THIS headline was borrowed from the response of a Black American voter, interviewed two days before the November 5, 2024 Presidential Elections, on whether Vice President Kamala Harris wouldn’t naturally be ‘A good black president for African-Americans…’
Up to election day, Harris and ex-President Donald Trump were said – by the misleading mainstream American and Western media – to be ‘too close to call’ in the seven battlegrounds ‘swing states’, where ‘a one-percentage point’ difference, in any, could have decided which face won the race to The White House.
The international media kept portraying Harris as the very possible next Black face at The White House, but Trump targeted Harris’ skin colour from the day after President Joe Biden belatedly (and reluctantly) stepped aside as the Democratic Party’s candidate, starting off by questioning “whether she’s Black or Indian…”
But VP Harris went through nothing with Trump that Barack Obama didn’t in his first run for the Presidency.
Trump treated her like a colourless alien groomed by a “communist” Jamaican father and an “alien” Indian mother, who’d opened up America’s borders to millions of illegal “rapists, gangs and thieves”, including “Haitians eating cats…”
Vice President Harris was second-in-command at the Oval Office in Washington and did her job well enough to earn Wall Street’s confidence to put her in the Oval Office at the White House, even (officially) attracting more ‘billionaire’ funding than Trump.
Indeed, almost everything she said on the campaign trail was as Uncle Sam’s new Chosen One, just as Obama was chosen to lead the flock when the Democratic Party went astray in his time.
And never mind her direct appeals to Black voters, nothing Harris said on the hustings would have changed set-minds among Blacks and Latinos in the last days, as many felt she and the Democratic party had been “taking” them “for granted”.
Blacks, Latinos, Muslims and Arab-Americans (and minorities generally) traditionally voted Democratic, but this year Trump attracted more, because, like other voters elsewhere, they’d also learned from history, making wiser political choices – and no longer only or mainly based on race.
The world has seen black faces in high places before in the USA – from UN Ambassador Andrew Young to National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces Colin Powell to President Barack Obama and VP Harris.
The US has long been and is still good at window dressing, two black faces today presenting and representing, implementing and defending the US position supporting Israel against Palestine at the UN Security Council, as the Biden Administration’s Ambassador and Deputy Ambassador, while the Secretary of Defense is also black.
But candidate Harris disappointed Americans who still mistakenly believed that ‘a Black President’ would naturally or automatically take better care of Black Americans or People of African Descent in America – just because they look like her.
The 2024 US presidential race also clearly demonstrated Uncle Sam doesn’t care that much anymore about his colour and would easily transform into ‘Auntie Kam’ (if that was to be) just to keep both hands on the global tiller and the national kitty.
Same in the UK, where the opposition Conservative Party settled for their first Black Leader, but only after their worst defeat at the polls after 14 years in office and five Prime Ministers, including two women.
Like her predecessor Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (of Indian heritage), Kemi Badenoch represents the party that traditionally defends the rich right-wing minority that runs Britain – and though not like billionaire Sunak, she’s also seen as married to money.
The new Tory Leader defeated James Cleverly and all other ‘non-white’ candidates (including former fellow Cabinet Minister Priti Patel), but just like David Lammy being made the Labour Government’s Foreign Secretary, Badenoch’s appointment, by selection and election, is partly (some would say mainly) to attract the large Black and Brown (Minority) vote.
Badenoch is already seen and heard as trumpeting for White Britain, questioning why the UK should pay reparations and insisting it should instead be praised for abolishing slavery.
Yet, bad enough as that may be, she has started out-shining Prime Minister Sir Keith Starmer in Parliament, taking the Tory fight to Labour’s knight in shining robes, who’d failed in a bid to drop a veteran Black Baroness (and Labour’s longest-serving Black woman parliamentarian) – from the party’s slate in the last election.
The ‘black faces in high places’ experiment didn’t work well in Scotland or Wales either, as anti-immigrant sentiments run deep down blue-blooded veins on both sides of The Atlantic.
Scotland’s first son of Arab and Muslim immigrants didn’t last long as First Minister and the first black First Minister of Wales is holding on while his first term lasts.
But while women and ‘people of colour’ may now be appointed to jobs hitherto exclusively held by white Brits, it’s also true that many do face eventual moves to remove and replace the showcased window-dressings – and not necessarily with people looking like them.
Like Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Liz Truss, Opposition Leader Badenoch will also leave a patented mark on the pages of UK political history – and as a daughter of ‘people of colour’, she’ll also still be treated by her peers like People of African Descent everywhere else in the Western world today.
But, like VP Harris and ex-President Obama, her policies in office won’t be driven by the defence of her race, but instead – as already being demonstrated in the UK House of Commons – by what needs to be said to please those responsible for making her the highest-ranking black face in the highest place in UK politics today, as possibly the next Prime Minister of the UK (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales).
Like Obama, Badenoch can only defend, protect and promote His Majesty’s Government and The Crown’s imperial interests, at home and abroad, at all times – and from beginning to end, forever and ever…