get these nets
Veteran
Quotes from separate recent articles.
Braun should be the main person interviewed to weigh in about Harris becoming V.P. because she was the most recent trailblazer for her.
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From Politico article
Here’s What Kamala Harris Faces as a ‘First’
As the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, Moseley Braun found herself facing scrutiny for everything from her relationship with her then-fiance to her stance on welfare reform to alleged ethics violations to the way she looked in a Chanel twin set.
Everything she did, she said, was seen through the prism of her race and gender. “You really are held to a higher standard, a different standard,” said Moseley Braun, who, after losing her reelection bid in 1998, went on to serve as U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand. “It was not an easy row to hoe. I had to pray a lot, obviously, just to keep from losing my mind.”
After one particularly tough day on the floor, Moseley Braun recalls sitting at home, having a “pity party.” Until she turned on the TV. “Roots” was playing. She switched the channel. There was “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” starring Cicely Tyson as a formerly enslaved centenarian. She changed the channel again, only to see “Rosewood,” a biopic about the massacre of a middle-class Black Florida town at the hands of a white mob.
“I stood in the middle of my bedroom, looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘You’re just messing with me,’” Moseley Braun said, laughing. “I had no reason to have a pity party—there were people who literally died to make sure I could go to the Senate
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From NYT article
‘A Long Time Coming’: Black Women Celebrate Harris’s Ascension
After the presidential race was called, Carol Moseley Braun, 73, the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, found herself making a mental list of the Black women who had come before Ms. Harris. They were Black women who conquered firsts: Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Barbara Jordan. Then, she began to pray.
“I thanked the Lord for this dream come true,” said Ms. Braun, a Democrat who represented Illinois in the Senate from 1993 to 1999. “I believe Joe Biden is exactly what the country needs to heal, and Kamala as his second-in-command is the exactly the right person to help him. There were so many women who paved the way for this to happen, so many who sacrificed, so many shoulders.”
But after the celebration, she said, Ms. Harris will face the difficult task of reaching across the aisle in a country disrupted, cleaved and often intolerant of the changing America Ms. Harris embodies: She is a daughter of immigrants, she is Black and South Asian, and she is in an interracial marriage. “She checks all these boxes,” Ms. Braun said, and those that want to fan the flames of racism and hate just do not know what to do with her.”
The biggest challenge might be the Senate.
“She is going to have to navigate the cult of Donald Trump, which remains in the Senate,” Ms. Braun said. “The word ‘collegiality’ no longer applies. It’s not even something people aspire to. Joe and Kamala have to heal the wounds and make people on the other side feel like they are being heard.
Braun should be the main person interviewed to weigh in about Harris becoming V.P. because she was the most recent trailblazer for her.
======
From Politico article
Here’s What Kamala Harris Faces as a ‘First’
As the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, Moseley Braun found herself facing scrutiny for everything from her relationship with her then-fiance to her stance on welfare reform to alleged ethics violations to the way she looked in a Chanel twin set.
Everything she did, she said, was seen through the prism of her race and gender. “You really are held to a higher standard, a different standard,” said Moseley Braun, who, after losing her reelection bid in 1998, went on to serve as U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand. “It was not an easy row to hoe. I had to pray a lot, obviously, just to keep from losing my mind.”
After one particularly tough day on the floor, Moseley Braun recalls sitting at home, having a “pity party.” Until she turned on the TV. “Roots” was playing. She switched the channel. There was “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” starring Cicely Tyson as a formerly enslaved centenarian. She changed the channel again, only to see “Rosewood,” a biopic about the massacre of a middle-class Black Florida town at the hands of a white mob.
“I stood in the middle of my bedroom, looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘You’re just messing with me,’” Moseley Braun said, laughing. “I had no reason to have a pity party—there were people who literally died to make sure I could go to the Senate
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From NYT article
‘A Long Time Coming’: Black Women Celebrate Harris’s Ascension
After the presidential race was called, Carol Moseley Braun, 73, the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, found herself making a mental list of the Black women who had come before Ms. Harris. They were Black women who conquered firsts: Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Barbara Jordan. Then, she began to pray.
“I thanked the Lord for this dream come true,” said Ms. Braun, a Democrat who represented Illinois in the Senate from 1993 to 1999. “I believe Joe Biden is exactly what the country needs to heal, and Kamala as his second-in-command is the exactly the right person to help him. There were so many women who paved the way for this to happen, so many who sacrificed, so many shoulders.”
But after the celebration, she said, Ms. Harris will face the difficult task of reaching across the aisle in a country disrupted, cleaved and often intolerant of the changing America Ms. Harris embodies: She is a daughter of immigrants, she is Black and South Asian, and she is in an interracial marriage. “She checks all these boxes,” Ms. Braun said, and those that want to fan the flames of racism and hate just do not know what to do with her.”
The biggest challenge might be the Senate.
“She is going to have to navigate the cult of Donald Trump, which remains in the Senate,” Ms. Braun said. “The word ‘collegiality’ no longer applies. It’s not even something people aspire to. Joe and Kamala have to heal the wounds and make people on the other side feel like they are being heard.
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