Vice President Kamala Harris stands in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 20, 2024.

The Democratic Party is about to run a Black, South Asian woman against a white supremacist former president. It’s about to run a person whose parents were immigrants against a xenophobe who supports mass deportations. It’s about to run a woman who prosecuted sexual predators against a sexual predator who has been judged to be a rapist. And it’s about to run a fierce defender of reproductive rights against a person who proudly claims responsibility for overturning Roe v. Wade.

Add it all up, and what you get is that the Democrats are about to run the walking embodiment of what America is against the avenging specter of what America was.

The contrast between Vice President Kamala Harris and convicted felon Donald Trump could not be more clear, and that contrast should benefit Harris in every conceivable way. Harris is a person who wouldn’t be allowed to finish her sentences in Trump’s America, much less hold political and legal power. The distinction is now between a youthful, vibrant, and tolerant vision of the country, versus an aging, aggrieved, and absolutist version of America.

Democrats should be thrilled with the opportunity to run Donald Trump’s worst nightmare against Donald Trump. And the base is. ActBlue, the small-dollar donations aggregator, smashed fundraising records on the first day of Harris’s presidential campaign. Elder party poohbas and young rising Democratic stars all quickly endorsed Harris for president. “Win With Black Women,” a network of Black women grassroots organizers, had a call last night that broke Zoom, and ended up with over 40,000 participants who raised over a million dollars for Harris.

The contrast Harris provides to Trump is her greatest electoral asset, a thing that is energizing the very people Trump would harm the most—but we, as a nation, are about to endure weeks and months of people telling us that it is her greatest weakness. The question “Is America ready for a Black, female president?” will be posed again and again by people who will claim that they already know the answer is “no.” Even as Harris consolidates the entire Democratic Party around her and her campaign, there will be people telling her she can’t win because America won’t elect a woman of color.

And those naysayers will always be given a platform in The New York Times and other media outlets claiming they’re simply reporting the facts. The Times won’t cover Harris fairly even for a day, just to see what it would feel like, and they’ve already started down the road of making her seem unelectable because of her race and gender. For the first of what will be many hit pieces over the next few months, they used other Black people to make their point. A tortured Monday headline blared: “Some Black Voters Say They Wonder if a Black Woman Can Win.”

Before I dive into the article, I want you to step back and just marvel at the sheer meaninglessness of that headline. I, for instance, am a Black voter, and I wonder about a great many things. I wonder if aliens exist; I wonder if God is an *******; I wonder how many abortions Donald Trump has paid for. But the Times wouldn’t run a story that stated “Some Black Voters Say They Wonder How Many Active Klu Klux Klan Members Attended the Republican National Convention”—even though I promise you that more Black voters wonder about that than Harris’s electability. What the Times is doing here isn’t journalism but confirmation bias: They wanted to run that kind of story and went out and found some people to say what they wanted them to say.

And what those allegedly contemplative Black voters said was an all-too-standard refrain.

“It’s kind of sad, but I don’t think Harris will do well nationwide,” said Kristy Smith, 42, who is from Atlanta and works in sales.

As a Black woman herself, Smith said she thinks Ms. Harris is entering the race with two strikes against her. “America is just not ready for a woman president especially not a Black woman president,” she said.

In fairness to Smith, she is merely repeating what this country has told Black people, and especially Black women, her whole life: America hates you. Every Black or brown person, and every woman, has direct evidence from their lived experience of just how deeply America hates them. It’s palpable. We see the disdain this country holds for people of color whenever we turn on the news. We feel the antipathy this country holds for women every time we go to work, or read an opinion from the Supreme Court. Harris has been subjected to the worst press coverage of any vice president in my lifetime, and she’s about to be subjected to the worst coverage of any presidential candidate in American history… save perhaps Hillary Clinton, who was the last woman who made it within striking distance of the presidency.

This is part of the very serious work of white male supremacy. It’s not enough for white men to be in control of all the levers of power; they—and those who do their bidding—also have to make everybody else feel like they don’t deserve power and won’t be able to have any even if they try. The white guys who are determined to keep running this joint need the rest of us to believe that asking for equal opportunity and a fair shake is asking for too much, and that demanding equality now is perpetually too soon. Maybe someday a person like Kamala Harris could be president, but not today, never today; America is just not ready for all that right now.

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