Under the baobab: Kamala Harris’ rise is prime example of women’s influence in politics

Back in the ‘60s Gil Scott Heron wrote a song, “The revolution will not be televised.” He was wrong. It is being televised right now. Only it isn’t the revolution that Gil had in mind. He was singing about the Black Power struggle. The revolution we are witnessing has more to do with gender than color. We are seeing the emergence of women as the major political force in this country. A prime example was the vice presidential debate the other night.

Forget about who “won.” We were privileged to behold an articulate, caring, brilliant, courageous champion expounding on why her party should assume the office of the presidency. Her running mate, Joe Biden, praised her, saying she was prepared to step into the Oval Office at any time. President Trump assaulted her with a barrage of insulting tweets. He only attacks those who threaten him.

Most people were introduced to a viable VP candidate, who could be president. Those of us who have lived with Sen. Harris at the margins of power, Black and brown folk, women, children of immigrants, America’s “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” saw something else. We, the former wretched “refuse of our teeming shore,” saw the revolution.

Sen. Harris is the first woman of Asian descent (India), of African descent (Jamaica) to be a vice presidential nominee. She is the third woman (Gov. Palin, Congresswoman Ferraro) to be so honored. Her predecessors both lost. She is not the first person of color (President Obama) or woman (Secretary Clinton) to make it to the final four. Yet, somehow this is different.

Women of color have historically been at the bottom of American society. They are the victims of double discrimination, racial and gender bias. Often as wet nurses, house servants, and sexually abused enslaved concubines they have lived in close proximity to white masters. The closeness did not result in more privilege. To the contrary it often meant more disrespect.

My grandmother used to clean rich white folks’ houses. Sometimes she would take me with her. I would hear white kids, sometimes younger than me, refer to her by her first name while she would call them, “miss and master, so and so.” I asked her about it. Her only response was: That’s just the way things are. But, her eyes said, that is not how things would always be.

The civil rights movement started to turn things around. Shirley Chisholm was a major trailblazer. She was the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968. In 1972 she audaciously ran for the presidency. In 1980, I was honored to be with her as one of the people chosen to welcome President Carter to New York during his campaign. I asked her what was more difficult — the discrimination she faced as a Black person or as a woman.

“As a woman, without a doubt,” she told me, “In fact some of my toughest opposition has come from Black men in the movement.”

Her first campaign for Congress in 1968, she ran against James Farmer, the co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE. He was one of the Big 6 at the March on Washington in 1963. Farmer had organized Freedom Rides and sit-ins. During the campaign he said, “We need a man’s voice in Washington, not that of a little schoolteacher. “ Shirley won.

When she got to Washington, the “boys” in Congress had no idea of what to do with a woman of her stature. They tried ignoring her. She said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” She asked for and got a seat on the Education Committee. Her first speech from the House floor on March 26, 1969, she criticized the war in Vietnam, called the U.S. hypocritical for its international diplomacy of trying to “make the world free” while racism raged at home. It was a courageous move. At the time most of the country was not against the war.

Sen. Harris brings a lot more than a folding chair to the table. She does not come alone. She graduated from the prestigious HBCU, Howard University. She is a member of one of the most powerful Black sororities, the AKAs. The sisters are putting on the gloves.

Black women have become one of the most powerful forces in our modern political world. It was Black women who led the progressive Democrat Doug Jones to victory over the regressive Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s special election for senator in 2017. It was Black women who almost led Stacy Abrams to an upset win over Brian Kemp in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race.

Things have changed, Granny. The bottom has been redefined as the base. The revolution has come.