This may not sound like a women’s issue at first glance but I believe it is. This week our VP Kamala Harris gave a powerful address at the security conference in Munich to reassure our allies that the US will not betray them to Putin after trump promised to do just that.
She was impressive and knowledgeable in the q&a afterwards. It barely merited a sentence in an article about Zelensky in the WaPo. Even a news junkie might be excused for not knowing about the hard, serious work of quiet diplomacy she’s been doing in Asia and the Middle East. She only gets coverage when she misspeaks. And the media’s neglect to cover her work and accomplishments has enabled the right wing narrative that she’s an “identity politics affirmative action” hire who is doing nothing. I hear people who should know better talk about what a disaster she is but they can’t name anything she’s said or done that was disastrous. In part it’s Biden’s fault for hanging the border issue around her neck early on and she wasn’t a great campaigner in 2020. But I think misogyny is also at work here. People just assume the woman of color is less qualified unless she forcefully and publicly proves otherwise.
This may not sound like a women’s issue at first glance but I believe it is. This week our VP Kamala Harris gave a powerful address at the security conference in Munich to reassure our allies that the US will not betray them to Putin after trump promised to do just that.
She was impressive and knowledgeable in the q&a afterwards. It barely merited a sentence in an article about Zelensky in the WaPo. Even a news junkie might be excused for not knowing about the hard, serious work of quiet diplomacy she’s been doing in Asia and the Middle East. She only gets coverage when she misspeaks. And the media’s neglect to cover her work and accomplishments has enabled the right wing narrative that she’s an “identity politics affirmative action” hire who is doing nothing. I hear people who should know better talk about what a disaster she is but they can’t name anything she’s said or done that was disastrous. In part it’s Biden’s fault for hanging the border issue around her neck early on and she wasn’t a great campaigner in 2020. But I think misogyny is also at work here. People just assume the woman of color is less qualified unless she forcefully and publicly proves otherwise.