To The Contrary

Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E Rhodes and Leona B Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation Coming up on To the Contrary, Vice President Kamala Harris enters her second week as the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.

And what a launch she's had.

But who is this authoritative, intelligent, only recently powerful woman?

We'll give you insights into what made her the woman she is and where she stands on key issues.

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe' Welcome to to the contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Today's topic.

Who is Kamala Harris and where does she stand on important issues?

Joining us are Republican Consultant Rina Shah, Dr. Sharon Austin, University of Florida professor of political science, and Keli Goff, political reporter for The Daily Beast.

So Rina, let's start with you because, she has as we as we were made painfully aware by former President Trump before an appearance this week on National Association of Black Journalists.

She is biracial.

And, he was talking about that he always knew her as Asian, Asian, Asian.

But actually, from my perspective and doing background reading on her, she was raised by her Indian mother to be a she and her sister to be black women.

You have immigrant, you know, immigrants in your family.

You were raised by an Indian mother.

Tell me about how all that makes you feel.

And what does it tell you about her as a human being?

Well, first I have to say how exciting this moment is.

Despite having made my career in Republican politics, to see a woman of color become a major party's nominee and very well be this close to the presidency.

Not only did she break that ceiling as a VP, I think this moment demands that all women take an honest look at her.

you know, we really should hit reset on her and say, this is a person now that is so close to the Oval Office.

How do we look at her?

Her background deserves some scrutiny, but she's never made any kind of, a secret of that.

She's very proudly, like most kids of immigrants, talked about the sacrifices of her parents.

You know, her father being of Jamaican descent, her mother being of Indian descent, wearing a sari, being surrounded by her aunties, wearing saris, going to India to see her grandparents.

I have a lot in common with her in that way, being a daughter of immigrants as well, my father being from Uganda, my mother being from India and I will say immigrants want one thing for their kids to do better than they did, to be highly educated.

And not only has she cemented her place as the most accomplished and experienced vice president in our nation's history, but also one I was struck when I spoke to a friend of mine who's a voting rights expert the other day, and she reminded me that Kamala Harris has not just, excuse me, I pronounce her name like I do sometimes.

My my paternal grandmother was Kamala as well.

So I need to remember.

And it remains, as I understand, as I understand it, Kamala means, how she pronounces it.

Kamala means, lotus in Sanskrit, which I found very interesting.

Right.

And, this another word for lotus is Lakshmi.

And so my grandmother was Kamala Lakshmi, and I'm Rina Lakshmi.

And so we pass these traditions on, and it's really, really important to me that people know this about Kamala Harris, that she won election at local, state and federal.

Now, I may have policy differences with her, but I can respect that and I can admire that.

I have three little girls I'm raising with brown skin that I am teaching these same things to.

So it's hard for me to look at her and say, gosh, she's getting treated fairly.

I don't think so.

I think unfortunately, we are a country that still has a lot of problems.

when we see women in leadership, we unfairly use a different rubric for them.

You know, kids coming up in American schools are taught, go chase your dreams, go be the best at whatever you do, whether it's academics or athletics.

And I just see that woven into the experience from both of her parents.

And yes, her mom was more predominant.

And if I have to venture a guess, she is from the southern part of India, which is more matriarchal, so I'm not surprised her mother had such a predominant role in her life, but also took the fact that her husband was black and you're in America.

So being a blind.

In this and in the 1970s.

I knew it wasn't.

Let me jump in here for a second, because I want to bring in Keli -Please Keli, you have a different perspective.

Explain to the you write for The Daily Beast and and you, had a column, about being a black woman woman and reacting to Kamala Harris.

Tell us about that.

The first column I wrote for the Daily Beast, I think it was two weeks ago.

Bonnie, I discussed on your show, which is, about the double standard, right?

To have a lot of men, particularly some white men who have much shorter resumes.

than Kamala Harris, who had the audacity to say she was unqualified or to refer to her as a DEI candidate.

And these were literally men.

And some of the men she was being talked about being pushed aside for, including Gavin Newsom, who I would say is less qualified.

That was column number one, column number two, which is more recent, which I think you're referring to is the one where before everyone had finished coalescing around her, I crunched the data and talked about as a black woman, why?

For the good of our country?

I hope she would step aside because as the data which some of which is slightly improved but not really, showed that while she does slightly better than Joe Biden with certain demographics, including black women, she's actually quite behind President Obama in terms of favorables, including with black women and black men.

Now, some people would say it's not that relevant, right, that Barack Obama has 90% favorable, but she's at 77%.

And the point that I made is if you look at the swing states, that's just enough to make a difference in states where it really matters, because, for instance, Obama won North Carolina because his black turnout was just so sky high that it helped to to balance out anywhere that he struggled.

I do want to get, Doctor Austin in here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

You are a professor of political science at University of Florida.

You are writing a book about black women and the presidency.

Were you envisioning somebody like Kamala Harris when you decided to write that book?

I was I think that she has the type of multiracial appeal that will bring the kind of coalition that similar to the one that Shirley Chisholm attempted to put together.

Way back in 1972, that Barack Obama successfully put together in 2008 and again in 2012, in terms of it being multiracial, in terms of being multi-ethnic, and even I think she has the type of appeal to independents that's going to really I think I really have a really good feeling about it.

She's doing all the things that she needs to do to win the election.

Certainly the excitement that she has created just shocked me to 2 or 3 things about her first week, week and a half shocked me.

The, you know, doing a rally in, I believe it was Atlanta with Megan Thee Stallion.

And they had they had to turn away thousands and thousands of people who wanted to see her in that rally.

This was a problem at one point for President Trump in his first election, but it certainly is what has not been a problem for President Biden during the initial part of his campaign or any part of his campaign, really.

She can appeal to diverse groups.

But here's the challenge.

Alex Castellanos, who I think has covered more elections than I have, and particularly in terms of the voters that determine elections.

And he just made this point yesterday that for her, this election is all about Rust Belt voters.

I don't think Megan Thee Stallion helps with them.

And unfortunately, as a black candidate, she can't afford to have.

Yeah, but young voters young but get to young voters because.

I will.

She is energized.

She is energizing young voters of all colors like I have never seen since I was a teenager.

And and the Vietnam War was the energizer at that point in time.

As a black woman, I like Kamala Harris.

I respect Kamala Harris.

I spent a lot of both of my pieces making that clear.

I think it would be very exciting to see her as president.

All I am saying, to quote my mother who pointed out, you're not trying to rain on someone's parade.

You're trying to warn of the thunder and the lightning.

And I think a lot of what you're speaking to of this enthusiasm is people not actually doing their jobs and talking about how that translates at the polls.

And what I am saying to you is if you look at the latest data, for instance, the Wall Street Journal poll that had been going back for the entire year, Democrats are poised to lose young men under 30 for the first time in decades, in an election that was with Biden at the helm.

And they're not seeing Kamala Harris move the needle with them.

Now to your point.

If she can mobilize and inspire younger people of color to vote, then that's great.

Whether or not this.

Obama did.

But again, she's not doing as well with some of the other group friends.

Is that.

Because she's a woman, a woman of color as opposed to a man.

She's actually polling fairly badly with non-black minorities.

So, I mean, there's a lot going here in the data that I think is unfortunate.

It's unflattering.

It might not speak well of our country, Um-hm But it is the fact.

And so that's what I'm trying to deal in as an African American woman who doesn't want to have the experience some of us had of being surprised and disappointed.

Let's get back to Rina.

You are a Republican strategist.

You look you watch data very closely.

Do you think people of color are reacting to her the way Keli is?

Is, saying that they are?

Well, Keli's right to mention that the data that shows that we should be concerned about where she's able to lock up this win, can it be locked up?

And I think that was always a fear in that 3 to 4 weeks where the Democrats were openly in disarray.

Is that is she going to be the best one to take on Trump?

And look, I have, remained Republican for years despite opposing former President Trump.

I think he's antithetical to conservatism.

he's proven that in many ways.

Just this past week at the National Association of Black Journalists, he took a tone that he would not take with other people.

Let's let's be very clear about that.

He takes that tone with women because he thinks he knows he can do it.

He knows he can get away with it.

At the end of the day, I love America so much, but I do find this country to be more sexist than it is racist.

And I say that because my lived experience is is similar to Kamala's in that I sometimes don't present as Indian enough to people.

I'm born and raised in the southern coalfields of West Virginia.

I just want to be American, but I've been othered in other throughout my life.

Oh, you're Indian-American.

I've been this India six times, baby.

I'm not.

I'm not India.

I'm just saying I'm very proud of my heritage.

But this is what women of color are always up against being other.

And when I saw Trump talk about her that way that she leaned into her indianness when she was running for Senate in California, and now she leans into her blackness and I'm like, can't she just be Kamala Harris?

Who?

Well, she's Irish.

But but wait a second.

And I'm, I'm playing devil's advocate with you.

But she also had more recently, she has switched to identifying herself as American and not as she did earlier in her life as one of her two racial identities.

And that seems to me to be an effort.

And, Doctor Austin, if you could please weigh in on this, that seems to be a way of unifying the country, trying to help rid the country of the major divisions that we seem to have based on race and and as, as Rina pointed out, just as much, if not more so gender.

Yeah.

I'd like to respond to the comment about why can't she just be Kamala?

I think that in my research, I wrote a book a few years ago called The Caribbeanization of Black Politics, and I wrote about what's called the one drop rule that was put in place in the 1800s that said, basically, regardless of what you think you are as a person of color in our country, if you have one drop of black blood is the way it was phrased, you are black.

And I think a lot of people who have multiracial identities have to deal with that.

And that's why her mother raised her as a black woman, because I think having.

And.

Let's point out to the audience that her parents divorced when she was seven.

Her mother got sole custody under California law at the time, and raise decided to raise even though she was Indian, her children, her two daughters, Maya, as well as Black and (inaudible) I remember I mentioned something, a few years ago herself as a woman who is biracial.

Her mother's white, her father's black mother raised her as a black woman.

And she mentioned it because that's the way people see her, and that's the way people see Kamala Harris.

She has an identity.

She's not tried to hide, either.

All of the aspects of her identity, whether it be Indian or black.

I think that that's just the way society labels people.

And even Donald Trump, just recently proved that when he mentioned, what is she?

Is she black?

Is she Indian?

And I think that with a lot of candidates of color, they would like to just be seen as a human being or as an American.

But unfortunately, we have such a complex, racial history and complex race relations that society, points out and focuses on their race and their ethnicity.

What's the consensus here among us about whether she can overcome sexism and racism and, and whether she can be a unifying figure as opposed to a polarizing figure.

Whether or not Donald Trump's appearance at NABJ was a success or not on this issue is all determined on who you think he was speaking to.

If you think he was trying to win over the majority of black voters, it was an utter failure.

It was an embarrassment.

But I don't think that's who he was speaking to.

There is a sub community, I would say, with a young black voters who bizarrely have this issue, that Kamala Harris is not authentically Black American because of her upbringing.

It's the same criticism Barack Obama faced.

Now, I think one of the things he had going to his advantage over this Bonnie that she might not, is the fact that Barack Obama, just to be blunt, looks so African-American that he was never going to be confused for white.

Right.

You're never going to find a headline that says, white American, partially black candidate elected to the Senate.

Whereas with Kamala Harris, there are headlines that say, first, Indian-American senator.

There's the Mindy Kaling video where she says, I identify as Indian.

I don't have a problem with that.

I don't think that makes her any less black.

But for some reason, there is a group of voters that Donald Trump does not have to win.

He just has to play into their fears and stereotypes about that to convince them to stay home.

And I and let me, let me raise the point because you you referred to it in Rina, Doctor Austin jump in both President Obama and Kamala Harris are fair skinned.

Right.

And all that is, is that.

Because America would never... - Yes.

vote in a person of color with dark skin?

Doctor Austin can speak to this more than I can, but the first black senator, Ed Brock, looked white.

The first black governor, Douglas Wilder, looks white, the first black congressman elected post-Reconstruction Adam Clayton Powell looks white.

Our first Miss America, Vanessa Williams, has blue eyes.

There's a lot of studies about the preference for white people when it comes to subjective decision making, i.e.

not sports, to lean towards preferences of of minorities who look whiter.

So okay, let me let me ask you this very tough question.

Is it only a preference of white voters, or is it also a preference of voters of color?

And how do they differ?

I think it's a preference of among both, but I think it's more so a preference of white voters, because we talk about this in my African-American politics class and the issue of colorism, which basically says that people who have lighter skin, especially women with lighter skin, are thought to be more beautiful and that even men with lighter skin are thought to be more intelligent.

And I think that a lot of people who supported Barack Obama and also support Kamala Harris would never admit it.

But I do think that colorism has a lot to do with it.

And my class, we compare Kamala Harris to Stacey Abrams, for example, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Georgia twice in in 2018.

She came close to winning, but in the end she lost.

And as you know, Stacey Abrams is, a dark skinned woman with natural hair.

more.

I guess what we would define is more African features.

And I think in some sense, maybe that might have been something that a lot of people might have said, that she was less beautiful than Kamala Harris.

But whether we want to admit it or not, unfortunately, those are issues that, some voters are persuaded by.

Okay.

And enlighten me, please.

The one the voters who prefer light skinned candidates of color, does that include people of color themselves?

I would say yes that it does.

Yeah.

I mean, I've raised up with that, you know, and I'm struggling with it as I'm a mother now to, you know, my my eight year old just came home from summer day camp, asked why her hair wasn't blond.

Eight years.

I haven't got that question from her.

And she said, I wish my hair were lighter.

Mommy, I don't like it when I get tan mommy because she's been in the pool all summer and I, you know, I, I have had books here.

We have black friends, we have brown friends, we have white friends.

I've tried to expose her to everything.

And I'm still getting this and my own complicated history with my own immigrant mother asking me to stay out of the sun.

Oh, wear a lighter foundation.

Me looking at myself when I walk the halls of Congress and catching myself in the mirror when I'm with a group of my white congressmen.

who's my boss and other people who work for him, and realizing and feeling like I wasn't beautiful because I didn't wear foundation that day.

Well, now.

You and all your friends, at To the contrary know that is not the case.

Exactly.

Well, but we do.

It's time to switch topics now to the candidates top legislative priorities.

In 2016, when Kamala Harris ran for the Senate, we interviewed her about her priorities.

We need strong leadership that recognizes climate change is real, and there is work that we can do to mitigate its harm.

there's the work that we need to do to reform the criminal justice system.

I've long worked on that.

Harris also spoke to the issue of immigration.

Still a hot topic.

When we have an election cycle that is suggesting that, our country would somehow tolerate the idea that we would deny people entry into our country because of the God they worship.

when we have people who want to be leaders, who are suggesting that an individual cannot be a judge in a court of our land because his parents were born in Mexico, we know that the challenges are really great right now, and it requires those of us who are prepared to and have a track record of fighting for our ideals to stand up and say, that's not who our country is, and we want leadership that that that reflects the best of who we are, not the worst of who we are.

So, Doctor Austin, I've heard you speak publicly before about that Immigration may be the toughest issue for her to navigate.

Where does she stand?

Is it the same position that she's had throughout her political career?

How should she change it?

Or will she change it as she's after she secures the Democratic nomination?

Well, I think that's definitely going to be the toughest, issue for her.

And we've already seen some evidence of that because the belief is that she was the border Czar during the Biden administration and that she was in charge of the border.

Now, as we know, the Department of Homeland Security is in charge of the border.

but the truth is that she was sent to certain countries to find out the root causes as to what would cause people to want to immigrate out of their home countries and immigrate, undocumented, into America.

But a lot of people don't believe that.

And one of the things that I've mentioned in the past is, it doesn't have to be true.

You just have to convince your constituency to believe that is true.

And Donald Trump is really making an effort to convince his constituency and also, undecided voters that she was in charge of the border.

And then she dropped the ball because there was a surge in the numbers of people who crossed the US-Mexico border.

A lot of that was because of the end of the pandemic.

But as Kamala Harris has recently pointed out, there was an effort to pass a bipartisan bill that would have made it possible for there to be stronger border enforcement.

And she, according to her, said that Donald Trump persuaded Republicans to vote against that.

I think the only way she has a shot of winning this election is if she says as little about immigration as humanly possible, because if she actually says what the progressive base that she needs, what their policies are, she loses swing voters and she loses conservatives.

And if she actually leans into what Obama did, which was actually deport a lot of people, then she loses her base.

So I think it's one of those issues where she, she there's little that is humanly possible is the only way.

She has a really a shot for the White House.

Interesting.

Rina, do you agree with that?

somewhat.

Now, of course, we've seen the Harris campaign come out swinging, saying she was never officially the border Czar, but in the minds of a lot of Americans when we all were really paying attention right, in that 2020 to 2022 time frame as we were coming up out of the pandemic, there is a sense that this administration failed us on the border.

All of us sitting here know that there are so many more factors that led into that.

but what we thought the RNC this past month was calls for mass deportation, tying immigration, illegal immigration, these migrants at our southern border directly to crime and public safety.

And that's where I'm seeing it stick with center right women and independently minded women that they, too are quickly going to the border when they talk about Kamala Harris.

Because for me, there's four buckets.

There's economy, immigration, public safety, foreign affairs, and then abortion.

And, you know, on the fourth point, she's going to be masterful.

Immigration is really the place where even though she put out a good ad this past week, she's either got to keep quiet or go a couple miles further than this Trump-Vance ticket, which is again, unfairly casting her as, having failed.

If Kamala Harris were not a woman and we're not a racial minority weighed down by some of all of these other expectations that come with that, then what she could say is speak honestly and say most migrants aren't criminals, but some have committed crime.

There are women who have been murdered by migrants, and it doesn't make me less of an American to talk about that.

But the fact that she won't say it, other Democrats are dismissive of it is not going to help her with some of the voters she needs to win.

And that's what I mean about her being stuck between a rock and a hard place, and probably saying as little as possible.

I want to get to, and we're about out of time, but but her position on abortion rights, she has returned the language to the language that existed politically around that topic right after Roe versus Wade was handed down.

She talks about it's a woman's right, a woman's choice she does not talk about It's between you and your doctor, which some women might interpret as meaning giving the doctor more control over your own life in your own body than you want to give.

So her position is stronger.

Doctor Austin, is that going to be a winning position for her?

I think the the fact that she needs to get the support of as many women as possible, especially women who are not in favor of things like project 2025, which is being tied to the Trump administration, women who are pro-choice, women who believe in reproductive rights.

She really wants to get those votes of those women who live in those suburban communities, especially in the battleground states.

So I think the more she talks about issues like abortion and shows the differences between her position and that of president, former President Trump, I think the stronger a candidate she'll be.

I agree with Doctor Austin, but I would like to add and maybe this is controversial for many folks, but I don't I don't believe this election will be won on the margins with black people and people of color.

I actually believe it'll be won and and determined the outcome will be determined by white liberal people.

So we know who suffers when there's, a cut off of access to reproductive care.

To me, it's a private decision.

but we know that black and brown women, particularly women of lower socioeconomic status, do suffer for these are women that are going to take that issue and, you know, determine the outcome of this election.

No, it'll still be white liberal women.

So in that regard, I do agree with Doctor Austin and who needs to hear this message.

But I also think women are not a monolith.

And these other issues, such as economy and public safety, are front of mind for all women.

You've got to be thinking about what's front of mind in November, and we've got a long way to go.

Well, thank you all for your keen insights.

Really.

I learned so much from you, all three of you this show.

Thank you for joining us.

And we want to have all of you back as you all know.

That's it for this edition.

Keep the conversation going on our social media platforms.

Reach out to us at to the contrary and visit our website.

The address on the screen and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.