Travel back in time with me for a moment, won鈥檛 you? The year is 2008. Barack Obama has just received the Democratic nomination for president. . A Black man is running for the highest office in the country, and there鈥檚 a chance he could actually win. Many Americans never dreamed that this day would come, and regardless of how the election turns out, to them, Obama represents a new era 鈥� one defined by progress, change, and . When he is eventually elected, that symbolism is magnified. . The word . There are critics and skeptics and realists, of course, but they are being drowned out by .
Not fifteen years later, the world is a different place. As Kamala Harris steps into the spotlight as the Democratic party鈥檚 newest presumptive nominee, the mood surrounding her candidacy seems decidedly less breathless. Harris, of course, 鈥� if elected, she would be the first Asian American in the Oval Office, the first Black woman 鈥� heck, the first woman of any background. And while there are , and , there seem to be just as many who learned some hard lessons from the Obama era 鈥� and .
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So what exactly have we learned in the past 14 years?
For one thing, we鈥檝e learned that was a . Instead, as the journalist Wesley Lowery wrote in his book American Whitelash, the election of Obama 鈥渓ed us down a perilous path and into a decade and a half (and counting) of explicit racial thrashing.鈥� The post-Obama era, he argues, has been characterized, in large part, by many white Americans becoming 鈥渃onvinced, in the aggregate, that they were the targets of antiwhite bigotry and being systematically discriminated against.鈥�
People on the right learned that they could gain a lot of traction by foregrounding racist and nativist policies. They learned and face almost no consequences. They learned that did not risk getting you canceled; instead, it created a viable path to the highest halls of power. They learned that huge swaths of people , and that they were .
People on the left learned that having a Black president . They learned that many people in the general public had no qualms about drawing distinctions between 鈥済ood鈥� Black people like Obama, and . They learned (or were reminded) that simply . They learned that the felt almost as insurmountable as the ones outside of it.
All of which is to say, we are . Very few people seem to think that Harris鈥檚 nomination portends the kind of utopic future that seemed possible 鈥� at least to some 鈥� all those years ago. And while that may seem sad, or jaded, perhaps it鈥檚 actually the thing that should be cause for the most hope. Because maybe, just maybe, Kamala Harris will get to anchor the next phase in her political career on something more substantive than the details of her heritage. Maybe, she鈥檒l get to run 鈥� and be judged 鈥� according to the strength and substance of her policies and ideas. It won鈥檛 immunize her against the racist or sexist attacks . But it may mean that the people who support her are willing to let her serve as more than just a symbol.
This story was written by Leah Donnella and edited by Courtney Stein.
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