Four years ago, Joe Biden, then the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for the 2020 presidential election, promised to select a black woman as his running mate. He settled on Kamala Harris, a senator from California and the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. “Little black and brown girls, who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities, but today, today just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way, as the stuff of president and vice presidents,” Biden said then.
Now, Harris has supplanted Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket after the president’s stunning withdrawal. Notably, however, Biden’s endorsement of Harris last month made no mention of her race, ethnicity, or gender. Some Democrats do want to make Harris’s racial and ethnic background the focus of her 2024 presidential campaign. By and large, these haven’t been top-ranking party officials, but rather progressive racial activists—particularly black and white women.
Indeed, just hours after Biden announced he would no longer seek reelection, the grassroots organization #WinWithBlackWomen convened a Zoom call for black women to discuss their support for Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. An estimated 90,000 tried to join the call, though the software could support only 40,000. “We’re together. We’re beautiful, we’re strong, we’re capable. We’re ready. We have incredible power in this group,” one participant told the Associated Press. “People just were so hungry for that community and for that feeling of hope.” The call reportedly raised $1.5 million.
The next day, Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, published an article on her Substack titled “White women have 100 days to help save the world.” Its sub-headline conveyed a similar message: “Since the 1950s, a majority of white women have voted Republican in all but two presidential elections. But if we mobilize, we can help elect the first woman, a Black and AAPI woman, as President.” Shortly thereafter, Watts, inspired by #WinWithBlackWomen, organized a similar Zoom meeting, titled “White Women: Answer the Call.” Over 200,000 women joined, including Glennon Doyle, P!nk (who logged on from a private jet), and Connie Britton, who jokingly referred to the group as “Karens for Kamala.” In 90 minutes, these “Karens” raised $8.5 million for the vice president’s campaign.
Both the black and white groups expressed interest in voting for Harris, at least in part, because of her racial, ethnic, and gender identity. Yet, while #WinWithBlackWomen appeared to be hopeful and excited, its white counterparts seemed motivated by guilt and shame.
“White guilt,” the idea that white Americans should feel ongoing remorse for the opportunities, privileges, and relative ease that their group enjoyed prior to the Civil Rights Movement, is not new. It has been an explicit tenet of critical race theory for decades, and it was central to the so-called antiracism efforts of activists such as Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The belief that whites should feel such guilt—predicated on the idea that white men and women have more power and opportunity than racial minorities in America in 2024—is not only condescending and arrogant but also racist.
A recent viral example underscores the point. At Watts’s July 25 event, teacher-turned–Tik Tok influencer Arielle Fodor, known to her 1.3 million followers on the social media platform as “Mrs. Frazzled,” was invited to speak. Fodor, who gained popularity online from sharing videos about her experience as a kindergarten teacher and often speaks to her audience in a patronizing, teacherlike tone, told the white women on the Zoom call:
As white women, we need to use our privilege to make positive changes. If you find yourself talking over or speaking for BIPOC individuals, or, God forbid, correcting them, just take a beat, and instead we can put our listening ears on. So, do learn from and amplify the voices of those who have been historically marginalized and use the privilege you have in order to push for systemic change.
Many people noted that Fodor’s speaking tone was exceptionally off-putting, but I found Fodor’s comments much more offensive than her voice. They suggest that racial minorities in America today have little to no agency, that they must be infantilized, and that they can succeed only if white men and women act on their behalf. All three beliefs, which stem from white guilt, are false.
Consider the success of Indian Americans. Economically, Indians have become a powerhouse in the United States. According to the one-year estimates of the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS), a demographic survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Indians’ median household income (in inflation-adjusted dollars) is roughly $152,341—well outstripping the U.S. average of $74,755.
Politically, they’ve enjoyed similar success. Kamala Harris herself is the daughter of an Indian immigrant, and she became the first female vice president in American history. If she defeats Donald Trump in November, she will become the country’s first female president, a feat that Hillary Clinton, a white woman, failed to achieve. Do Foder, Watts, and the others on the “White Women” Zoom call really believe that they have more privilege than the sitting vice president of the United States in 2024?
Rejecting white guilt does not, of course, imply that one believes that America is perfect. The United States has periodically failed to uphold its founding promise of liberty, equality, and opportunity for all. To dismiss the need for white guilt today is not to deny those past injustices but to assert that the promises of America belong equally to racial minorities and their white peers. For proof, we need only look to Kamala Harris.
Photo by Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images