By Virtudes Alvarez, Translated by J. Palameda // November 8, 2020.

The recently concluded electoral process in the United States of America is an obligatory topic in the analysis of international politics. All its aspects are important, including the election of Kamala Harris as Vice-President.

She is the first woman vice president-elect in the United States. Everything seems to indicate that she is a woman who combines many political, professional and personal strengths, including her charisma, “people like her,” as we would say around here.

But let’s not get confused.

Kamala Harris was not elected as the second in command in U.S. politics because she is a woman; not because she is black, nor because she is of Caribbean or Indian roots. If so, Joe Biden’s running mate could have been a Dominican, Mexican, Haitian, Ecuadorian, etc… But it was Kamala Harris because of what she represents in the US political power structure.

In the revolutionary feminist movement, we should not be satisfied with celebrating that a woman is the first vice president of the United States. If there is anything positive about this, it is that her election is part of the defeat of Donald Trump and his ultra-right-wing ideas, and that circumstance can represent a respite for the American people, who are overwhelmed by resurgent white supremacism, xenophobia, machismo, homophobia, religious intolerance, etc.

These comments written by a woman may seem to run counter to the positive euphoria over Kamala’s election, but it is not a question of sorority, but rather of clearly marking the lines that separate emotions from class and national interests and those of our peoples in general.

If the immediate future showed us that the role of Kamala Harris as the face of U.S. imperialist policy toward the nations and peoples of the world was in favor of working women, migrant women and Black women, that reality would leave the reality and logic of politics and enter the field of literature.

Categories: Women