Why Joe Biden Should Pick One of These Two Black Women as His Vice President
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The entire history of America starts with white men of power owning everything, including slaves, running the government, owning the wealth, and calling all the shots.
Then once that power was finally shared in the late 1860s after slavery, it was shared first with black men. Followed by white women, then finally, black women and women of color. It started with the 15th Amendment, approved by Congress on Feb. 26, 1869, and ratified Feb. 3, 1870, granting black men the right to vote. Not black women. And not white women.
The first blacks elected to Congress, during Reconstruction, were all men, of course. It was not until 1920 that white women got the right to vote, with the first white woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1916 and to the U.S. Senate in 1922. It was not until Shirley Chisholm’s election to the House in 1968 that a black woman served in Congress.
Chisholm’s historic win came one year after the first non-white Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, joined the highest court in 1967. It wasn't until Sandra Day O’Connor reached the Supreme Court in 1981 that a woman served on the world’s most elite bench. Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina justice in 2009. It is 2020 and no black woman has been nominated to the high court.
It was Bill Clinton who appointed the first women to serve as secretary of state and attorney general. It took George W. Bush, a Republican, to appoint the first black secretary of state, Colin Powell, followed by Condoleezza Rice, a black woman.
Joe Biden now has a chance to buck history’s tide. Two white women have been nominated for vice president, Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Sarah Palin in 2008. If I were advising Biden strictly along electoral guidelines, I would tell him the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, or Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin would make great choices. They both would likely bring key electoral states that Trump carried in 2016 into his column on Election Day.
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