Trailblazing women of color see themselves in Kamala Harris. Making it meant always having to work harder than their white peers, they say.
Mae Jemison was in kindergarten when the teacher asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.The teacher looked down at the young Black girl and corrected her: “You mean a nurse?”. “She was trying to give me something that was achievable from her perspective. But that wasn’t going to work for me. I wanted to go places.”
“Kamala has had so many doubters along the way simply because she did not fit the profile of her predecessors,” says Brian Brokaw, a political consultant based in Sacramento, California, who ran Harris’ 2010 attorney general campaign. “But she has a remarkable ability to not just tune out doubters, but to turn that into fuel to drive her.”
Former advisor Brokaw recalls something Harris would say “a million times over,” an admonition her mother, a formative influence, would tell daughters Kamala and Maya. “Black women aren’t expected to be leaders, they’re often even mistaken for the secretary, so those who are successful develop a powerful authenticity within their leadership style that stays true to their cultural heritage and gender,” says Morgan Roberts, who conducted a“Many talked about sponsors and mentors who helped out, but largely these women didn’t try and blend into their white male counterparts, and it paid off,” she says.
For her, success has simply meant staying true to that little girl who would take stats during every Bulls game. Wise is CEO and president of the Colorado Longitudinal Study based in Aurora, a non-profit that is building a bank of biological samples to learn more about tracking diseases in their earliest stages. She was the daughter of two biologists “who expected me to excel, not so much to break down barriers but just to make the best use of the brain I was given.”
Finance world maven Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments and wife of"Star Wars" creator George Lucas, became the first Black woman to head The Economic Club of Chicago in 2017. Last year, Ashely James became the Guggenheim museum’s first Black woman curator. Early this year, the comedian Awkwafina, co-star of “Crazy Rich Asians,” became the first Asian American to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress.
Her book urges women of color to trust themselves and “be willing to work harder than everyone else around you, because that’s the world we live in.” “Women of color are part of the future of this country,” says Jayapal. “When I work on policy issues with Kamala, who is the daughter of two immigrant parents, I don’t ever have to wonder whether she understands where many of our citizens are coming from.”
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