Ahead of this week’s presidential debate, which raised serious concerns about Joe Biden, Bonnie Greer shared her thoughts on why his Vice President may not be seen as an option to succeed him
US Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo: PA/Alamy
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He may be a convicted felon, but there is a reason why Donald Trump is still in the running to return to the White House. A reason which dare not speak its name.
It is the matter of the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris.
Harris was the 32nd Attorney General of California and the 27th District Attorney of San Francisco. She had a reputation for putting people in jail.
I personally know people who know people who know the Vice President, and she is no joke. Most of the time we may see her smiling, but forget that.
But there is another matter: the Vice President is a woman. A black woman.
She is a bright, almost 60-year old ‘youngster’, and means business. And this is all a problem.
Because, if Joe Biden is re-elected, the United States may not only have its first woman president, but the first black woman president. For many, this is the existential terror that lies at the root of it all; the terror that dare not speak its name.
In the US, reporters on The Washington Post are investigating their own bosses – and their stories get published. It is hard to even contemplate such fearless reporting happening in the UK, writes Brian Cathcart
Brian Cathcart
There’s nothing to stop a re-elected Biden from handing over to her at midterm, and my money is on the fact that he probably will – because she will be his legacy; the icing on the cake for all of his efforts in the field of civil rights and inclusion. He will become immortalised because of this too.
But this fear – the fear of a black woman president – is much of what lies at the heart of the MAGA movement.
Because then there will be living proof: that the US is rapidly becoming a minority-majority country. Which it is. And so the choice is: a big white macho man (and everything that means); or a black woman. It is the bridge too far.
Trump will articulate this fear on the campaign trail. Of him versus the daughter of a Jamaican-American father and a Tamil Indian mother.
This is my theory, and I’m sticking to it.
Bonnie Greer is a Chicago-born playwright, novelist and cultural critic. She has lived in the UK since 1986