I feel disappointed that the first female and woman of color president of the United States of America was being considered under these dark circumstances, but sending a woman to fix the mess of a failing institution is not a new phenomenon.
The first woman of color candidate for the presidency of the USA should be an exciting period of history in the making; for the most part, it is. Still, US Vice President Kamala Harris’ road to the presidency was always shrouded by controversy, grief, and anger at the realization that even if she won, it would not make much difference to the US foreign policy.
I have spent the past few months watching the Free Palestine movement devolve under pressure. The intense back-and-forth between Palestinians and African Americans is hard to watch, but I empathize with the grief, fear, and anger consuming each side.
I will never fully comprehend having your family decimated by a bloodthirsty political power. I have spent my whole life watching, from a distance, the Middle East being torn into shreds and brown people villainized. I spent my teen years into adulthood watching adults be filled with hatred for an entire group of people, leaving me wishing that I had a magic wand to poof the hatred and pain away. Still, I will never fully understand the grief, fear, and helplessness of actually experiencing genocide but I can only slightly relate to being under US imperialism. All I know is that the anger is valid.
We’ve spent the past year watching people being murdered through state-sanctioned violence. Only a heartless person can witness the horror of a genocide and not be moved into action. You do not have to be from the Middle East to understand that this is wrong and to empathize with those who are affected by the genocide.
These past two years have made me feel the most anxious. The last time I felt this anxious was when I believed that there was a possibility the world might end in 2012. In the past year, I witnessed my country, South Africa, being threatened with economic sanctions on multiple occasions, for our foreign policy such as our alliance with Russia and our ICJ case against Israel. I’ve seen what sanctions do to African countries, for example, people claim that corruption is the sole reason why Zimbabwe failed as a state but sanctions contributed to the failure. Sanctions do not punish leaders but they punish the people.
If you asked me how I feel on the surface, I would say that I love seeing an African country make decisions for themselves and defend their allies. If you ask me how I feel on a deeper level, I would say I am terrified. I think about the history of US interventions with coups and wars around the world. The thought of the possibility that something like that might happen to my country, felt as though the world could end at any moment, or at least the world as I know it.
As a black person and someone who is affected by colonization, I relate to African American’s plight to preserve the human rights that were fought hard for. The desire to walk on the streets without fear of being shot, to have a government that protects the few human rights that you have, and works towards humanizing you in the world. As much as I empathize with the Palestinian people, I also see the need for Americans to be strategic and preserve their rights, so they can continue to fight for the rest of the world and to hold their government accountable.
When South Africa was experiencing our own Apartheid, it was the boycotts and the protests that brought us liberation. Apartheid was not sustainable anymore, the internal protest’s goal was to make the country ungovernable, the economic boycotts from around the world and the international companies pulling out because of international protest had crippled the country financially.
The Palestinian genocide is different and we are entering a world where the US government is not afraid of its people anymore. Corporate companies have become so rich and powerful that boycotting seems not to make a real dent in their profits and feels futile. However, it is not hopeless.
I also see disillusionment in many Americans because voting does not make the problems go away. It’s a disillusionment that many people feel around the world. In “democratic countries,” we are all told that we need to vote to protect democracy and have a voice in the running of the country, but voting doesn’t guarantee that your government will act in your best interest. Also, people deserve better options to vote for. It cannot always be the boogeyman and the lesser evil.
I face this conflict in my relationships too. As I interact with Americans on networking apps, I realize that I have to separate my perceptions of Americans from what I see on social media and remember that people are not a monolith. I am also aware that I will meet people with an allegiance to their American identity and all that comes with it, after all, it’s all that they’ve known. I fear broaching the subject of the wars and genocides occurring around the world. This has made me think of my line when it comes to my convictions. Do I build a relationship with someone knowing that they are patriotic to an institution that I have had strong emotions against my entire life? Am I being a sell-out by having empathy for a person who has grown to believe in the greatness of the American empire?
I remember that these institutions are predatory. This made me think of my disappointment that the US kept sending black people to vote against a ceasefire and how even before the genocide in Palestine, South Africa was accused of supplying arms to Russia when our government had stated countless times that they did not want to be involved in that war. The ambassador who accused us was black. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach.
This white supremacist system will take advantage of your ambition as a person of color. We often enter these spaces thinking that we can change the system from the inside, only to be hit with the realization that to progress means that you will be doing things that go against your values and your best interest. Maybe you didn’t have strong values based on your racial identity as you entered these spaces, not all black people desire the same progress or view the world in the same way because we are not a monolith. Regardless of one’s reasoning for entering these career paths, it is still sad that one is caught in a tightrope of moral decisions.
What hits the hardest is the realization that marginalized people would not be able to enter these spaces if it were not to fix the image of these institutions, this is a phenomenon called the “Glass cliff”.
The “Glass Cliff” was coined by University of Exeter professors, Michell K Ryan and Alexander Haslam, when they were observing the difference in the performance of FTSE 100 companies after a change in leadership. They found that the companies that tend to place women into leadership positions were most likely struggling with bad performance 5 months prior.
The concept of a Glass Cliff suggests that women are more likely to smash the glass ceiling, by achieving leadership positions in a business or organization, during times of crisis or underperforming where failure is inevitable. The “Glass cliff” was coined to parallel the “Glass ceiling” but also implies that it is impossible to foresee the slippery slope that comes with the glass cliff. They have to be strategic about staying on top, otherwise one wrong move will cause their downfall.
The phenomenon is not limited to women but all marginalized identities. People often dream of smashing the “Glass ceiling” and opening avenues for the next generation to enter without the hard work of having to smash the ceiling themselves. The “Glass ceiling”, coined by Marylin Loden during a speech in 1978, is the concept of an invisible barrier that prevents marginalized people from accessing positions of power. Smashing the glass ceiling is achieving a position of leadership or entering a field that has been previously only associated with a specific type of person, usually a white male.
I can imagine that if a person is in a management position, they are most likely to be aware that the company is failing. If you were in a position where you were given your dream position but at a price, would you take it?
For the marginalized person being placed in this position, it is an opportunity to prove that someone like you is just as capable of getting the job done, just as much as the preferred demographic. However, you are also aware that your every move is micro-analysed. University of Houston’s psychology professor Kristin J. Anderson expands on the theory by suggesting that these companies offer these positions to marginalized people because they are seen as expendable. When you cannot save the ship from sinking, they will say that you personally created the hole in the haul that caused the wreck.
Madam Vice President of the United States uses the perfect analogy to describe the journey that she is embarking on, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
She is an intelligent woman. She knows the price of her ambition and achievements. People of color who are given positions of power know that whatever they do will never be enough. If she was radical in any way, they wouldn’t be in these positions. Harris’ campaign attempted to disassociate herself completely from the left. Even without her portraying herself as a radical leftist, there are still people who perceive her as a leftist or Liberal because of her blackness.
Distancing herself from the very people who supported her was a fatal flaw of her campaign. People support the Democrats, not because they believe that they will magically fix everything but because they know that the Democrats will preserve the human rights they fought so hard to get. The Democrats are supposed to be “easier to negotiate with”. However, not everyone agrees. For radical leftists and victims of genocide, everything seems futile. It makes sense that radical leftists and victims of genocide do not want to participate
Voting is supposed to make things better. You vote and your taxes are still being spent on bombing innocent children in the Middle East and Africa, while you do not have affordable healthcare and your schools are being defunded. You vote and you still cannot return to your homeland because it’s being bombed, despite Americans telling you to go back home.
There is an expectation for marginalized people to fix the systems that oppress us, but anyone who tries gets chewed out. When they are unable to fix a broken system, they are remembered for that failure. For example, when people call Barack Obama a war criminal as if wars are not a constant in American politics. Harris will be remembered for her inability to stop the Palestinians, for her silence, and for sticking to her party’s statements on Palestine.
Activist Angela Davis advised activists to vote with the intention of harm reduction and online leftists lost their minds, calling her a liberal. Content creator, Marie Soledad, made an excellent point “You are not more battle-tested in your political activism, across all fields and all causes than Dr. Angela Davis.” She has been at the center of liberation movements and has witnessed her comrades and the people she looked up to be subjected to state-sanctioned violence. She too has experienced violence. If anyone knows how difficult it is to undo broken systems, it’s Dr.Angela Davis.
Harris was always set up to fail, whether she won or not. There is no way to fix a sinking ship that doesn’t want to be fixed and will sacrifice its coal burners to maintain the illusion of being perceived as functional.
