Black Catholics laud Harris pick

 

Vice President Joe Biden’s choice of Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate elicited support and good wishes from key Black Catholics. 

“This is headline news. It’s the first of its kind,” said Father Aniedi Okure, O.P., executive director of the Africa Faith and Justice Network, about the choice of Harris, the first Black vice presidential nominee of a major political party.

A native of Nigeria, Father Okure has lived in the United States since the late 1980s and called himself “a voting card-carrying citizen” of the United States.

“Given what the country has been going through lately, with the fallout from (the killing of) George Floyd,” Father Okure told Catholic News Service, “it is something that’s pointing in the right direction, if I may use the word. The United States is an inclusive community. All of this is happening, and things are getting better in that sense. So I think really it’s something to look forward to,” he added, noting, “They haven’t won yet.”

Donna Toliver Grimes, associate director of African American affairs in the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, said "I was so elated. We, the community, need good news, and this was just wonderful.  She wasn’t my top candidate in the primaries, and she wasn’t my top pick for vice president, but she’s really deserving and brings a lot to the table.”

Black Catholics should look at Biden and Harris for “policy that is favorable to people on the margins. If I say ‘for African Americans,’ it benefits other people on the margins as well,” Grimes said. “That’s a concern to deal with this voting-rights, voter-suppression issue. “I would expect he (Biden) would put good people in his Cabinet, who would not damage the agencies, or ignore the mission,” Grimes said.

While Harris was raised by her non-Christian mother, Kamala began attending Christian churches as a young girl and even sang in the children's choir.  Today, Harris is a member of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, led by Rev. Amos Brown, who lauded her as “a quintessential scholar” who would unite “the spirituality, the genius and the nonviolent traditions” of her parents’ backgrounds and of the African American community.  “She’s a spiritual person,” Brown said of Harris.