During a dynamic panel on Thursday morning, From the Base to the Face of the Democratic Party: Kamala Harris, Black Women & Misogynoir, six Black women joined together for a robust conversation breaking down a historic night for Sen. Harris (D-CA), the first Black woman to be nominated for vice president of a major political party.
Harris accepted her nomination Wednesday night—day three of the Democratic National Convention—standing behind a podium at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware. Reporters stood the appropriate social distance away documenting the moment for posterity, but Kimberlé Crenshaw, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, noticed something missing in the post-Convention coverage: Black women’s voices.
“Already a pattern has developed in which Black women who are journalists, elected officials and academics serve as informants to conversations in which they are underrepresented,” Crenshaw said in statement. “It was past time to bring Black women together to discuss the politics, the election, Kamala Harris’s historic run and the intersections of race and gender playing out in the presidential campaign.”
Crenshaw, the creator of the #SayHerName campaign, gathered Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Barbara R. Arnwine (president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition), Donna Brazile (veteran Democratic political strategist, adjunct professor and author), Kimberly M. Foxx (state’s attorney for Cook County, Illinois) and Kirsten West Savali (executive producer at ESSENCE magazine) to discuss.
The dialogue, situated firmly within the historic and future implications of the senator’s nomination, ranged from the misogynoir that Harris faces to the progressive critique of her candidacy to a deep dive into the politics of representation.
Each woman brought her unique perspective—on topics from the Combahee River Collective to Shirley Chisholm to the isolation that Black women in power too often feel—to a conversation that was long overdue.
Watch the powerful discussion below: