As has been duly noted, The New York Times‘ front page celebrating Biden’s announcement of Kamala Harris as his running mate rivaled its moon landing coverage. A gigantic photo of a saintlike Harris took up half of the space above the fold, under a 2-inch headline: “HARRIS JOINS BIDEN TICKET, ACHIEVING A FIRST.”
Specifically, the “first” was: “Woman of color in No. 2 slot of major party.”
History was being made! “It was historic most of all, and especially sweet for many Black women” … Harris “is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party” … “It’s a stand-alone milestone, irrespective of who the opponent is.”
(That last quote was from Vanita Gupta, who was head of the civil rights division in Obama’s Justice Department. As I keep telling you, Black America, immigrants are getting all the good diversity jobs.)
No offense, but Harris was picked because she’s a woman of color. So it’s not really that amazing that she’s a woman of color. She didn’t swim the English Channel. She didn’t even win a primary. She’s not Margaret Thatcher.
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Hey, New York Times! How about devoting three-fourths of your front page with a 2-inch headline to Trump’s picking a young real estate investor as his chief White House adviser?
At 34, Jared Kushner Is Youngest Top White House Aide in History
Jared Kushner, Shatterer of Ceilings
For Jared Kushner, The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer
(Me screaming in the corner: “He’s the son-in-law of the person who picked him!!!”)
If Democrats wanted us to treat Kamala’s selection as an historic achievement, the process needed to be color-blind. All the gushing about THE FIRST WOMAN OF COLOR AS VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE is like the articles every year gushing about the Nigerian who got into ALL EIGHT IVY LEAGUES!
Ever heard of affirmative action? In the same year, a thousand white and Asian kids with the exact same credentials didn’t get into any Ivy League schools.
Biden made perfectly clear — as did his supporters and sponsors — that he would be considering only women of color. Oh my gosh! A woman of color has somehow climbed to the top of the greasy pole!
Kamala’s big achievement is that she was better than the other women of color with visible positions in the Democratic Party. Of which there were five — maybe seven, as long we’re counting Jamaican Indian Americans as “African American”: a mayor, some representatives and a member of Obama’s administration who’d never run for office.
