Kamala Harris, for the Black People

By Keith Boykin, Word in Black

LONDON — Certain Black people on the internet keep raising two questions about Kamala Harris. What is her Black agenda? And why didn’t she do it during the last four years?

First, if you want to know Kamala Harris’s Black agenda, look at what she’s already done. As vice president, Kamala Harris helped to pass the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, provided a record $16 billion in funding to HBCUs, $2.8 billion for Pell grants and need-based assistance, $2 billion to Black farmers, $2 billion to clean up pollution in communities of color, doubled the number of Black businesses in America, and brought us the lowest Black unemployment rate and the lowest Black poverty rate in history.

The Biden-Harris administration also expanded the child tax credit, which cut the Black child poverty rate in half, capped the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors, which is especially important for Black people who are disproportionately affected by diabetes, signed up 5 million more people for Obamacare, canceled $168.5 billion in student loan debt for 4.8 million people, pardoned thousands of marijuana charges, and on top of all that, even signed a law creating the first new Black-related federal holiday in forty years — Juneteenth.

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Now, the second question. Why hasn’t Kamala Harris done whatever thing you think she should have done in the last four years? The answer. She’s not the president. She’s the vice president, and that person’s job is to help the president. But even if she were president, people need to have realistic expectations about what a president can and cannot do.

Continue reading to learn more.

Some worry about Kamala’s past as a lawyer who contributed to Black men in prison.

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