Kamala Harris and the scourge of identity politics

Harris’s identity was the focal point of comments by the Obamas and Joe Biden, too. Barack Obama said her ‘story’ would inspire people. What about her policies? There was, bizarrely, much talk of ‘little girls’. Michelle Obama said that when she was ‘a little girl’ she got used to ‘hardly ever seeing anyone’ who looked like her in the newspapers or on TV. But now, thanks to Harris, ‘all those girls growing up today… will be able to take it for granted that someone who looks like them can grow up to lead a nation like ours’.

Is politics for adults or children? Is it about inspiring voters (adults) to support a vision for the best way to run society and organise and distribute its resources, or is it about sending a message to little girls (not little boys?) about people who look like them? The little-girls discussion, where Harris’s role is reduced to one of a kindergarten teacher keeping kids happy, was pursued by Biden too. ‘[L]ittle black and brown girls, who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities… today, just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way’, he said.

The strange focus on the feelings of little girls points to an infantilising dynamic in the politics of identity. For all the discussion of Harris as an empowering figure sending a message of strength to people of colour, in truth even her own impressive achievements are downplayed or pushed aside when she is reduced to a tokenistic figure whose most important value is apparently her heritage and skin colour.

From the front page of the New York Times to the world of social-media influencers, Harris has been talked about primarily as a woman of colour. Not as a former district attorney and attorney general or as a senator, but as a woman with a certain shade of skin. This is how identitarianism dehumanises people. Harris’s chief role, it seems, is to increase the visibility of non-white people. Perhaps she should be seen and not heard? No wonder the discussion of this high-achieving 55-year-old woman can so casually drift into chatter about little girls.