Harriet Tubman on $20 bill symbolizes a new era
It’s clear after his first week in office that President Joe Biden’s leadership marks a new era, one in which the White House intends to be the disruptor of what’s always been, to forge national consensus around confronting systemic racism, making that — as he put it Tuesday — one of “the core values of this nation.” Biden’s laser focus on racial justice represents the most sustained presidential focus on race matters that America has ever seen, at least since Reconstruction or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Biden’s set an important tone for the entire federal government’s approach to racial equity Tuesday, when he signed four executive orders promoting racial equity in housing (a reversal of the previous administration’s stance on efforts to root out systemic racism in federal housing policies), ending the federal use of private prisons, “reaffirming the federal government’s commitment to tribal sovereignty and consultation” with Native American and indigenous communities and combating racism and xenophobia directed toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. In many ways these represent his first major policy steps as president: to confront the roots of America’s national crisis over racial injustice.
There is perhaps no greater symbol in these early days of Biden’s administration than Harriet Tubman, the former enslaved Black woman turned abolitionist who led hundreds of Blacks to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad. White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Tuesday the administration’s intention to speed up plans to have Tubman’s image grace $20 US Treasury notes.
This is extraordinary, and on the heels of the Biden administration’s promotion of racial equity via executive orders, proves to be both symbolic and substantive. Representation matters. Biden has named more people of color to his cabinet than any chief executive in American history. Black women power in the Biden administration, from Vice President Kamala Harris to domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and many others; it’s a long overdue reflection of Black women’s national organizing and voter mobilization power (that proved key to the president’s successful campaign and the Democratic Party regaining control of the US Senate).
Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill is more than a timely act of symbolism by a president who owes Black voters. It represents a much needed acknowledgement of the way in which racial slavery helped to create the wealth of this nation and much of the world. Tubman represents my 81-year-old Haitian mother — and all of the Black women who tended marginalized communities — like gardens in the face of unspeakable systems of oppression and personal acts of cruelty.
Rice told reporters Tuesday that Biden planned an “ambitious” effort to address racial inequality and support “communities that have been left behind.” Biden himself spoke candidly of his motivations, citing George Floyd’s death as “marking a turning point in this country’s attitude towards racial justice” and calling “the devastation in communities of color” wrought by Covid-19 “nothing short of stunning.” Biden’s embrace of racial justice, in symbolism and substance, contrasts sharply with the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back the clock on longstanding efforts to ensure racial equity in the federal government.
Biden’s remarks capped the first week of an administration already modeling the importance of both policy substance and political symbolism in the promotion of racial justice in America. Symbols of Black dignity and citizenship were on full display during the inaugural festivities, encapsulated by the soaring and unabashedly optimistic poetry of Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old Black youth poet laureate whose rendering of “The Hill We Climb” provoked and inspired so many.
These latest executive orders built on one of Biden’s very first actions in office: an executive order focused specifically on fighting systemic racism across multiple layers of government. His executive order “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” represented an effort to do more than roll back the previous administration’s policies on race and history (which Biden already has by ending the 1776 Commission, which he labeled “offensive” and that defined a truly warts and all view of American history as unpatriotic), but a proactive response to the groundswell of racial justice protests that transformed the nation last year. The executive order also directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to partner with federal agencies to produce data assessments to measure racial equity outcomes and, when necessary, to pilot programs designated to broaden access and equity.
Historically, social movements, from abolitionism to civil rights, have forged national consensus around political, economic, and human rights injustices through peaceful, sometimes combative, confrontation. American Presidents, such as Johnson, at their best (achieved only very rarely) existed in creative tension with these movements, led by activists who tended to disrupt the status quo.
Biden’s turning that dynamic on its head. In addition to the executive orders, Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus contains anti-poverty and employment relief policies that would, the administration says, reduce Black poverty by a third and Hispanic poverty by 40%.
Having Harriet Tubman on the $20 would be a deep reflection both of the change Biden craves and of the historical factors behind the poverty his policies are intended to fight. Her image on US currency speaks to a larger truth: that American democracy was cultivated not through the grand political acts of White presidents and statesman whose (mostly slave-owning) visages, up until now, have reflected a one-sided portrait of the nation on our currency. By embracing the image of Tubman on the $20 bill we recognize her, and the formerly enslaved Black people whose labor helped make America truly wealthy, as architects of our flawed democratic experiment.
Biden seems to understand that this is the kind of truth America must recognize in order to create public policies that leverage justice to produce healing. “Our soul will be troubled as long as systemic racism persists,” Biden observed during Tuesday’s announcement, noting that the nation is less prosperous and healthy due to racial injustice. “We need to make equity a part of what we do every day.”
These words are especially crucial during this period of racial and political reckoning in America. We still have a long road ahead of us, with legislation devoted to expanding and protecting voting rights, transforming the criminal justice system and ending racial wealth and income gaps, to name a few, high on the agenda. For now, Biden has taken unprecedented first steps toward meeting the historic crisis of race and democracy; his first week portends a potentially transformative presidency.
