Last week, Barack Obama proclaimed that he had to tell “some truth” to America’s black community. In a condescending speech to black workers at a Kamala Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh, the former president took time to castigate “the brothers” for “coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses” for not enthusiastically rallying behind the Democratic candidate. In his telling, this scepticism could only be due to sexism, not political differences, a spiteful desire to block the progressive achievement of a first female president.
With the backlash from Obama’s faux pas intensifying, to the point of jeopardising the black male vote even further, the Harris campaign this week released the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men”. As a set of policy proposals dangled specifically in front of black men, some seem fair and innocuous — such as launching an initiative to address sickle cell anaemia which disproportionately affects African American males compared to other demographics. Others are patronising and cringe-inducing, such as making access to cryptocurrency easier for black men — black people are disproportionately into the crypto market, apparently — and promising to legalise marijuana.
These policy ideas are at least consistent in that they stem from Harris’s progressive racialism. As a senator, and in her current role as Vice President, she has championed similar “race-conscious” policies such as racially based hiring programmes and schemes to improve “representation”. During an “audio town hall” yesterday on The Breakfast Club in Detroit, an appearance geared towards courting a black male Millennial and Gen-Z audience, she went further, stating that she recognised the “disparities” which affect black people and that reparations would be “studied” and considered.