Making history without highlighting it: Kamala Harris remains silent on her gender and race

US Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is on the cusp of becoming the first woman and the first African-American of Indian origin to hold the White House . However, she has chosen not to highlight her gender or race in an effort to connect with independent voters and moderate Republicans.

At 60, her career has been marked by firsts: she was the first black district attorney and the first woman to serve as attorney general in California, the first Indian-American to serve in the Senate and the first female vice president of the United States.

Despite those accomplishments, Harris has never used her race or gender as central themes in her campaigns, and she is not doing so this time around.

The reason she is not emphasizing the historical aspect of her candidacy is the need to attract independent voters and moderate Republicans, who, unlike many Democrats, tend to associate the country’s leadership with a male figure, Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for Women in Politics at Rutgers University, told EFE.

“For these voters, Harris must dismantle the preconceived image of who can occupy the presidency and who should be trusted to lead the country,” he said.

Harris prefers to let the facts speak for themselves. Instead of emphasizing her status as the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, she projects herself as a leader capable of unifying the country beyond racial differences, following in the footsteps of Barack Obama (2009-2017), who avoided making race the focus of his electoral message.

With the exception of Obama’s historic speech in Philadelphia in March 2008, titled “A More Perfect Union,” the then-candidate rarely mentioned the color of his skin during the campaign. The historic nature of his election has already become part of the narrative surrounding him.

Harris, for her part, made clear what her approach to race and gender would be at the Democratic National Convention in August, when she was officially named the party’s nominee, just a month after US President Joe Biden announced the end of his campaign.

In his speech, he presented an image of a strong leader prepared to lead the country through its most difficult moments, promising that as commander in chief he would ensure the United States maintains “the most powerful and lethal military force in the world.”

She took the stage in a sober navy blue suit, in contrast to the white that Hillary Clinton wore in 2016 in honor of the suffragette movement, when she made history as the first woman to accept the presidential nomination from one of the two major parties.

Unlike Harris , Clinton made gender a central theme of her campaign, mentioning in her speeches the women who had paved the way for her and constantly referencing the cracks she and her supporters were making in “the highest, hardest glass ceiling.”

Democrats, then, saw gender as a tool to generate enthusiasm among voters. As Dolan explains, Clinton was such a well-known figure to Americans for her role as first lady and senator for New York that it was necessary to bring something new to the table to spark voter interest.

Is the US ready for a female president?

Clinton’s loss in 2016 led many to conclude that the country was not ready for a woman in the White House. But Dolan argues that that reading doesn’t reflect reality: Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes than former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump, even though she lost because of the electoral college system.

“The American people have already shown that they are absolutely willing to vote for a woman,” the expert said.

In fact, data from the Gallup consultancy, which has been measuring Americans’ willingness to vote for a woman for nearly 90 years, show a radical change. In 1937, only 33% were in favour, but today that percentage has risen to 93%.

Gender is no longer the decisive factor for most voters. Instead, party and ideology set the tone, with most choosing one candidate or another depending on their level of education, race, or whether they live in rural or urban areas.

The ground seems set for a historic change, but it remains to be seen whether Harris will be the one to break the last barrier that still separates a woman from the presidency of the United States on November 5 .