Why it matters that Kamala Harris has two white guys in her corner

“Historic,” the word most often used to describe Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy, is just shorthand for the fact that in nearly 250 years of this country’s existence, no one who looks like her has ever been at the top of a major party’s ticket. 

That’s got nothing to do with ability. Racism and sexism are rigorous gatekeepers of America’s halls of power. Consequently, the mere presence of a biracial Black American woman of Indian descent in the race at this stage is a challenge to the status quo. But Harris’ run is also historic in another, less discussed way. 

On the campaign trail, Doug Emhoff and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — Harris’ husband and vice presidential running mate, respectively — embody figures rarely before observed in American life: white men who know their place.

That is to say, white men who know their supportive place and seem to occupy it without hesitation or resentment. This is the first time our national political stage has hosted two white men whose role is to passionately champion a Black woman all the way to the White House. 

Obviously, it’s vitally important not to diminish Harris as the main character in this political story. But it’s still worth examining the optics presented by Walz and Emhoff, because those two white guys are defying and potentially redefining America’s vision of authority and leadership. Amid all the racist, sexist MAGA detritus that surrounds us, the Harris campaign is a necessary glimpse at what American power, equality and truly inclusive democracy could someday look like.

That redefinition would be notable in any moment, but it’s particularly important in the dark timeline we find ourselves on. Former President Donald Trump’s frequent attacks on Black women journalists and insults toward Black women lawmakers have energized masses of racist misogynists. The corrosive spillage of MAGA identity politics — in addition to innumerable anti-woman and anti-anti-racist laws, policy proposals and civil rights rollbacks — has included the absurd notion that white masculinity is in crisis.

Walz seems to have understood the assignment from the jump. During vetting interviews, Walz reportedly volunteered that he wasn’t “angling for anything else” and emphasized, “This is not about me.” Both quotes suggest Walz not only understood the level of deference and loyalty required, but also took pains to establish that he would have no issues offering both to a Black woman superior. 

“Being strategically invisible or staying in the background will require a humility that many white men have never had to demonstrate,” Sheletta Brundidge, a Minnesota-based Black woman author, wrote in a Minnesota Star Tribune op-ed. “She’s going to be Gladys Knight; he will be a Pip.” 

Since his selection, Walz has seemed joyful as second-in-command, radiating an ease in the role that most likely assuages the reflexive discomfort some voters — and particularly white voters — would feel seeing the boss is a Black woman. 

The misogynist smears that might allow MAGA types to portray Walz as a “beta” for playing second banana to a Black woman are simply less effective because of his background as a football coach, hunter, gun owner and National Guard veteran. Misogynoir falsely pathologizes Black women as inherently anormal — but as an older, rural-coded Midwestern white man, Walz is regarded as almost aggressively normal — or as the headlines put it, “all-American” and an “everyman.” 

The tendency to view Black women with suspicion and hostility — to interpret the mildest pleas for equitable change as inherently dangerous and threatening — remains. But the Harris campaign might succeed in moving the needle a bit on those perceptions. 

The same reassurances are provided by Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman- turned-Harris campaign surrogate, whose demonstrations of supportive partnership earned his reputation as a “wife guy” as far back as 2019. Emhoff’s loving advocacy of his wife’s ascendance consistently suggests he feels he “married up” — a sentiment rarely extended to Black women in a system in which even their femininity is routinely questioned. (Right-wing memes questioning both Michelle Obama’s and Harris’ gender are par for the MAGA course.) 

Emhoff ditched his career as a firm’s partner attorney to attend to his wife’s, breaking with all gender expectations, especially those attached to white men who have succeeded in corporate America. In positioning himself as the white man happily standing behind a great Black woman, Emhoff exemplifies a breed of white male masculinity in opposition to MAGA’s camp, women-hating, masculinity — one that emphasizes partnership and respect over insecure dominance and superiority. “I’m honored now to have my wife be at the top of the ticket,” Emhoff recently announced on a podcast. “I cannot tell you how proud I am of her.” 

Emhoff’s words are a rejection of the idea that Black women’s goals should somehow be contained, that Black women are taking up too much space or vying for spots that somehow always rightfully belong to someone else. And it’s the opposite of the right’s fragile white masculinity model, which views gender equality as oppressive and racial justice as unbearable. 

Several decades back, these folks would probably have called Emhoff and Walz “N-word lovers” and kept it moving, but now they use more euphemistic terms.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed Walz is “afraid of testosterone.” Rob Schmitt, a Newsmax anchor, described Walz as “the white guy with a white wife and white kids who hates white people” — a gender and racial turncoat, if you will. Donald Trump Jr., the creative one in the family, predictably labeled the White Dudes for Harris fundraising call “Cucks for Kamala.” And Christopher Rufo, the right-wing architect of the phony “critical race theory” panic, was so apoplectic over the announcement of Walz’s appointment that he spent the whole day firing off social media copes.

None of this is to suggest Walz and Emhoff should be lauded as American superheroes. White men are praised enough for doing the absolute barest of minimums on behalf of decency, and “white saviorism” is among our country’s most tired tropes. But the two are working against deeply ingrained, stubbornly persistent and highly damaging ideas about whiteness and maleness, modeling behavior that really shouldn’t be so expectation-defying at this point — and yet. 

“How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come?” Walz asked attendees on the White Dudes for Harris call. “And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass, sent him on the road?”

It’s yet another idea that Harris herself couldn’t push too strongly, lest she set off alarm bells, handing MAGA something to scare white voters over. But the point stands, nonetheless.