WASHINGTON, CMC -The end result of the US Presidential elections will reverberate globally, impacting many countries. Each authorities, together with these within the Caribbean, has begun to weigh which candidate’s victory would possibly higher serve their pursuits.
The most recent occasion within the marketing campaign circus options Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, ridiculing the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, over her racial origin. Trump has questioned Harris’s race, saying, “She was at all times of Indian heritage, and she or he was solely selling Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black till a number of years in the past when she occurred to show Black.”
Trump made this comment at an look on the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists, the place he was interviewed dwell by a Black journalist. The comment was meant to dilute help for Harris amongst Black journalists.
Race has at all times been a big consider US politics, relationship again to 1863, when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that each one enslaved individuals had been to be let out. All through US historical past, the Civil Rights motion has fought for Black individuals’s rights, together with the correct to vote and maintain workplace.
The election of Barack Obama because the “first Black president” of the US overcame important limitations. Nonetheless, for a lot of White Individuals, the difficulty of Black individuals in excessive workplace turned extra pronounced. Trump exploited this ‘concern’ of Black individuals in political life towards Obama by emphasizing his Blackness whereas ignoring his White heritage. Now, with rising confidence amongst Black individuals regarding their reliable place in all elements of US society and their recognition of the facility of their vote, Trump is utilizing the race card otherwise towards Harris. He’s in search of to painting her as “Indian” and never “Black” to decrease her standing with Black voters.
Moreover, Harris has come underneath the highlight of Trump as a result of he and his political disciples efficiently engineered the withdrawal of the earlier presumptive nominee, President Joe Biden, on the idea that he’s previous and feeble. Biden was 81 when he determined to withdraw as a candidate for election; Trump was 78 – a mere three years youthful than Biden.
Remarkably, having eradicated Biden, Trump is now the oldest presidential candidate in US historical past, and the query of being “too previous” has disappeared from his marketing campaign. Given a youthful and nimbler opponent, Trump is using race towards Harris by questioning her Blackness and emphasizing her Indianness.
Nonetheless, with the robust help she has already obtained from the Democratic Celebration hierarchy, she is definite to be the social gathering’s nominee for the presidential election in November.
Each side have additionally used concern as a political device, and it’ll seemingly turn into the dominant theme within the weeks and days forward. Trump is portraying Harris as a ‘socialist,’ claiming that she is going to encourage immigration and refugees who, in line with him, are, for essentially the most half, criminals, rapists, and drug traffickers. Immigrants and refugees are being painted as a extreme menace to US society usually. He has added that immigrants are taking ‘Black jobs.’ Intrinsic to this argument is that Black individuals are primarily employed in low-skill or laboring jobs that immigrants and refugees are grabbing, dislocating Black individuals.
An underlying theme of the Trump marketing campaign is that the US just isn’t prepared for a girl as President and definitely not for a Black lady. This premise is being developed into one other ‘concern’ within the marketing campaign.
On the opposite facet, Harris can be utilizing concern as a device towards Trump. She has forged him as a villain who’s a convicted felon, a lady abuser, a fraudster, and a tax dodger, undeserving of the US Presidency. Drawing on her background as a prosecutor, she has declared that she is aware of Trump’s “kind.”
All of that is par for the political course. The elements are the identical in politics globally.
Governments are watching this race within the Caribbean, attempting to find out which of the 2 candidates can be finest for them. They see a floor distinction between a lady of Indian-Jamaican heritage, more likely to proceed the insurance policies of Obama and Biden. Nonetheless, the area had no important profit from both Obama or Biden. On the identical time, the administrations of each males acknowledged the elemental challenges confronting the realm and the steps wanted to rework their capability to beat these challenges. Those that had excessive expectations of Obama as a result of he was “Black” realized that, rightly, he was the President of the US, involved together with his personal nation.
The identical scenario will prevail if Harris wins the presidency. The actual fact of her Jamaican and Indian mother and father won’t trigger her to prioritize both Jamaica (and, by extension, the Caribbean) or India. She is an American and can deal with US nationwide pursuits at dwelling and overseas if elected President.
The Caribbean has additionally had expertise with Trump as President. His current presidential marketing campaign doesn’t recommend that his isolationist posture will change or that he has any curiosity within the Caribbean, which, other than Guyana and Suriname, holds little attraction to the US both as a market or as a location for sources resembling oil and fuel. Past curbing immigration and refugees, principally from Haiti, and limiting the movement of unlawful medicine via the area, the earlier perspective towards the area is unlikely to vary.
For these causes, the Caribbean shouldn’t imagine it has a stake within the US presidential struggle. Who’s elected US President is a matter for the US voters. As soon as a brand new administration is in place, the area should work to command as a lot consideration as it could to handle its considerations on the sensible foundation of shared values and mutual considerations. The race or social gathering affiliation of the President will probably be of no consequence.
*Sir Ronald Sanders is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the Group of American States (OAS). The views expressed are totally his personal.
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