The tendency to attribute Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss principally to racism or misogynoir (hatred of black women) runs deep. In a post-election interview on MSNBC, Princeton University Distinguished Professor of African American Studies Eddie Glaude asserted about Trump’s re-election: “we chose a felon because we didn’t want to elect a black woman,” which means “we would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened.” If I had a dollar for every time I happened upon a meme, social media post, or found myself in conversation with friends or colleagues who echoed Blow’s and Glaude’s sentiments I might be able to retire by the end of the year.
I have long quipped that “Blow is no Bob Herbert.” Blow’s attachment to racial moralizing has never thrilled me. The fundamental problem with a moralistic discourse on race and inequality is that neither righteousness nor righteous outrage permit explication of context. Harris’s not terribly surprising loss was owed to many factors, not just the electorate’s racism or sexism. And Blow—who has written very thoughtful columns on the issues informing support for Trump among Hispanics and black male discomfort with Harris-Walz—knows this, even if he’s not always comfortable with where context takes us.
Precisely because Blow is not averse to context, his recent visceral reflections on President Trump’s re-election reminded me of his meditations on the context that gave us the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA) nearly a decade ago.
During the 2016 Democratic primaries, Blow released an impassioned video intended to contextualize Hillary Clinton’s advocacy for the omnibus crime act. After acknowledging the bill’s disastrous impact on “the black community,” Blow correctly noted that support for the VCCLEA ran deep among Democrats and liberals. Senator Joe Biden helped draft it. President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton stumped publicly for it, while the president lobbied Democrats in Congress to vote for it. Thanks in part to the Clintons’ efforts, the bill received more support from Congressional Democrats than Republicans. Perhaps most striking or maybe just telling, roughly two-thirds of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for the crime act, which was also enthusiastically greeted by black mayors and ministers alike.
Blow insinuated the VCCLEA’s long-term consequences were not altogether clear in 1994; however, this isn’t quite right. In fact, while Bernie Sanders voted for the bill because it included the Violence Against Women Act, he also warned on the floor of the House of Representatives that tough on crime policies absent programs designed to address poverty—a major contributor to violent and property crimes—would compound extant racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system while swelling the nation’s already appallingly large inmate population.