Kamala Harris, Catalyst

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Last week, my wife and I made a bet. She bet that Joe Biden would pick a white woman as his running mate. I bet he would pick a Black woman. The loser in the bet would have to wash the other’s car.

All week long I felt uneasy, almost fearful, and not because I dreaded washing my wife’s car. She’s an intelligent woman, and I worried whether she might be right. For far too long, Democrats have helped (mostly inadvertently) to institutionalize racism by failing to speak, act and fight against it at every opportunity.

Could this have been yet another instance in which fear of others’ racism in the voting booth leads Democrats to abandon their principles? Could this have been yet another case of Democrats letting a crisis and “good trouble” (John Lewis’ immortal words) go to waste—in this case the national, multiracial uprising after George Floyd’s police murder?

My first reaction on learning of Harris’ selection was cerebral. I had to reconcile my preference for others with Biden’s selection. I thought about how Harris’ empathy and immense debating talent could help the ticket win, and possibly also to govern. And of course I felt relief that Biden had not made the catastrophic blunder of pushing yet another all-white ticket at this historic inflection point.

As the evening wore on, as I watched the thrown-together bios on TV, a strange thing happened. A soothing calm, akin to resolve, overtook me. For the first time since Trump’s unforeseen election, which had happened four years ago as I awoke from shoulder surgery, I felt an unaccustomed sense of confidence. I began to feel that, yes, everything could turn out all right.

A great weight had lifted from my heart. If an otherwise comfortable white Geezer could feel that way, you can imagine how much-maligned and much-neglected people of color and young folk feel, not just here at home, but all over the world.

Despite our national psychotic break in electing and failing to remove Trump, we Americans are still the last, best hope of mankind. Our credo of “all . . . are created equal” still pulls migrants to our shores. Just the idea of having an equal opportunity to succeed—even if it’s often illusory—pulls them in like a magnet. And they enrich us with their hopes and can-do spirit.

Earlier this week PBS Newshour aired a feature on migrants hiking through Panama’s Darien Gap. It’s some sixty-five miles of tropical rainforest, beset with torrential rains, swollen rivers, poisonous snakes, avaricious (human) coyotes, and murderous bandits. After (and if) exhausted and hungry migrants make it through, they have another thousand-plus miles of trek to reach our borders and claim asylum or other immigrant status. (Right now, some 2,000 of them are frozen in place, in a tiny village in Panama, by the pandemic.)

Yet still they come. The intrepid trekkers included Jamaicans, like Senator Harris’ father and Colin Powell’s parents. They also included Pakistanis fleeing Taliban terror. Pakistanis—so far from their homes and anything like their native climate or arid mountain terrain! Yet still they come, with the same spirit as the indentured servants who endured months-long ocean voyages in the dank holds of sailing ships to build this nation from scratch.

The Republicans have had forty years to destroy our nation with their “greed is good” and “profit above all” philosophy. They have incited and exploited fear and hatred of immigrants at the same time as they kept them in fear and legal limbo in order to exploit them as docile workers. Trump’s corruption, incompetence and nastiness are the logical conclusions of the GOP’s governing philosophy for two generations. So is its outrageous but persistent coddling of racists.

Trump’s crude efforts to divide us by race, national origin, religion, ethnicity and sexuality are just a continuation of the divide-and-conquer policy that defeated our late-nineteenth-century progressive labor movement. It took the Great Depression for our workers to overcome that division, unite, unionize and build the most prosperous and egalitarian consumer society in human history. That society lasted until Ronald Reagan began destroying it by crushing the Air Traffic Controllers union and making “It’s your money” the catchphrase of our people’s relationship to their own government.

Now we have another Depression in progress—the Pandemic Depression, which Trump’s corruption and incompetence helped cause and accelerate. But that’s not all. Our demographics are changing, gradually but inexorably. By 2043 we will have no ethnic or racial majority. Non-Hispanic whites will be like everyone else, just another big chunk of ice dissolving in the great Melting Pot. An alliance among people of color and white progressives, within that Melting Pot, could soon change this nation’s politics as never before.

The demographic end was never in doubt, and it’s not now. The question before us is whether that great Melting Pot will still be a democracy and the envy of the world. Kamala Harris’ candidacy and her possible future presidency bring us closer to a favorable answer to that question.

But make no mistake about it. Senator Harris is a cautious, careful, order-seeking, left-leaning moderate. In that respect she’s much like President Obama, now and then. She’s 55 years old. She has her governing philosophy—and her empathy—worked out. She’s not likely to morph suddenly into a radical or firebrand.

But isn’t that how catalysts in chemistry work? They don’t change themselves. Instead, they promote powerful chemical reactions, without themselves changing or being consumed.

Just so, Harris will move us gently and surely toward our no-majority, fully egalitarian society, step by careful step. The journey may be steep and hard at times, but we will get there, just like most trekkers through the Darien Gap. At least that’s what gave me hope, and a startling dose of calm resolve, for the first time since President Obama left office.

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