Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Milwaukee during the planned Democratic National Convention on August 20, 2024. Photo credit: Anna Moneymaker – Getty Images
Donald Trump shocked a room full of black journalists this month when he claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris “accidentally turned black” several years ago. The former president has also repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name in recent weeks and said she was treated like a “toy” by world leaders.
The first woman of color to run as a major party presidential candidate is expected to continue to attract political attacks with racist or misogynistic undertones leading up to Election Day. The advice many women of color gave Harris for the next 10 weeks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week could be summed up in four words: Don’t be baited.
“Some things you don’t even have to acknowledge — you have to pretend you didn’t hear them,” said the Rev. Shari Nichols-Sweat, a 66-year-old retired music teacher from Chicago who belongs to the same historically black sorority as Harris, Alpha Kappa Alpha. Nichols-Sweat was at the United Arena Thursday night, having just heard Harris’ speech at the convention.
In a speech to the country, Harris described how, as a child, she experienced first-hand the challenges faced by her mother, who was “a brilliant, 5-foot-tall, dark-skinned woman with an accent” who immigrated to the United States from India at age 19 with dreams of becoming a breast cancer researcher. “But she never lost her cool,” Harris said. “She was tough.”
Harris has taken the same approach. Rather than expressing outrage at Trump’s comments or calling them racist and sexist, she has often responded in mild tones, saying such comments are part of the “same old show” of disrespect and dismissing Trump and his allies as “weird” and calling him an “unserious man.”
Harris will face Trump in a prime-time debate in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, where he could further question her racial identity and attack her personally in front of a nationally televised audience. She is already preparing for the debate to plan how she will personally respond to Trump’s tactics, according to campaign officials.
Former first lady Michelle Obama addressed the racist rhetoric and attack lines being used against Harris during her speech at the convention on Tuesday, warning that people will “do anything they can to distort her past and her accomplishments.” “My husband and I, unfortunately, know a little bit about that,” she said, before naming Trump, who made baseless “birther” allegations against Barack Obama. “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to make people afraid of us. You see, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be black,” she said.
Obama gave Harris some advice: “Scaling down is never the answer,” she said. “Scaling down is petty, it’s unhealthy and, quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.”
Like Harris, Angela Alsobrooks, a Democratic Senate candidate who delivered a prime-time speech at the DNC on Tuesday, could make history this election cycle as Maryland’s first black senator. She tells TIME that the racist and demeaning attacks against Harris are a sign that Trump is afraid of losing: “He’s attacking her because she’s winning,” she says. Harris’ candidacy has “excited and engaged people” and she “should continue to be exactly who she is and keep working,” Alsobrooks says.
Alexandria Alston, 33, a Chicago fashion designer and embroiderer who attended Harris’ speech Thursday night, said the vice president is doing the right thing by not giving too much air to Trump’s insults. “She’s focused on what she needs to keep her going. When people attack you, sometimes you have to look ahead and not necessarily pay as much attention to them.” These provocative comments have been effective diversions in previous campaigns, Alston says. But she believes this time is different. “You know it’s a tactic of his, and that’s why I don’t think we’re falling for it,” Alston says.
Rather than hurting Harris, the attacks weaken his opponent, says Krystal Kidd of Southfield, Michigan. “I’m really disappointed because I really thought he was a dynamic businessman before,” she says. “The attacks show that he’s not doing the due diligence to be competitive in this race.”
Like so many other attendees at this week’s convention, Kidd hopes Harris continues to ignore such efforts by Trump. “She doesn’t have to do anything to fight back against him,” Kidd says. “Everything she’s worked for speaks in her favor.”
Write to Nik Popli at [email protected].
