With the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris to the highest of the Democratic list, the Republicans Rebuilding a campaign strategy who has spent months focused on running against President Joe Biden. An emerging theme claims that Harris laughs an excessive amount of at inappropriate moments – Part of a broader argument that Harris is “strange.”
“I call her “laughing Kamala”'” former President Donald Trump said at a rally in Michigan on July 24. “Have you ever seen her laugh? She's crazy. You can tell a lot from a laugh. … She's crazy.”
As a Professor of American Studies with a deal with race and politics, I do know that black women within the United States have a history of fighting violence and oppression. And all too often, once we feel and show joy, ridicule follows. We are seen as too loud, too emotional – So, to “Black Women.”
History shows that that is a well known dog whistle. Black women have been sexually provocative Jezebels, emasculating Sapphires or submissive, caring Mammys in popular culture. These labels obviously don't fit Harris, so Trump has created a brand new epithet: “laughing madly.”
Invisibility has long plagued black women and girls. In response, their decisions, from clothing to spirituality to Activist groupsis usually about becoming visible. They do that to attract attention to injustice and to supply a vision of justice based on their experiences.
In my opinion, black women should have some joy in that visibility, and Harris is paving the way in which in that area.
Exhilaration in battle
Many public views of Harris don’t reflect Trump's portrayal. The Vice President Anecdotessmile, laugh and even – shock – Dancing in public have inspired a flood of fan posts and videos that capture their energy and what media scholar Jamie Cohen calls their “lovable awkwardness.”
For these observers, Harris embodies the thought of Black Joy – a national movement that began in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. NAACP Legal Defense Fund Senior editor Lindsey Norward explains:
“Black joy is an essential part of the entire history of black people in their struggle for dignity and restoration… the unrestricted opportunity to go out and enjoy all the good things in life.”
Act of self-definition
In a book I co-edited with Wake Forest University political scientist Julia Jordan-Zacherywe examined a related concept: Black Girl Magic. Our book describes how Black women and girls maintain their humanity within the face of hostility by fostering community, countering invisibility, and creating spaces for freedom.
Sometimes this implies drawing attention to their struggles. An essay within the book quotes African American Policy Forum Managing Director Kimberlé Crenshaw explains the hashtag #SayHerNamewhich was coined to boost awareness for black women who’re victims of police brutality and anti-black violence.
“Although Black women are routinely killed, raped, and beaten by police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality,” Crenshaw wrote. “Nevertheless, incorporating Black women's experiences into social movements, media reports, and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racist state violence against Black and other communities of color.”
On July 23, 2024, Harris released a press release expressing sadness over the “senseless death” of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old black woman who was shot in her home in Illinois by a deputy sheriff who responded to a report of a burglar. The deputy sheriff was released and charged with murderbased on bodycam footage from one other deputy showing him threatening Massey after she reprimanded him after which shooting her.
“Sonya Massey deserves to be safe,” Harris wrote. “The disturbing footage released yesterday confirms what we know from the experiences of so many people – we still have a lot of work to do to ensure our justice system fully lives up to its name.” In other words, Harris spoke Massey's name.
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Our book argued that within the age of Trump, whom black women almost without exception see as hostile to their interestsIt is more essential than ever for black women and girls to seek out the balance between humanity and magic.
As then-First Lady Michelle Obama said in a speech on the Black Girls Rock Awards in March 2015, young black girls often hear “voices telling them that they are usually not adequate, that you may have to look a certain way, behave a certain way; that you just are too loud whenever you speak your mind; that you just are bossy whenever you take the lead.”
Around this time, creator and social media influencer CaShawn Thompson began tweeting “#BlackGirlMagic” because, she said, “magic something that people don't always understand“Sometimes our successes seem to come out of nowhere because often the only people supporting us are other black women.”
The hashtag went mainstream on the 2016 Black Entertainment Television Awards, where actor and activist Jesse Williams a passionate discussion about race in America. He concluded with a subtle nod:
“The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the viewer. That's not our job, okay – stop it… the thing is, just because we're magical doesn't make us unreal.”
Williams respectfully referenced the #BlackGirlMagic movement, alluding to the incontrovertible fact that black girls' and girls's identities include resistance to narratives that exclude them and a willingness to define themselves.
Harris has faced this challenge persistently over the course of her profession as district attorney, attorney general, senator and vice chairman. Now she must reinvent herself as a presidential candidate. And even with a big campaign team, Harris could have to do it herself.
As Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison noted, the black woman has “nothing to fall back on: not masculinity, not whiteness, not ladyhood, nothing. And from the profound desolation of her reality it may well be that she thought of something herself.”
Our book highlighted the emotional strength that black women use to perform so many feats while overcoming insurmountable barriers. It isn’t any exaggeration to call what they do magic.
To run a successful campaign, Harris will need quite a lot of support – from black women and plenty of others. There will likely be serious issues, from border security to foreign policy to the economy. But Harris also has an actual likelihood to bring her humor and positive energy to a very dark vision from the GOP – without letting them dictate when she will laugh.
image credit : theconversation.com