The College Fix

‘Race does matter. Gender does matter. … we have not gotten past it.’

Discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’s race and gender is important ahead of the upcoming presidential election because some voters do care about a candidate’s identity, Macalester College Professor Duchess Harris said in a recent interview.

“Colorblind does not work when you go to cast your vote. It just does not. So it works in both directions. There were African Americans who had never voted, who came out to vote because Barack Obama was running for presidency. So in that way, it mattered,” the St. Paul, Minnesota professor told KARE 11.

Harris is the first woman, first black American, and first South Asian American to serve as vice president, and she could be the first to be elected president of the U.S., the American studies professor said. She is presumed to be the Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden announced earlier this month that he will not run for re-election.

Speaking with the news outlet, the professor said the fact that Harris is a woman is significant because the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its abortion decision Roe v. Wade in 2022. Now, under the new ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson, states may ban abortions again.

“We’re in a different moment than when Hillary [Clinton] was running because we are post-Dobbs. So people are going to be thinking about a woman presidency differently,” Professor Harris said.

The private college professor said black women are loyal Democratic Party voters, and 94 percent supported Clinton.

Female voters also tend to consider candidates by how their stances on various issues affect their entire family, she said.

“So Black women will ask, ‘How does this impact my father? My husband? My son?’ What we have found is that Black men will not say, ‘How will this impact my wife?’ But we think now with Vice President Harris, that will be changing,” Professor Harris told the news outlet.

As an example, she said an “unprecedented” fundraising event last week for Harris, “Win with Black Men,” raised $1.3 million in four hours.

Professor Harris said she and other scholars have studied the vice president for years through The Kamala Harris Project, and she believes the candidate’s identity does matter to voters.

“So race does matter. Gender does matter. I understand that people want us to get past it, but we have not gotten past it,” she said.

The vice president’s race and sex have been a focus of other scholars’ comments as well. Professors at Rutgers and Northwestern have said Harris will be the target of “sexist and racist” attacks in her race against former Republican President Donald Trump in November.

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