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THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
Don’t Let Me Hear You Say an HBCU Education Didn’t Prepare Me
Kamala Harris’ appointment to Madam Vice President hits differently for Black college grads like me
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
For many of my co-workers, this inauguration hit different. Mostly for good reasons. After four years marked by incompetence, negligence, and frequent abuses of power at the presidential level, we were all elated to see last week’s changing of the guard. There was a noticeable optimism beaming through everyone’s Zoom windows throughout the day. (I even put myself on mute during a meeting to bump “FDT” for a bit.)
But that’s not the only reason this inauguration felt special. It wasn’t the Covid-era masks that everyone was wearing, or Bernie Sanders’ viral normcore fashion statement in front of the same building where, just two weeks before, domestic terrorists had attempted a whole-ass coup. No, this one was historic because now, for the first time ever, we can all paraphrase Jeezy: My vice president is Black — a woman, too!
There’s no shortage of historical significance attached to Kamala Harris’ ascension to…
