# Biden's choice for vice presidential candidate **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 10, 2020, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505 "2020-04-10T15:04:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 51
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1003 "2020-08-13T14:43:40Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I’m not expert, but I’d imagine that if her Black ancestors are Caribbean going back many decades, there might be a good possibility that some of them were slaves at some point. There’s a 100% probability that a Black Jamaican is the descendant of slaves. His or her ancestors were enslaved by either Spanish colonists or, later, British colonists. Yes, I know, there were possibly an insignificant number of Africans who emigrated to Jamaica voluntarily. Not enough to count. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1004 "2020-08-13T14:44:36Z")
Yes and no. This is the rhetoric that creates hard-core Trump supporters. People that aren’t nuanced thinkers about their own social views, and who react emotionally. Trump isn’t just talking to people who already agree with him, he’s talking to all the people whose political alignments are currently nebulous. Giving them this narrative–that she’s an uppity black woman–can be effective. All of it–disrespectful, nasty–is about establishing her as the sort of person who can’t follow the rules, can’t go along with society. Someone _abnormal_. The sort of person who shows up at a party and dominates conversation and doesn’t wash their hands after they use the bathroom. Someone who puts their clothesline in the front yard. People that buck social norms grate, and characterizing your opponent as basically weird is pretty powerful. Sure, this line of attack wouldn’t work if all the implicit racism and sexism weren’t already out there, but they are, and we shouldn’t think of the set of “hard-core Trump supporters” as static, a group that can only shrink as they die off. This shit has to be called out. It’s dangerous. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1005 "2020-08-13T14:52:41Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > There’s a 100% probability that a Black Jamaican is the descendant of slaves. Well, just to cover ALL possibilities, I think slavery was abolished in Jamaica in the early 1800s. A Black person could have moved to Jamaica from someplace other than Africa after that, become a citizen, and had a kid. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1006 "2020-08-13T14:56:05Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > let’s assume a truly Black person this time > [@ThelmaLou](#): > > You’re serious, right? Words fail me… > [@Alessan](#): > > So Jamaicans aren’t Black now? This was the subject of some serious debate among black Americans when Barack Obama was a senator, and was first considering and then undertaking a run for president. Perhaps one of the most widely-publicized arguments along these lines was made by Debra Dickerson in the online liberal magazine Salon, in an article called [Colorblind](https://www.salon.com/2007/01/22/obama_161/), published in early 2007. The subtitle for the article was, " Barack Obama would be the great black hope in the next presidential race – if he were actually black." Here’s the crux of her argument: > [@](#): > > “Black,” in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can’t be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won’t bother to make the distinction. They’re both “black” as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term. Dickerson, who is black by her own definition, still supported Obama, and in a bunch of interviews after this piece was published, she made very clear that she liked him and hoped he would win the presidency. She was, she said, simply making a broader point about the political and cultural meaning of “black” in the context of American history. > [@](#): > > To say that Obama isn’t black is merely to say that, by virtue of his white American mom and his Kenyan dad who abandoned both him and America, he is an American of African immigrant extraction. It is also to point out the continuing significance of the slave experience to the white American psyche; it’s not we who can’t get over it. It’s you. Lumping us all together (which blacks also do from sloppiness and ignorance, and as a way to dominate the race issue and to force immigrants of African descent to subordinate their preferences to ours) erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress. Though actually, it _is_ a kind of progress. And that’s why I break my silence: Obama, with his non-black ass, is doing us all a favor. Black writer and cultural commentator Stanley Crouch had made a similar point a few months earlier, in late 2006, in a piece titled [What Obama Isn’t: Black Like Me on Race](https://www.nydailynews.com/archives/opinions/obama-isn-black-race-article-1.585922), in which he also invokes Colin Powell. > [@](#): > > His father is a black Kenyan. Other than color, Obama did not - does not - share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves… > > So when black Americans refer to Obama as “one of us,” I do not know what they are talking about. In his new book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama makes it clear that, while he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own - nor has he lived the life of a black American. Will this matter in the end? Probably not. Obama is being greeted with the same kind of public affection that Colin Powell had when he seemed ready to knock Bill Clinton out of the Oval Office. For many reasons, most of them personal, Powell did not become the first black American to be a serious presidential contender. I doubt Obama will share Powell’s fate, but if he throws his hat in the ring, he will have to run as the son of a white woman and an African immigrant. If we then end up with him as our first black President, he will have come into the White House through a side door - which might, at this point, be the only one that’s open. And, of course, Dickerson and Crouch did not represent the views of all black Americans; a bunch of black writers argued against them. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1007 "2020-08-13T14:56:42Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Well, just to cover ALL possibilities, I think slavery was abolished in Jamaica in the early 1800s. A Black person could have moved to Jamaica from someplace other than Africa after that, become a citizen, and had a kid. And this person had a kid with someone who had also recently moved from somewhere other than Africa, and all of their descendants had children only with people who were not descended from slaves… In other words, while there is a slight chance that she has some African ancestry that is not descended from slaves, the chance that _none_ of her ancestors were slaves is, in fact, zero. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1008 "2020-08-13T14:57:11Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I think slavery was abolished in Jamaica in the early 1800s. 1830-something? I’d have to check Wikipedia to be more precise, but I’m pretty confident I’m right. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1009 "2020-08-13T15:04:03Z")
Saw my friend on the bus just now and he says Kamalas parents were slave owners. What? (hes a big Trump supporter and gun owner) ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1010 "2020-08-13T15:07:10Z")
> [@mhendo (quoting Dickerson)](#): > > “Black,” in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. This just isn’t true. Dickerson could say that “Black” means that to her, but she can’t say that’s what it means “in our political and social reality.” In our political and social reality, Obama (and Harris) are Black, and are African-Americans. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1011 "2020-08-13T15:08:05Z")
Yes, but that is highly unlikely in Harris’s case. She inherited an English last name from _someone_. I’m not thinking she inherited it from an African. This current conversation is reminding a lot of the media-manufactured "IS OBAMA BLACK ENOUGH?! that black folks had to patiently endure prior to his election. A lot of white folks swallowed the lie that black folks were sitting around clucking our tongues over Obama not being the descendant of American-born slaves. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1012 "2020-08-13T15:08:06Z")
> [@SuntanLotion](#): > > Saw my friend on the bus just now and he says Kamalas parents were slave owners. What? Senator Harris’s parents were not slave owners, of course. That’s just stupid. But it’s somewhat possible that one of her distant ancestors was a slave owner. See what Snopes has to say on the subject: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kamala-harris-ancestor-slaves/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kamala-harris-ancestor-slaves/) Why your idiot friend thinks this should discredit Senator Harris in any way is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1013 "2020-08-13T15:10:32Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > This just isn’t true. Dude, don’t argue with me about it. I wasn’t trying to defend her point; I was simply noting, for a bunch of people in this thread who were apparently unaware, that the argument about what it means to be black in America is not new, and providing some examples of the arguments. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1014 "2020-08-13T15:11:42Z")
Sure, it’s possible that among Kamala Harris’ father’s ancestors was a slave owner. Just like there are Americans alive today who descended from Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. That’s a bit different than saying her “parents were slave owners.” ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1015 "2020-08-13T15:23:20Z")
Obama and Harris are African Americans because that’s how they choose to identify themselves. But in the academic/scholarly use of the word “African American”, they would not fit into that box. That expression tends to be reserved for the descendents of American-born slaves because these individuals were stripped of the ability to reference an nationality or ethnic origin. Obama has Kenyan parentage. Harris has Jamaican parentage. So they are African Americans through self-adoption into the culture rather than birth. I explained this to my mother yesterday in a rather heated discussion. At first she did not agree with me at all. She told me that nny black person in the US is a “African American.” So I asked her how she would describe the black ethnic groups of Miami, FL, where I once lived. In Miami, we’ve got the Haitian Americans. We’ve got the Jamaican Americans and Trinidadian Americans. There are recent immigrants from African living there. We’ve also got Afro-Cuban Americans. And of course, there’s the folks of my cultural group–the descendants of American born slaves. All of these groups are black, but it is stupid and inconsiderate to lump us all together in a conversation about ethnicity/ethnic groups. So I explained to my mother that “African American” is the most appropriate label for members of _our_ group. All the other groups have a geographic descriptor, so we should have one too. We get “African” because we don’t have a known country of origin. “African American” distinguishes our subculture from other subcultures of the African Diaspora in a way that “black American” does not. She understood what I was saying when I put it like that. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1016 "2020-08-13T15:23:54Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Dude, don’t argue with me about it. I wasn’t trying to defend her point; I was simply noting, for a bunch of people in this thread who were apparently unaware, that the argument about what it means to be black in America is not new, and providing some examples of the arguments I know. Sorry if it came across that way. I do remember those discussions about Obama. That statement by Debra Dickerson just really hit a chord with me. It’s a good example of what you were trying to illustrate. Perhaps we do need a word for _American descendants of African slaves_, but to me, “Black” isn’t that word. At least not yet. Language evolves, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1017 "2020-08-13T15:35:10Z")
I have a white friend whose equally white brother was born in South Africa to expatriate U.S. parents, and then brought back here when he was still a little kid. He sometimes jokingly refers to himself as an African American. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1018 "2020-08-13T15:40:51Z")
Yeah, I’m already seeing many, many Underbridge-Americans on social media, particularly social media frequented by black people, desperately arguing that Harris isn’t really black, that she is an opportunist who only claims to be black when it suits her purpose, and that she hates black people. Personally I think that if she’s black enough for Howard and AKA, I’m not going to argue. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1019 "2020-08-13T15:54:54Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Personally I think that if she’s black enough for Howard and AKA, I’m not going to argue. I know the point you’re making. But I just want it to be known that neither of those organizations is restricted to black people. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1020 "2020-08-13T15:55:22Z")
Duly noted. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1021 "2020-08-13T15:57:33Z")
“She’s descended from slaves, but those slaves lived 700 miles from Florida so she’s not black,” is maybe the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever seen. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505/1022 "2020-08-13T16:06:02Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I have a white friend whose equally white brother was born in South Africa to expatriate U.S. parents, and then brought back here when he was still a little kid. He sometimes jokingly refers to himself as an African American. And a friend of mine is married to a Black man who emphatically resists being called African-American, because he’s from Haiti. IMO these labels can get pretty silly, and I really wish voters would focus on more substantive issues. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505.md?page=50) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-choice-for-vice-presidential-candidate/851505.md?page=52)