Black girls don’t just know about Kamala Harris; they plan to emulate her.
Last month, Kamala Harris accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for president of the United States. An instantly iconic photograph by Todd Heisler of the New York Times shows Harris delivering her address from the perspective of a young girl in braids. The message is clear: Kamala Harris is offering our daughters a new vision of what political leadership looks like.
Our research leads us to expect Harris will in fact inspire young Black girls in particular to follow in her footsteps by becoming politically engaged or even running for office.
Black girls see Harris as a role model
What makes Harris a particularly effective role model? As a challenge to the white, male status quo, Harris is attention-grabbing, especially to young Black women. In 2020, we asked a nationally representative sample of 820 American teenagers whether they had read or heard a lot about Kamala Harris: 73 percent of Black girls said they had, compared to just 28 percent of white girls. Harris’ intersectional identity as both a person of color (Black and South Asian) and a woman mattered: Only 25 percent of Black boys paid a lot of attention to her, roughly the same as white boys (27 percent).
Black girls didn’t just know about Harris – they sought to emulate her. On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 indicates she is not a role model and 10 means that she is, Black girls gave Kamala Harris an average score of 8. By comparison, they rated Joe Biden 6.6 on the same scale. Again, the combination of shared race and gender likely explains the higher ratings for Harris . Black boys gave her a respectable average score of 7 – relatively high, but still lower than Black girls. Among white girls, her role model rating was only 4.5, below the midpoint.
This attention and admiration can translate into action. In another 2020 survey, we asked 1,000 Black and 1,000 white teenagers about their political engagement. Since this survey sample involved teenagers, the questions had them project into adulthood. As adults, do they envision themselves participating in politics by, for example, attending a campaign rally, working for a candidate, or even running for office themselves?
It’s not just Kamala. Black women role models broadly matter.
Black girls who lived in a community where a Black woman ran for the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, or governor for the first time were significantly more likely to say that they will get involved in politics, compared to respondents who lived somewhere with only white women candidates, or no women running for office at all. These results suggest Black women candidates were true role models, as they even inspired Black girls to say that they would like to run for office one day.
But it wasn’t just Black girls who are inspired by pathbreaking Black women candidates. White girls also were more likely to say they were interested in running for political office when Black women run for office in their communities. In contrast, exposure to white women candidates had no impact on white girls’ ambition to run for political office. By breaking multiple barriers, Black women inspire young white women to view politics and, especially, serving in public office as an attractive future path.
Talk is cheap, however. Do we have any reason to think that what adolescents say they will do has any bearing on what they actually do as adults? Yes, we do. Childhood socialization has a significant impact on adult political behavior. In our research we also find that when teenage girls see women role models running for office, they are more likely to be politically engaged as adults. This, of course, is what people mean when they say that path-breakers in any field – politics, science, business – are role models. They change what young people believe they can accomplish. In the words of Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, “you can’t be what you can’t see.” When young girls see someone who looks like them competing for a highly visible political office, it can spur them to follow in that role model’s footsteps.
Visibility matters more than winning
What happens if a woman role model loses? Does this negate her ability to be an inspiration to others? We have studied women as political role models for more than two decades, and have never found any evidence that women must actually win to inspire young girls to be politically active. It is running, not winning, that matters. More precisely, to be role models, women candidates must run viable campaigns for a high-profile public office.
Kamala Harris obviously qualifies. Not only is she running for the highest office in the land, but her emergence as the Democratic nominee generated an explosion of interest, especially on social media. By any metric, she is exceedingly visible. Public opinion polls suggest that Harris and Trump are neck and neck, so she is definitely a viable candidate as well.
The young girl in that iconic New York Times photograph is eight-year-old Amara Ajagu, Harris’ great-niece. When Kamala Harris herself was the same age, Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) became the first Black woman ever awarded delegates at a national convention. In 2018, reflecting on Chisholm’s legacy, then-Senator Harris (D-Calif.) wrote that she “spawned generations of Black women determined to and successful at breaking political glass ceilings.”
Both Chisholm and Harris provide clear evidence of the political leadership potential of Black women. In summarizing her own career, Shirley Chisholm said, “I hope that my having made it, the hard way, can be some kind of inspiration, particularly to women.” Now, it is Harris’ turn to serve as an inspiration to another generation of young women, transforming American politics not only with her leadership but by her example.
Editors’ note: An earlier version described Kamala Harris as Southeast Asian, not South Asian. We regret the error.
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