Bad News for Dems: Kamala Harris Wouldn't Be First VP of Color - It Was a Republican Elected Over 90 Years Ago
With numerous news outlets prematurely announcing the victory of Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, progressives everywhere are incessantly cheering on the election of the woman many believe to be the first vice president of color in American history.
As it turns out, Harris, if appointed, would not be the first vice president of color.
Instead, that honor goes to Charles Curtis, a Republican who served under former President Herbert Hoover as the 31st vice president from 1929 to 1933.
Don’t erase Native Americans from history.
Don’t erase Native Americans from history.
The first BIPOC vice president was Charles Curtis, a member of the Caw Nation. He was Herbert Hoover’s vice president from 1929 to 1933. pic.twitter.com/OJPErPdX5P
— Kierán Suckling (@KieranSuckling) November 7, 2020
Curtis was born to a white father and a one-quarter Kaw Indian mother.
During the early part of his life, Curtis was raised in North Topeka, Kansas, where he split time living between the white and Native American communities there, according to the U.S. Senate website.
“The son of Orren Curtis, a white man, and Ellen Pappan, who was one-quarter Kaw Indian, Charles Curtis on his mother’s side was the great-great grandson of White Plume, a Kansa-Kaw chief who had offered assistance to the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804,” Curtis’s biography on the website reads.
“White Plume’s daughter married Louis Gonville, a French-Canadian fur trader, and their daughter, Julie Gonville, married Louis Pappan.”
Before returning to Topeka for school and discovering his passion for politics, Curtis spent much of his childhood with his maternal grandparents after the death of his mother. Curtis spoke French and Kansa, the Siouan language of the Great Plains, before he learned English.
Unlike Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who claims Native American heritage despite the microscopic evidence to prove it, Curtis remained very much a part of his Native American community and “fit comfortably into the tribe.”
Upon becoming vice president, Curtis didn’t suddenly abandon his cultural roots. Instead, the Kaw Nation member brought his heritage with him, using Native American artifacts to decorate his office and wearing Indian headdresses in photos.
Despite his incredibly storied history, Curtis isn’t praised by progressives in the same way that other politicians that happen to be minorities, such as Kamala Harris, are — most likely because Curtis was a Republican.
His very existence dispels two of the left’s most important narratives.
One, that the Republican Party is the party of white supremacist racism. And two, that politicians such as Kamala Harris are breaking glass ceilings and invisible barriers that the racist nation of America has had in place since its inception.
While far from perfect, the ideal that Republicans have strived to achieve for decades is that of judging people by the content of their character, not their immutable characteristics.
When you strip away Kamala Harris’ racial and gender identity, what’s left is just another social justice warrior politician pushing the radical Marxist ideal of equity over true equality.
To put it bluntly, she’s nothing special.
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