At IOP, Cheri Beasley Urges American Voters to Reject Racialized Attacks in Politics

Former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley expressed disappointment in the American electorate for tolerating racist remarks against Vice President Kamala Harris during a Harvard Institute of Politics forum on Thursday.

Beasley discussed the impact of race and gender in the 2024 presidential election alongside Harvard Kennedy School professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President Cornell William Brooks. Eugene Scott, host of Axios Live, moderated the IOP forum.

In the months since Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, her political opponents have repeatedly made racist remarks about her. At the Republican National Convention in July, speakers repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name.

Beasley said that Harris’ gender and race have been repeatedly targeted throughout the campaign.

“I’m not surprised that the vice president is really experiencing insults heaped upon her,” Beasley said. “It’s surprising that it is acceptable to just write off, to just dismiss how abrasive these kinds of remarks are.”

“We as the electors should not find it acceptable,” she added.

Muhammad also denounced the racist remarks made against Harris and agreed that he did not find them to be surprising. He cited the conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of former President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship ahead of the 2008 election.

“From the deliberate mispronunciation of her name, to the ascription of her identity as not black — ,” Muhammad said. “Obviously we can go down a really dark rabbit hole for all the stories we know have circulated in the news, but that, to me, is the least surprising aspect of this.”

During the event, the panelists also discussed the role that young voters might play in swaying the outcome of this year’s election.

“This moment holds so much promise because young people really are heavily engaged,” Beasley said. “They’re fired up about the candidates — but even more so than that they really appreciate the fact that it’s important to stand for these issues that they care so much about — and to insist that the candidates do the same.”

Muhammad also used the forum to criticize members of Congress for demanding that leaders of colleges and universities further “shrink the space of the right of assembly, even on a college campus.”

“College campuses, until quite recently, remained places that allowed for the right of assembly and a certain amount of speech that could challenge state actors of one kind or another,” Muhammad said.