[What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s Black Innovators & Changemakers issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.]
Domino. Domino.
Only spot a few Blacks the higher I go.”
—Jay-Z, “Murder to Excellence,” 2011
The Inauguration
I almost went to Kamala Harris’ inauguration. “Almost,” of course, is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The former vice president came up short against Donald Trump’s Third Reich… I mean, third run at the Oval Office. Harris, who would have been the first woman to ascend to the country’s top office, is admittedly many stone throws away from my politics. But in a land of constant dreams deferred, I was struck that, maybe this time, the top-of-the-top may be finally cracked by a Black woman.
Could she be the First Black woman to be president?
Kamala, or rather her platform, was hardly inventive. When engaged on its fundamentals, it was largely conservative. Not conservative like Charlie Kirk… conservative meaning, it preserved many pieces of America as is—just as a conservationist preserves the trees of a forest. It was a platform that largely fit hand-in-glove with Bidenomics: protect corporate global interests, overfund all military and law enforcement, and yes—promote electric cars, along with a dash of maternal health reform, abortion protections, and a short-lived national rent cap promise.
So while racists and right-wing extremists predictably (and laughably) labeled her a “communist” and “Comrade Kamala,” it’s noteworthy that the former San Francisco district attorney—while certainly more left than any Dixiecrat—was hardly the face of The Revolution™.
I mean, she campaigned with Liz Cheney, guys.
Like, Dick’s daughter.
Dick’s daughter, guys.
I was a senior in high school when Barack Obama first blazed the presidential campaign trail. When he made his stop in Portland to shore up liberal votes, my mom forced me to attend, talking about “history” or something. I did not want to go. By the time I left the coliseum, that had changed. When Election Day ‘08 came around, I was as swept up in Obama-mania as anyone. And in many ways, I’m unsure if I would’ve become the man I am today—with abolitionist critiques of Obama, while also maintaining a level of admiration—without the eight years he gave me a mirror as the First Black President.
So too, I considered Kamala for my two girls.
Identity Politics
Charlie Kirk was not a Klansman. He was a podcaster.
And as his millions of fans said after he was killed last year, “he just talked to people.”
Except he didn’t just talk. He was a prevailing force of erecting and fortifying permission and policy structures around the country.
In addition to claiming Black people were “better under Jim Crow,” he also had an amazing habit of attacking people who just happened to be Black.
His greatest hits include stating that Ketanji Brown, Michelle Obama, Joy Reid, and the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee “didn’t have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a White person’s slot to be taken somewhat seriously.”
And of course, when he called MLK “awful” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “great mistake.”
RIP Charlie—he loved a good “talk.”
“Identity Politics” certainly do not replace my need for good policy. However, race and gender continue to be handed down as heavy heirlooms bestowed down to each generation of Americans.
This means, for many Black citizens, the prospect of shared experience in a candidate, often carries a hope that representation will also result in some level of transformation.
Last fall, Harris did what all presidential hopefuls do when their dreams are deferred—she published a book. During her nationwide book tour she made a stop in Portland. On stage, she was engaged by one of the quintessential changemakers of our time, Rukaiyah Adams, of the 1803 Fund. Their hourlong dialogue found the pair exchanging fewer theories on policy, and more on what it means to be a Black woman carrying the weight of the country’s expectations right now.
Just hours after Harris announced her candidacy, Win With Black Women sent an invitation to its 4,000 members to support her ticket and organize through a Zoom call. By the end of the call, more than 44,000 people had joined in—raising $1.5 million for the campaign in three hours.
“I was one of those women,” Adams submitted to the vice president from the stage.
Pain. Pride. Sisterhood. All nuzzled in those few words.
First Blacks
In America, much emphasis is put on “First Blacks.” First Blacks are important to the American story. They show, at the very least, possibility—in this so-called promised land of opportunity. This possibility is often maximized in the country’s mythmaking as a beacon—proof of pathways to collective prosperity. For if they could do it, so could you (even if untrue). So too, First Blacks often bear the weight of history as they maneuver their present. First Blacks are rarely the first qualified—they are just the first to crack the ceiling.
And so, low and high, First Blacks often provide us unique insight on the State of the Union.
Case in point: Few names in Portland politics ring as many bells and sirens as Jo Ann Hardesty, the First Black woman elected to Portland City Council. During her four years in office, Hardesty, a Baltimore-bred Marine veteran, often found herself in the crosshairs of the city’s centrist and business class.
Elected in 2018, Commissioner Hardesty led the transformation of the city’s 911 infrastructure with the launch of Portland Street Response, an unarmed, trauma-informed, first-response program that provided a real-life alternative to police. She championed the Portland Clean Energy Fund, a tax which buoyed environmental efforts across the city and has been looked to as a national model.
Despite such accomplishments, Hardesty, like Harris, discovered the claws of racism firmly entrenched in her almost every move.
Former Portland Police union president Brian Hunzeker leaked a false claim to the media that Hardesty was involved in a hit-and-run during the heat of her re-election bid. While the claim was debunked, it likely played a role in ushering her law-and-order, Republican-lite successor, Rene Gonzalez, into the seat. In the end, Hardesty sued the city, was paid a $650,000 settlement, and has since stepped away from the spotlight.
Today, however, sprouting from the family tree of Hardesty is a solid bloc of progressives on the newly expanded and reformed 12-person Portland City Council. The so-called Progressive Caucus (the multicultural group of folks colloquially known as “Peacock”), was elected during the same cycle Harris lost her bid for president.
Much like Hardesty, Peacock has been crawling up the asses of centrists and extremists aplenty. The Mercury’s recent report, “Racist, Dehumanizing”: Chat Images Show Portland Power Players Disparaging Councilors of Color,” outlined this dynamic in depth, detailing text exchanges including powerful developer Brian Owendoff and some colleagues who notably, during the vote for council president, referred to Peacock members using racist and homophobic language.
Owendoff and his colleagues’ messages provide insight to an uncomfortable truth—not all systemic barriers are erected (or fortified) by card-carrying Segregationists. Sometimes they are—as Owendoff said while defending himself against the Mercury’s article—“volunteering 4 hours of their time, helping African and middle eastern refugees with affordable housing.”
Reconstruction Era
In the decade following the Emancipation Proclamation, this era welcomed the largest wave in American history of Black officials serving at local, state, and federal levels. From 1865 to 1877, about 2,000 Black people held elected office—marking the first time America’s democracy became anything beyond White powered. Black women, of course could not vote (nor run) then, because they were women, and America was and is ruled by the patriarchy. But this time—the Reconstruction Era—represented the potential of transformation beyond the surface. As formerly enslaved people rose to the ranks of power, their lives improved.
This came to a halt as Republicans and Democrats soured on the prospect of shared representation, power, and democracy as the country took on a series of economic hits. White supremacist groups then saw an uptick in activity, particularly in the Ku Klux Klan.
And with this rise, everymen and electeds (hooded or not) effectively Deconstructed a prospect of shared democracy, through a series of racist physical and legislative attacks on Black officials and voters.
Famed scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois, who was the First Black man to graduate from Harvard, penned a book titled Black Reconstruction. In it he recounts the end of this era saying, “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery.”
This Deconstruction lingers today, in our multicultural democracy where most Americans are now eligible to vote. Harris, elected in 2016, was just the tenth Black person to ever serve in the U.S. Senate. She was only the second Black woman to hold a federal Senate seat. She was the first woman to become Vice President.
She was then, in her attempt at the Oval, the First Black woman to fall from so high.
The Inauguration (Reprise)
I was going to go to Kamala’s inauguration. I would have gone guarded, knowing I would have been witnessing—as she put it during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention—her becoming the head of the “strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Not a Revolution. Not even a Reconstruction.
Simply a reframing of the forest.
However the fact of the matter remains—the majority of the voting public will still take the unwieldy hand of a maniacal White male conquistador over the steady hand of a Black female conservationist.
Because for them, Symbols Matter.
How much would have actually transformed for the 99 percent of us under President Harris?
I guess we’ll never know.
