The 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 may 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 all the time of Indian heritage, and he or she was solely selling Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black till various 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 clearly meant to dilute assist for Harris amongst Black journalists.
Traditionally, race has all the time been a big consider US politics, relationship again to 1863 when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that every one enslaved folks had been to be let out. All through US historical past, the Civil Rights motion has fought for Black folks’s rights, together with the proper to vote and maintain workplace.
The election of Barack Obama because the “first Black president” of the US overcame vital boundaries. Nonetheless, for a lot of White People, the difficulty of Black folks in excessive workplace grew to become extra pronounced. Trump exploited this ‘concern’ of Black folks in political life towards Obama by emphasizing his Blackness whereas ignoring his White heritage. Now, with rising confidence amongst Black folks regarding their official place in all elements of US society and their recognition of the facility of their vote, Trump is utilizing the race card in another way 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 beneath the highlight of Trump as a result of he and his political disciples efficiently managed to engineer the withdrawal of the earlier presumptive nominee, President Joe Biden, on the premise 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 assist she has already obtained from the hierarchy of the Democratic Social gathering, she is for certain to be the get together’s nominee for the presidential election in November.
Worry has additionally been used as a political software by each side, and it’ll probably grow to be 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 probably the most half criminals, rapists, and drug traffickers. Immigrants and refugees are being painted as a severe risk to US society usually. He has added that immigrants are taking ‘Black jobs.’ Intrinsic to this argument is that Black individuals are principally employed in low-skill or labouring jobs that immigrants and refugees are grabbing, dislocating Black folks.
An underlying theme of the Trump marketing campaign is that the US shouldn’t be prepared for a lady as President and definitely not for a Black girl. This premise is being developed into one other ‘concern’ within the marketing campaign.
On the opposite aspect, Harris can be utilizing concern as a software towards Trump. She has solid 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.
Within the Caribbean, governments are watching this race, making an attempt to find out which of the 2 candidates could be finest for them. They see a floor distinction between a lady of Indian-Jamaican heritage, more likely to proceed insurance policies of Obama and Biden. Nonetheless, there was no nice profit for the area from both Obama or Biden. Whereas the administrations of each males acknowledged the basic challenges confronting the area, the steps that had been taken didn’t 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 along with his personal nation.
The identical scenario will prevail if Harris wins the presidency. The very fact of her Jamaican and Indian dad and mom won’t trigger her to prioritize both Jamaica (and by extension, the Caribbean) or India. She is an American, and if elected as president, will focus her consideration on US nationwide pursuits at residence and overseas.
The Caribbean has additionally had expertise with Trump as President. His current presidential marketing campaign doesn’t counsel 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 comparable to oil and gasoline. Past curbing immigration and refugees, principally from Haiti, and proscribing the movement of unlawful medicine by way of the area, the earlier perspective towards the area is unlikely to alter.
For these causes, the Caribbean mustn’t consider that it has a stake within the US presidential combat. Who’s elected US President is a matter for the voters of the US. As soon as a brand new administration is in place, the area must work to command as a lot consideration as it could so as to deal with its issues on the sensible foundation of shared values and mutual issues. The race or get together affiliation of the President will probably be of no consequence.
(The author is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS. The views expressed are fully his personal)
