Hurricane Ian And People Of Color First–Kamala Harris And The Insidious Nature Of Racial Politics

Kamala Harris got chosen for the Vice Presidency because she was a woman of color, not surprising in an age of identity.  Her credentials were fair to middling, her attack dog savaging of Brett Kavanagh at his Supreme Court hearings solidified her progressive credentials, and her mixed race looks – never a sure thing – turned out fine enough to make a very good Hollywood poster.

In the two years of her tenure as Vice President, she has been typically out of the limelight.  Presidents do not like to share publicity, and Joe Biden has had his hands full to keep a steady hand on the tiller.  Rumors swirled in Washington that Harris was really in charge, a modern day Rasputin with the ear of the tsar. 

She could very well been in charge, since the President only read from prepared speeches on predictable subjects, announced massive government spending (‘incentives’), recited the litany of race, gender, and ethnicity at every calling, and made quick exits when questioning began.   He has been a mouthpiece for the progressive agenda, front and center for black people, transgendered individuals, and the urban poor.

In his universe white people exist only as predators, wolves of Wall Street, perpetuators of systemic racism, hopelessly mired in fundamentalism, capitalism, and racial animus.  Each and every appointment has this particular agenda behind it.  The new White House press secretary was what the behind-the-scenes facilitators called a Trifecta – by appointing a gay woman of color of Haitian origin, the Administration was able to check the most significant ‘inclusivity’ boxes in one fell swoop and defer other individual identity appointments. 

Biden is from modest Irish Catholic roots, and in his small Delaware community growing up, desegregation was slow in coming. When the Civil War began, Delaware and other border states permitted slavery but refused to join the Confederacy. Issues of race in Delaware reflected this mixed heritage, and residents had misgivings about school desegregation.

Yet, laws on segregation followed the state’s southern traditions.  Delaware was certainly not a Confederate State, but it was by no means a true Northern abolitionist one; and life in the 50s was much more like the recidivist states of the former Confederacy.

As the President politically matured, he realized on which side his bread was buttered; and despite whatever conservative misgivings he might have had concerning the pace and nature of government intervention to engineer social equality, he became a social justice advocate.  He brought home so much bacon to his small, politically insignificant state that re-election was assured; and standing for civil rights not only would not hurt him politically, but ‘was the right thing to do’.  The road to progressivism was smoothly paved.

Joe Biden was no political firebrand – he was no Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, or Martin Luther King – and he preferred to be a backbencher, working quietly and unobtrusively to influence positive legislation for his state and at the same time hewing to a moderately liberal political line.  Because of his political quiescence, he was a good choice to serve with Barack Obama as Vice President.  Obama was himself a political moderate, and despite his own bi-racial heritage and identification as ‘black’, he was no left wing activist.

So, until his victory as President in 2020, Joe Biden had been known only for his temperance, moderation, and political fidelity.  Then, thanks to the windfall of running against Donald Trump, benefitting from the Trump hatred and deliberate conflation of his idiosyncrasies with the corrupt nature of conservativism, he won the election.

The Left in the euphoria of beating the evil Trump, knew that this was the time to promote their radical agenda.  White House, Senate, and Congress were all aligned and primed to champion blackness, gayness, Third World ethnicity, and anti-capitalism; and Biden, good political sycophant that he was, went along.  Whatever sense of moderation, objectivity, reason, and intellectual carefulness he might have had went out the window; and since he was a newcomer to such radical progressive ideas, he needed help, and Kamala Harris was just the one to give it.

Multi-racialism is a non-starter in progressive America – it’s ok to be half-black, but politically dangerous to acknowledge the white or Asian half.  Whites are the ur-enemy, racist, misogynist, with a built-in animus to the poor, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized.  Asians are usurpers, bulldozing their way through Harvard, Berkeley, and MIT, displacing blacks and Hispanics along their arrogant, self-centered, bullying path.  

So it is not surprising that Kamala Harris has not only downplayed but ignored her Asian Indian heritage.  What would be the point?  She apologized to her mother, felt she had to make no overtures to the Indian community which was busy making money, running IT companies, and leading the nation’s biggest corporations to profitability, and went on her political way as black.

As Vice President and spokesperson for the Biden Administration, she understood that there were no limits on speech that promoted the cause of blackness, diversity, and the progressive agenda.  She became the government equivalent of the ambulance-chasing, race-baiting, shamelessly venal Al Sharpton. She could be outspoken in her support of Black Lives Matter, a racially insurrectionist organization whose executives were found with her hands in the till.  As reported recently in the New York Post:

“It appears that the house of cards may be falling,” says Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that snarfs up most cash donated to the BLM movement. Indeed, “this happens eventually with nearly every scam, scheme or illegal enterprise.”

It’s not just Indiana: The states of Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia have all revoked BLMNGF’s charitable registration, while California and Washington are threatening to hold the nonprofit’s officers personally liable for its lack of financial transparency.

The outfit has failed to file taxes for 2020, the year it raised tens of millions after George Floyd’s death at police hands and the rioting and protests that followed. It has no official leader overseeing its $60 million war chest after its co-founder resigned in May.

She sounded exactly like arch-conservative Barry Goldwater who said during his presidential run in 1964, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”  There were no limits to the measures black people could take in the restoration of equality and justice; and no limit to the amounts of public financing to be put at the service of the black community. 

This last unequivocal endorsement of walkin’ around money struck most conservatives as ironic at best and destructive at worst.  For years the District of Columbia under Mayor Marion Barry opened the municipal treasury sluice gates and poured money willy-nilly into the ghetto neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.  Of course with no financial discipline, no accountability, and no concern for results or impact, the monies were wasted, and the District’s social indicators became worse and worse.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian (2022) which devastated large portions of Florida, reducing Fort Myers and surrounding communities to rubble, Harris stated that any federal aid should first go to people of color.  On the grounds that black people were more severely impacted by the storm – and such vulnerability was because of the persistent racism of wealthy whites – they should be put at the top of the list of government assistance.

Most conservative and moderate critics were outraged.  The storm spared no one. Residences, commercial establishments, public and private infrastructure were all destroyed.  Priority for restoration should be based on objective criteria – restoring power, water, and transportation; returning hospitals and medical facilities to full functioning, investing first in those neighborhoods most damaged, etc.

During the early stages of the COVID vaccine rollout, the District of Columbia provoked similar outrage.  Vaccines were to be delivered first to poor, black communities who are ‘the most in need’.  They were in need explained the District because they were poor and unhealthy and needed protection to improve health outcomes; and of course they were the victims of systemic white racism.

Yet these communities were home to high percentages of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, and their ‘risk factors’ were not because of racism but because of poor diet, dysfunctional family structure, obesity, and nutritional and health ignorance.  The white communities which had done everything right – worn masks, aggressively sought vaccines, and made the right lifestyle decisions – would now be penalized for their good behavior; and the black communities would be rewarded for their poor behavior. The essential American principle of reward, fairness, and responsibility was ignored.

Eventually the District walked back this contentious decision and returned to a first-come, first-serve system, followed by a much more technologically efficient online sign up program.  The District, overwhelmingly black and significantly poor thought it could get away with the most extreme racial politics, but it could not.  Chastened, but never apologetic, city administrators went about their business.

The white American electorate has reached the breaking point.  They have been hammered with accusation and abuse for too long, been told that they are predatory and indifferent, and seen blacks lionized for their race while the roots of their persistent poverty, social dysfunction, and lack of mobility are ignored.  The more that blacks are put at the top of the pyramid, at the head of the line simply because of their race, the less sympathetic the white community becomes.  

America’s history is one of economic mobility.  The earliest European immigrants asked for no favors and no handouts.  Achieving success, social and economic integration, and respect was their responsibility and theirs alone.

Kamala Harris’ race-baiting, incendiary, and destructive comments should be called out for what they are.  She should be censored and punished.