“Obviously, we have eyes.” That was the somewhat jaded response by Larhonda Marshall, a 42-year-old health care worker from Chicago, about all the attention being paid to Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity.
As a Black woman herself, Marshall said that the symbolism of a Harris victory would surely be on her mind as she considers her vote for president. But it was not the most important factor at all, she said. And she wishes the Harris supporters who keep mentioning it would drop it. “I’m tired of hearing it,” Marshall said. “That’s not an issue. I just want what’s best for the country.”
This week, after former President Donald Trump claimed falsely that Harris “happened to turn Black” only recently, the vice president did not attempt to clarify the obvious: that she has, in fact, been Black all her life. She did not mention race at all. Rather, she denounced Trump’s “divisiveness and disrespect” in a previously planned speech to a historically Black sorority, Sigma Gamma Rho.
Harris, whose father was from Jamaica and whose mother was from India, has long resisted attempts by others to categorize her identity. “I am who I am,” she once said. “I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.” In interviews, dozens of voters across the country — Black, white, Hispanic, Asian — echoed her unburdened attitude toward discussing her race, even as she sits on the cusp of making history as the first woman of color to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
When describing the barriers a possible Harris presidency could break, people called that a “cherry on top” and “a bonus” compared with their most pressing concerns. Likely voters said — and recent polling appears to confirm — that their first priority is not to make history with their ballots. Instead, they want to hear more about what kind of person Harris is and what kind of president she would be.
That could reflect the fact that Barack Obama’s two elections were such milestones, while Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss made voters wary of embracing candidates simply to shatter a glass ceiling. But it’s also a different time. From school board meetings to board rooms, Americans are fighting over how to ensure opportunity, as they also question whether affirmative action and diversity and inclusion programs are achieving what they’re supposed to. Add in widespread distrust of the political process, and it’s evident why many say they want to hear precisely how the next president will make their lives better.
This may help explain why Black Americans are supporting Trump in rising, if still small, numbers. A poll of likely Black voters in seven battleground states, conducted in mid-July by the left-leaning group Data for Progress, found that a minority agreed with the notion that Democrats cannot pass over the first Black female vice president.
A majority preferred the more pragmatic option: picking the person with the best chance to beat Trump. “While Kamala Harris is a very popular pick, justifying her selection through an appeal to identity would probably be unnecessary, unconvincing and counterproductive with Black voters,” said an analysis of the poll by Split Ticket, an election modeling and data analysis group.
When it comes to Harris, “we can all see that you’re Black — everybody knows that,” said Bradley Thurman Jr., a 53-year-old self-described independent in Milwaukee. Thurman, who is Black, had not been enthusiastic about voting for President Joe Biden. But, he said, Harris makes him “a little bit more on board” with Democrats. But Thurman, who co-owns a coffee shop called Coffee Makes You Black, added that he wanted to hear more detail about her ideas. “I want to know what your policies are and what you’re bringing to the table and what you’re proposing,” he said. “And, you know, how it’s going to affect me?”
The desire to see Harris in a multidimensional way may reflect that the power of identity politics has diminished. Mara Siegel, who is white and works in marketing in Atlanta, said she believed much of the effort to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 was hollow, with many people putting “a lot of energy behind somebody whose politics they did not align with.”
The reason, added Siegel, who considers herself to the left of most Democrats, was “strictly because of the excitement of potentially having a female president.” And while Siegel, 28, said appeals to emphasize Harris’ identity are “a distraction,” she still plans to vote for her because “there is such a real chance of her winning.”
In interviews, Harris supporters of all races said they were concerned that if she talked more directly about her race, she risked feeding the backlash that has been building over diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in businesses and universities.
Some of Trump’s conservative allies have attacked her as a “DEI hire” — claiming that she became vice president only because she is Black. Others said they viewed Harris’ rise as a continuation of Barack Obama’s legacy. He, too, preferred not to talk about himself as a Black man but also had to balance his self-reflection about race with the fact that America had never elected a Black president in its 220 years of existence.
“Let’s let the woman move forward,” said Jay Kruz, 63, the owner of a small vintage shop near downtown Dearborn, Michigan. Kruz, who is white and described himself as politically neutral, added that he has heard very little references to Harris’ race and thinks that is a good thing. That so many Americans today see race as a secondary or tertiary issue with a Black candidate on the presidential ballot could be a measure of how far the discussion on race and representation has shifted since Harris became Biden’s running mate in the summer of 2020.
Back then, the country seethed with outrage after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, throwing a spotlight on racial disparities in the criminal justice system and other powerful institutions. Corporations established new divisions dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion for employees.
In the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden vowed to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. And his shortlist of vice-presidential contenders was dominated by Black women, including Karen Bass, now the mayor of Los Angeles; Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser; and Val Demings, then a representative from Florida. It took only a few years for the landscape to change. The Supreme Court banned universities from considering race as a factor in admitting students. Republican-led states began slashing programs dedicated to diversity. Many corporations laid off or disbanded their diversity initiatives.
And many Americans started to question whether all the efforts to draw attention to racial bias had actually done anything. A 2023 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 61% of people thought the Black Lives Matter movement had not been effective at improving race relations. Asked if the increased focus on race and racial inequality had improved the lives of Black people, 57% said it had not. Nicolaz Hamilton, 27, who works at an ax-throwing venue in Atlanta, said he finds the idea of the first president who is a woman of color to be “a good thing,” generally speaking. “So long as she just gives us basic human rights,” he added. “That’s what I care about.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.