By Leilah Bruno:
On Martin Luther King Jr Day, January, 27, 2019, Senator Kamala Harris announced her run for president. She brought up her resolutions on progressive issues and her attempts to fight for the middle class. As a Democrat, her political stance seems to replicate what many of the people in the working middle class value. Her opinions on things like healthcare, foreign policy, abortion, and immigration also seem to relate to what many younger generations appeal to including her view on cannabis.
If you do not know Kamala Harris by now, you soon will with her campaign underway and her recent time in the limelight. Harris has already been scrutinized by many people both Democratic and Republican and black and white since announcing her run.
Harris went on to say that she smoked a joint. “I just broke news.” she said after stating her past. The news Harris used to smoke came as a shock to some listeners and when asked if she would do it again, Harris replied with “It gives a lot of people joy and I think we need more joy.” When the talk show host Charlamagne the God mentioned that people have stated that she was opposed to weed, she replied by saying “That’s not true. And look I joke about it, half joking- half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me.”
Charlamagne also asked what she listened to while she smoked. “What were you listening to when you were high? What was on? what song was on? Was it snoop?”
“Definitely Snoop,” she said, “and Tupac for sure.”
Avid and smart listeners put the pieces together and found out that Harris graduated college in 1986 well before both Tupac and Snoop Dogs albums were even released. The next day Harris’s representatives cleared the air stating it was miscommunication and Harris was simply saying who she listens to during this time. The Washington Post posted a video which is a play-by-play of Harris talking about her weed experience.
After the interview, Harris’s father disapproved her comments saying it is part of “identity politics” and writes out a statement showing his disapproval.
“My dear departed grandmothers … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
– Donald Harris
Fox News
Along with the comments Harris faces with marijuana use, people also questioned her blackness due to the fact her parents are immigrants from India and Jamaica and lived in Canada during her high school years. “I think they don’t understand who black people are,” she says to the audience. “I’m not going to spend time trying to educate people about who black people are.”
“I’m black and I’m proud of being black,” she continued. “I was born black, I will die black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.” Many people say this because of her parents status but also what she does for the community, and it not being enough to help out the black community as a prosecutor where her job seem to only involve “hurting black people.”
“I regret not having done enough,” said Harris, who was elected district attorney of San Francisco before becoming California’s attorney general. “If I had been there longer, if I had more in terms of bandwidth, I would have done more around creating initiatives, for example, in the juvenile justice system. That was something that was always on my agenda to focus on, and I didn’t get around to that.”
THE AC301 