CNN analyst suggests America is not ready to elect a black woman as president — but the first black woman president won’t wait for us to be ready
CNN political analyst Nia Malika-Henderson reports that black women she’s spoken to don’t want Kamala Harris to run again, primarily because they do not believe the country is ready for a female black president.
It’s not because they don’t think she would be a good president. It’s because…at this point in America’s history, she would be the most competitive person to run in 2028.
Understandable! We conducted what felt like a pretty conclusive test of this proposition. I agree that, as Henderson’s sources told her, racism has been “unleashed and stirred up.” I believe their lived experience. I even believe the 2024 election results.
America will never be “ready” for a female black president. But that’s the good news, because we also weren’t ready for a Catholic president, a divorced president, or a Black male president. We forget that lack of readiness, because once something happens, it feels inevitable. And once something earth-shattering happens, it feels like everything has changed, rather than just one big thing.
We might also separate whether the country is ready for a female Black president and whether it is ready for this one (again). This one who ran in that election, under those circumstances.
What are we really saying when we describe “the country” as not being ready, anyway? Malika-Henderson is likely correct in representing what her sources say, but “the country” in this formulation is “white voters,” though not even all of them– it’s just enough white voters in delegate-rich swing states to move the electoral needle. It’s easy to elide that bit of geography, to judge the whole country’s readiness for change based on what a football stadium of voters in the Iron Belt want–if just 70,000 of them had voted differently in 2016, the country would have been “ready for a woman” then. Hell, by popular vote, a majority of the country was.
Harris’ loss was almost as narrow in terms of votes that could have changed everything. The electoral blow-out hides the 100,000-or-so votes across those same swing states that could have made America “ready” for her. Determining America’s readiness for a Black female president based on who has won already turns realism about our entrenched racism into its own kind of trap. It’s not by accident that Black respondents tend to be more pessimistic than White ones when polls ask who the country is willing to elect. I respect that hesitancy; I worry it will determine primary votes.
The black woman who commands the Oval Office won’t get there because we’ve become less racist or sexist in the near future. She’ll get there the same way Obama did, not as proof that bigotry has ended but as proof it doesn’t have to be the end.
The woman who runs and wins won’t wait until we’re ready. That’s how we’ll know it’s her.
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