Opinion; Women have the best voice her how it felt to have VP Candidate Black Women speak to America. God knows the struggle black women have had in this country just staying alive. We need a change.
Dear Senator Harris,
I don’t know if you changed many minds last night, but something momentous occurred between you behind your Plexiglass shield and me on my couch. Not the thunderclap of history being made by the first Black woman in a vice presidential debate–a strong contender for the first woman to occupy the Oval Office. I expected that, so my ears weren’t ringing. What I didn’t expect was the disarming intimacy of it all. You’ve known women like me for a long time now. As a woman of ambition–a Black woman, at that–you’ve known all your life what it means to blaze a trail in hostile territory. But until last night, I didn’t know you.
When you told the bulldozing Mike Pence, with firm grace, “I’m speaking,” you were speaking for every woman who has ever been cut off in a meeting by a man with a louder voice and the invisible shield of maleness. You drew me into a sisterhood of women on couches, at computers, in rocker-recliners, and at kitchen tables across America and beyond. All colors, all faiths, all origins. I sensed our collective hope that you would not be undone by the burden of high expectations (not least your own), followed by the sweet release of “She’s got this.”
You had it, alright. Fifty-nine percent of viewers–and 69 percent of women–thought you won last night. We didn’t see the effort you must have felt. Watching you was not unlike watching Misty Copeland–her smile radiant, her fouettes on the money, her toes bleeding inside the satin slippers. A ballerina has a partner who lifts her up; you faced an opponent who aimed to take you down by daring you to raise your voice and reveal your inner harridan–“angry,” “strident,” “shrill.” Misogynists (not all of them male) despise a woman who kicks butt. Especially when that woman is Black. So you smiled. You laughed. When you looked into the camerawoman to woman, human to human–it was as if we were sitting at the same table, having coffee.
Mike Pence is a master of disdain. Those tight lips, that head shake took decades of practice. The fly that came to rest on his silver hair (and hung out enjoying the view for two minutes, according to those who keep track of such things) might as well have been sitting on a statue. Being white, male, and over 60, Pence has had years and years to enjoy what used to be the natural order of things, with women like you outside the inner circle. I kept wishing he’d be human for a second and brush the visitor away, but that would have meant admitting he’d lost control. Control is everything to those accustomed to it. Especially when it’s slipping away. When Pence predicted disaster if the Biden/Harris ticket “somehow” wins, he implied yet again that only massive fraud could deprive him and Trump of four more years.
Somehow? We know what would happen if tomorrow were Election Day.
Cries of desperation rang loud this morning. Donald Trump called you a “monster.” A guest on Laura Ingraham’s show, a pastor from Ohio, called you “Hillary Clinton in blackface.” And he calls himself a man of God. I shuddered but I doubt you were in any way surprised. You must have heard it all before and then some.
Today’s ugliest news is not about you, but as a Democratic woman of conviction, you must have felt it close to the bone. Six right-wing extremists have been charged with plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, who on the outer fringes of the right is widely loathed for her efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19. The group has been surveilling her vacation home and has threatened violence before. Yet here you are, Kamala (I think we’re beyond “Senator Harris” now). Lacing up your sneakers to fight the good fight another day. I do like those sneakers of yours. Real-woman shoes for the crisis that’s testing us all.
These last few days it’s taken everything I’ve got to put one foot in front of the other, the kibble in the dog’s bowl, the onion sizzling in the olive oil. Putting one word in front of another became just about impossible, this after a lifetime of writing. I pictured you last night, and heard you say, “I’m speaking.” Then the words came to me.
With hope, admiration, and gratitude,
A new friend