What They Fear
It took roughly six minutes for Kamala Harris to eviscerate Ron DeSantis without even saying his name.
Because what Harris did was speak directly to how and why learning history is so critical. It is not only a window into our past but it is a lens with which to understand our present and our future. One cannot understand current world events without having learned the background story as to how these events unfolded. The strikes in Paris. The war in Ukraine. The protests in Israel. Each with a story to be told. Each a direct result of historical trends leading to this very moment.
Ron DeSantis and Republicans are scared shitless of Kamala Harris because she is the product of a generation of engaged civil rights activists. Her parents were right in the thick of the movement. Harris herself has admitted being a fly on the wall during the movement's height. She became more and more politically engaged while at Howard. She went on to become a prosecutor with the intent of reforming the system from the inside. As a state Attorney General, she was one of the 50 most powerful lawyers in the country. As a senator, she became only the second African American woman elected. And now, as vice-president, she serves as a representative of the United States on the world stage and is first in line to the presidency.
Republican culture wars are not about protecting children. They're about shielding children from learning the truth. Truths that Vice-President Harris spoke about at Cape Coast Castle. Republicans hope that without A.P. African American history, students will never learn or see content like what Vice-President Harris delivered yesterday. They hope to minimalize, and in many cases erase entirely, the painful portions of American history. They want this next generation of children thinking of slavery as a minor inconvenience that was overcome by Black folks pulling up their bootstraps and getting to work. This allows them to paint any "unsuccessful" Black men or women as simply lacking the drive they need to be successful. The "lazy Negro" stereotype is never far from how they still, to this day, see the world.
Instead, American history needs the good, the bad, and the ugly. It needs the full story of slavery. Of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Of redlining. Of a segregated military. Of returning Black soldiers being unable to apply for the G.I. Bill. Of segregation. Of the failed War On Drugs. Students today need to be critical thinkers and ask themselves not only how we got to this point but why. Why are mortality rates for Black women so much higher than White women? Why are there so few Black senators and representatives? Why is it so hard for Black families to acquire generational wealth? And why are White power brokers so hesitant to have a serious conversation about reparations?
It's not that Republicans don't want to have these conversations. It's that they don't want to even acknowledge the problems in the first place. Because to admit inequality is to admit that somehow there is an imbalance of power. And to admit an imbalance of power is to admit that you yourself might have benefitted from a system that has held others down for well over 400 years. That ruins the Republican "get up by your bootstraps" mantra. If the system is stacked against you, there's no way for you to overcome it. That raises the question as to why this system is the way it is and why it is that Republicans fail to address these inequalities time and time again in the legislation they either produce themselves or fail to support.
The seeds for these types of conversations are planted in the classroom. These seeds were percolating in the mind of a young Oakland girl who wondered why she was getting bussed across town to go to school. That same girl was learning history at school and having conversations with her active and engaged parents at home. She was becoming political and eventually attended an HBCU before attending UC Law in San Francisco. What Kamala Harris' career path shows us is just how critical an early education can be in shaping and molding young minds. It is a path that made her who she is today.
That is what Republicans fear. Free-thinking young men and women of color who start to question why. Why am I the only Black kid in my AP History class? Why do all the Black kids sit together in the cafeteria? Why do all the kids in my neighborhood look like me? History doesn't always tell us the answers. Instead, it tells us where to look and what to ask. Yesterday, Kamala Harris gave the entire world a history lesson. Which gifted Black woman gives a similar speech 40 years from now on the world stage is the question that Republicans are terrified by and they will do everything in their power to make sure the next generation has as few Kamala Harrises as possible. They believe that by eliminating their history, they will be eliminating their future.
How wrong they are.
Because what Harris did was speak directly to how and why learning history is so critical. It is not only a window into our past but it is a lens with which to understand our present and our future. One cannot understand current world events without having learned the background story as to how these events unfolded. The strikes in Paris. The war in Ukraine. The protests in Israel. Each with a story to be told. Each a direct result of historical trends leading to this very moment.
Ron DeSantis and Republicans are scared shitless of Kamala Harris because she is the product of a generation of engaged civil rights activists. Her parents were right in the thick of the movement. Harris herself has admitted being a fly on the wall during the movement's height. She became more and more politically engaged while at Howard. She went on to become a prosecutor with the intent of reforming the system from the inside. As a state Attorney General, she was one of the 50 most powerful lawyers in the country. As a senator, she became only the second African American woman elected. And now, as vice-president, she serves as a representative of the United States on the world stage and is first in line to the presidency.
Republican culture wars are not about protecting children. They're about shielding children from learning the truth. Truths that Vice-President Harris spoke about at Cape Coast Castle. Republicans hope that without A.P. African American history, students will never learn or see content like what Vice-President Harris delivered yesterday. They hope to minimalize, and in many cases erase entirely, the painful portions of American history. They want this next generation of children thinking of slavery as a minor inconvenience that was overcome by Black folks pulling up their bootstraps and getting to work. This allows them to paint any "unsuccessful" Black men or women as simply lacking the drive they need to be successful. The "lazy Negro" stereotype is never far from how they still, to this day, see the world.
Instead, American history needs the good, the bad, and the ugly. It needs the full story of slavery. Of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Of redlining. Of a segregated military. Of returning Black soldiers being unable to apply for the G.I. Bill. Of segregation. Of the failed War On Drugs. Students today need to be critical thinkers and ask themselves not only how we got to this point but why. Why are mortality rates for Black women so much higher than White women? Why are there so few Black senators and representatives? Why is it so hard for Black families to acquire generational wealth? And why are White power brokers so hesitant to have a serious conversation about reparations?
It's not that Republicans don't want to have these conversations. It's that they don't want to even acknowledge the problems in the first place. Because to admit inequality is to admit that somehow there is an imbalance of power. And to admit an imbalance of power is to admit that you yourself might have benefitted from a system that has held others down for well over 400 years. That ruins the Republican "get up by your bootstraps" mantra. If the system is stacked against you, there's no way for you to overcome it. That raises the question as to why this system is the way it is and why it is that Republicans fail to address these inequalities time and time again in the legislation they either produce themselves or fail to support.
The seeds for these types of conversations are planted in the classroom. These seeds were percolating in the mind of a young Oakland girl who wondered why she was getting bussed across town to go to school. That same girl was learning history at school and having conversations with her active and engaged parents at home. She was becoming political and eventually attended an HBCU before attending UC Law in San Francisco. What Kamala Harris' career path shows us is just how critical an early education can be in shaping and molding young minds. It is a path that made her who she is today.
That is what Republicans fear. Free-thinking young men and women of color who start to question why. Why am I the only Black kid in my AP History class? Why do all the Black kids sit together in the cafeteria? Why do all the kids in my neighborhood look like me? History doesn't always tell us the answers. Instead, it tells us where to look and what to ask. Yesterday, Kamala Harris gave the entire world a history lesson. Which gifted Black woman gives a similar speech 40 years from now on the world stage is the question that Republicans are terrified by and they will do everything in their power to make sure the next generation has as few Kamala Harrises as possible. They believe that by eliminating their history, they will be eliminating their future.
How wrong they are.