think, “I see someone that looks like me and she lives in the White House.”

The American dream is if you work hard, you can achieve. But for people of color the reality is that hasn’t always been true for us. We’ve always had to be better than or work twice as hard to be able to get to that level, and still not ever see someone that represents us. And now you can look to the White House and say, “Hey, here is Kamala Harris and she is a vice president and she represents us.” And so for young girls, they can say, “I really can be anything I want to be.”

Robin Kolodny, professor of political science

Two other women [Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin] have been nominated to be vice president and one woman nominated to be president [Hillary Clinton] but they did not succeed on Election Day. So that’s the historic first: that Kamala Harris is the first woman to occupy an office that is one heartbeat away from the presidency. That’s a very significant thing. It wasn’t even an issue that you should consider not voting for Joe Biden because he put a woman on the ticket. None of the Biden supporters were deterred. If anything, Harris almost certainly increased some turnout among women of color in particular. 

I had a female friend of mine, a very accomplished professional, who said, “Well, why did he put himself in the box like that? He should pick the most qualified person. Now he’s excluded half the population.” I said to her, “You realize that women and people of color have been excluded for centuries? Why weren’t they in the choice set?” There are more women now, about 100 women in the House of Representatives. The problem is it’s 435 representatives and women are 51% of the population. So it really should be 218 or so, but OK. We’re not there yet. As women become more confident about running and men become less threatened about women going into the political realm and more comfortable with domestic roles, then you’ll see a difference.

We don’t entirely know what Harris’ win means for U.S. politics yet, but this is what I would predict. It means that you can put a woman of color on the ticket and it doesn’t damage the ticket. Already, that’s one of the taboos that’s gone. Even the state of Georgia, which wasn’t expected to go Democratic, goes Democratic and does not have a problem at all. She didn’t lose any votes. That’s number one. Number two, and much more important, is what portfolio Biden is going to give her. It’s clear from the way that he worked with Barack Obama and just his way in general, that she’s going to have something that’s just hers. She’ll head up a task force or commission or something. That will give her the opportunity to shine and to have a lot more people comfortable with her as a national executive figure. That’s really the key.