Warren is white; Harris is East Indian/African; I would vote for Warren

Feb 03, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Elizabeth Warren is a white. Kamala Harris is half East Indian (mother from India) and African (father is Jamaican). Both are senators contesting the Democratic Party primaries for the American presidency.
If I were to vote, what criteria should I use? I am East Indian genetically. My grandparents came from the same race and country Harris’ mother was born into. I am shamelessly, unapologetically a Caribbean human. I like being Caribbean. I love Caribbean people. I never thought of living elsewhere except the Caricom area. At the foreign universities, I attended I got along better with Jamaicans than any other CARICOM nationalities. Harris is half-Jamaican.
Based on these anthropological facts, should I choose Warren over Harris? I definitely think my choice hovers over those two. I want a woman to be president of Guyana and the US. If Guyana chooses David Granger in the next election, because of health issues, the PM slot for APNU should be a woman. If Granger steps down, we would have a female president. That is good for Guyanese history and world history, given how badly in the evolution of the world women have been treated.
Why would I not want a “dougla” woman to be president of the US? But what about what constitutes the human? I am non-white. I am East Indian. I am from the Caribbean. But why should that reality be the compelling vortex in which I should swim for Harris? In each of us, there is a belief system, an ideological set of values, a cluster of philosophical instincts. We are not just ethnic organisms only.
I come from a background of dirt poverty. Out of that, my ideological worldview has been shaped. I support people, organizations and governments that are committed to using society’s wealth for the following purposes; elimination of want of people who were born into poverty and want to come out of it; giving access to higher education to working class youths whose parents’ income does not allow them to access higher education because of expenditure and tuition fees; providing social services and health services to communities that do not have the resources to pay for these vital things; stopping the abuse of moneyed people in a country where because of wealth they have greater access to law, justice, power; putting laws in place to stop the domination of wealthy classes and to engineer policies that make people feel that they are all equal in the eyes of the law.
On each of these levels, I see Elizabeth Warren’s politics and past performance as being closer to mine than Kamala Harris. I lean towards socialist economics, where the brutality, cruelty and sadism of runaway capitalism as we see in the US especially, are not allowed to roam rampantly. Warren is closer to socialist economics than Harris. For me, the race vote is unbelievable ignorance.
I came back with my wife in 1984 and since that time, I have never voted for the large ethnic parties – the PPP and the PNC. My past ballots went to WPA several times; once for TUF; twice for AFC – 2006 and 2011. I never would have contemplated voting for Ravi Dev’s ROAR.
In 2015, I voted for AFC+APNU. That was natural because I had friends, very close friends whose multi-racial agenda I admired. Two of those friends are Nigel Hughes and Michael Carrington. I am still friends with both. I still admire their multi-cultural praxis. I have fallen out with Khemraj Ramjattan, the other friend in 2015. His post-2015 politics and mine are billions of miles apart.
I supported Barack Obama against the two Republicans he ran against in his first and second terms because there was absolutely no choice. He was billions of times better than them. But I do not think Obama was transformative enough and I don’t think he was committed to working people as he professed. He didn’t transform the US in ways that would have made the US a better country.
If I have to choose between Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama for the American presidency, I honestly would be stumped as to my preference, but I know as a non-white human, Obama’s race would not be the essential reason for my decision to choose him. I like the politics of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
It is a soulless journey to a Faustian land of excruciating permanency to choose someone to shape your country, and in the process your personal life, because you and that person belong to the same race group. It is a suicidal travel. And I am not suicidal as yet.

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