‘She has to really connect’: South Florida Jamaicans have high hopes for Kamala Harris
C. Isaiah Smalls II
Thu, July 25, 2024 at 4:25 PM CDT·
When Rain Jarrett heard that President Joseph Biden ended his reelection bid in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, she was split.
The Jamaica-born mother of an 11-year-old daughter was ecstatic at the possibility that someone with the same cultural background as her could end up in the White House. Harris is a first generation American born to a Jamaican father and Indian mother. But Jarrett considers Harris’ inactivity during her tenure as vice president to be problematic. The Tamarac resident said that she and many of her friends wonder if Harris has the assertive voice necessary to be the leader of the free world.
“You’ve been so quiet. We know your qualifications, we know your experience, but can you assert your voice in a strong way with a direction and a plan for the country,” Jarrett, 42, said as if addressing Harris directly, later adding that she’d still be “incredibly proud to see a woman of Caribbean descent – though I don’t know if she has really owns that – be president of the United States.”
Outside of New York, Florida has the largest populations of Jamaicans in the country, according to U.S. Census data. Roughly 173,000 reside in South Florida, which gives the region the highest concentration of Jamaicans in the Sunshine State. In the days since Harris took over as the likely Democratic nominee, much of South Florida’s Jamaican community has been excited. But while potentially having a president with Jamaican heritage has invigorated some, others still expect Harris to earn their vote.
Already, the South Florida’s Jamaican expat community has begun to mobilize, with some even participating in the Zoom calls for Black women and Black men last Sunday and Monday, respectively, that raised millions of dollars for the Harris campaign. Many even compared the energy to that of former President Barack Obama’s initial bid for president in 2008.
“The only constituency that has saved the Democratic Party are Black women,” said Glendon Hall, 57, the chair of Miami Beach’s Black Affairs Advisory Committee. Born in England to Jamaican parents, Hall moved to the island in the early ‘70s and to Miami in 1979. “Now, it’s an opportunity for it to come full circle.”
“I can feel the electric buzz of excitement coursing through our island nation and the wider Caribbean,” Jamaica-born Broward County Commissioner Hazelle P. Rogers, 71, said in a statement. “We know that Kamala has the intellect, the passion, and the leadership chops to take the top spot, and we have no doubt that she will make us proud. Her Jamaican heritage is a source of pride for us, and we see in her a reflection of our own values of resilience, determination, and community.”
Harris will likely have to answer many questions about her identity as Election Day nears. It’s a point that she hasn’t necessarily always felt comfortable discussing – in a 2019 interview with the Washington Post, Harris simply called her self “an American” though she notably grew up with an Indian mother who seemingly reinforced her biracial daughter’s Black American side. Harris graduated from Howard University, an HBCU, where she pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest Black sorority. But her cultural identity didn’t become an issue until she got into politics, she told the Post.
“When I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created,” Harris said.
“My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it,” she added.
Her heritage, however, will be something that voters will want to know more about.
“I think she needs to communicate all aspects of her heritage that are meaningful to her,” said attorney Marlon Hill, 53, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved to South Miami when he was 14. “And maybe even some aspects of her heritage that she struggled with. She needs to make herself more vulnerable.”
Holding her accountable
In spite of the excitement some South Floridian Jamaicans expressed, some younger voters still have concerns about her candidacy.
“Could she win straight up against Trump?” said Everton Allen, 35, the founder and creative director of the lifestyle line the 3o5 Brand. Allen was born to Jamaican parents in Miami Gardens, where he still resides. “I don’t know if white America is going to go for that.”
“It’s cool she’s Jamaican,” said Jamaica-born Broward middle school civics teacher Simone Russell, 36. “It’s cool she’s an AKA. It’s cool she went to Howard. But I would be remiss if I ignored her other record.”
Russell was more concerned with where Harris stood on policies about Palestine, the Supreme Court and canceling student loan debt. “I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t be happy if she won and there’s now a half-Jamaican president,” Russell said. “But is that the main factor of what I need to know? No, because those policy things are far more important.”
Added Russell: “I don’t know if I want a half-Jamaican as the face of destroying the Gaza Strip. It can go from pride to embarrassment really quick.”
Then there’s the issue of Harris’ background as a prosecutor. During her initial bid for the presidency in 2020, her record as both the district attorney in San Francisco and California attorney general came under scrutiny. A 2024 NBC News investigation into her tenure at both positions found Harris was “a political chameleon rather than a tough-on-crime top cop,” though it noted that “civil rights attorneys and police reform advocates lambasted her for failing to charge police officers who they said had used excessive force.”
“Her track record shows that she is a cop’s cop and that is something that’s in the back of my mind,” Russell said. “I’m trying to make peace with figuring out how much of that has she internalized. I know that for Black men, that must be an even bigger part of why it’s hard for some of them to accept her.”
Allen had similar feelings about Harris’ background, noting that it’s something “that has to be addressed.” And while Allen likely still will vote for Harris, he understands that politics, for the most part, is a popularity contest. To that end, Allen says that Republicans have done a lot of fear mongering about the “tanning of American” and a woman with Indian and Jamaican ancestry in the Oval Office could be white America’s worst nightmare.
“Black, brown and marginalized people, in their mind, are relegated to certain places in society,” Allen said. “Being the leader of the free world, I don’t think that’s ideal for them in their mind. They’d rather have a white man leading the way.”
Hill, however, disagreed. He believed that her mixed heritage is one of the most intriguing parts of her candidacy.
“The fact that she comes from an immigrant experience, with two parents who studied at an American college, met each other, fell in love and had a child named Kamala, it’s an extraordinary American experience and an American story that I identify with,” Hill said.
What nearly everyone agreed with, however, is that Harris needs to tell her story.
“I think it would be a missed opportunity not to walk us through different levels of her story which includes the Indian side, the Jamaican side, the traditions, the family celebrations,” Hill said.
Added Jarrett: “She has to show that she has her finger on the pulse. She has to show that she relates to the issues and that she’s not some far-removed career politician who’s out of the loop on the everyday experience. She has to really connect.”
Jarrett is confident Harris and her campaign will do just that.
“I think, at the end of the day, everybody will coalesce around her,” Jarrett said.