Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden held people in great suspense while he mulled over who would become his Vice Presidential running mate. When he made his announcement, it turned out to be his former rival, Senator Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris is a very talented and accomplished woman. She is also the subject of much controversy. She is currently the only Black American female in the U.S. Senate, and was formerly Attorney General of the state of California. Many people were ecstatic when Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate. It was a surprise, therefore, to see the viciousness of attacks on her by some Black people. It took some time for the Trump administration to come up with a way to denigrate her. But it took no time for the “Crabs-In-A-Barrel Brigade” to pounce.
Some Black people are holding several things against her. For one, they say she is not Black. Her dad is Jamaican and her mother is East Indian. There is a birth certificate circulating that says her mother is “Caucasian,” and her father is Jamaican. Those who are circulating the birth certificate are using it to “prove” that Kamala is Caucasian! They continue to circulate this disinformation even though it has been pointed out on numerous occasions that nowhere on the birth certificate does it assign a race to Kamala. This is a deliberate disinformation campaign, and the Russians or bots are not responsible for it: it is being circulated by African Americans.
Kamala is a graduate of Howard University, a renowned HBCU, and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first African American sorority in the United States founded in 1908. Furthermore, if you look at her, it is very obvious that she is Black!
Some folks are also upset that she married a White man (Jewish) and was an extremely successful prosecutor who, as Attorney General of California, was responsible for the incarceration of a lot of Black men. This has been the biggest hue and cry; that she hates Black men.
What has not been said is that sections of California needed the intervention of a strong Attorney General. A Black female mayor of one of California’s beleaguered cities that suffered from extremely high crime rates went on record to say that Kamala worked with the city to reduce those rates and that she was very effective. In her mind, someone like Kamala was really needed.
Though there is no doubt a lot of Black people support Kamala, it is really sad to see how many are viciously opposing her. We are witnessing the granddaddy of the “crabs-in-a-barrel” syndrome! We all know that no one is perfect; and we know that politics often generates strange bedfellows. So we know that neither Kamala nor Biden is perfect; they both have baggage.
But their transgressions and misdeeds pale in comparison to those exhibited by our current president.
Incredibly, President Trump, who has also been impeached, is committing what some are saying is a federal crime. Because he opposes mail-in voting, falsely claiming that it is plagued with fraud, he has masterminded a massive voter suppression ploy. He appointed a new postmaster general who immediately let some staff go, slowed down the process, removed mail-sorting machines, and removed mail boxes from some communities in an attempt to thwart the mail-in voting process. This is an egregious breach of justice.
It is also said that Trump wants to get rid of Medicare, Social Security, and a number of other initiatives that were part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Basically, Donald Trump wants to re-create America in his image, which apparently does not have the well-being of the American people in mind.
This became patently obvious when he did not develop an effective strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and now insists that students and teachers return to schools where it is certain that some people will die as a result. At press time, more than 169,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
With all of this, there are still Black people saying that they will not vote for Biden and Harris, which translates into votes for Trump! This is outrageous—if we do not defeat Trump in November, things can get much worse, and there are those who even say that our democracy is at stake.
Ultimately, it is time that we resist the crabs-in-a-barrel mentality and mount a unity campaign in order to save us and our country.
(Reprinted from the Chicago Crusader)
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