It is early August 2020 and Joe Biden is about to announce his pick for Vice Presidential candidate any day now. The moment will be historic, as he has already committed to nominating a woman. Increasingly, calls have gone up for his nominee to be a woman of color.
The sense of urgency intensified this summer, as the social ills and injustices that plague U.S. society exposed the disproportionate lethality, and health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 virus on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people and communities. The persistent and disproportionate killing of Black people by law enforcement and attacks on Black people by neighbors and strangers for existing while Black (what one legal scholar has labeled ‘white caller crime‘ continued, seemingly unabated, throughout the pandemic.
These issues have many going further to insist the nominee be a Black woman. Moreover, given the phenomenal momentum and political success of so many Black women in recent years, Biden has a rich candidate pool to draw from. The truth is our demographic has had an outsized role as the beating heart of the Democratic party and is literally its most reliable voting block.
However, there has also been an ugly undercurrent amid this unprecedented moment, becoming more visible and vocal in the media from both sides of the political spectrum, and even from members of the former VP’s own nominating committee, as we get closer to Biden’s announcement. The latest jab is a Mayor of a Virginia town posting to Facebook that Biden is about to announce his pick is Aunt Jemima.
It hurts my soul to type that.
While the honor and dignity of the actual woman who inspired the brand image of the popular breakfast products is unquestioned, her imagery on product packaging is based, for many, on a caricatured, offensive and outdated stereotype.
And yet that is what a man elected to represent an American city actually posted to Facebook (since deleted, but the Internet never forgets).
Hundreds of Black women leaders and activists have published an open letter calling out the racism and sexism in such blatant attacks and the implicit bias in the ways that Black women candidates are being described and treated by would be allies and the opposition alike. Let’s call it out and stop the ugliness in its tracks. Let’s treat all of the amazing, highly accomplished, and qualified women being considered for the VP nomination with the humanity and respect that they and every person on Earth deserves.
I added my name to the open letter and invite you to do the same below, no matter your political affiliation or who you support for VP this election.
