With Vice President Kamala Harriss ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, Republicans are rebuilding a campaign strategy that for months focused on running against President Joe Biden. One emerging theme asserts that Harris laughs too much at inappropriate momentspart of a broader argument that Harris is weird.I call her laughing Kamala, former President Donald Trump said at a rally in Michigan on July 24. Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. . . . She is nuts.As a professor of American studies with a focus on race and politics, I know that Black women in the U.S. have a history of struggle against violence and oppression. And too often when we experience joy, and show it, ridicule follows. We are said to be too loud, too emotionalwell, too Black women.History shows that this is a familiar dog whistle. Black women have been called out as sexually provocative Jezebels, emasculating Sapphires, or servile, nurturing Mammys in popular culture. Those labels clearly dont fit Harris, so Trump has created a new epithet: crazy laughing.Invisibility has long haunted Black girls and women. In response, their choices, from dress to spirituality to activist groups, often center on making themselves visible. They do this to highlight injustice and to offer a vision of justice based on their experiences.As I see it, Black women deserve for some of that visibility to be joyful. In this realm, Harris is paving the way. Then-Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris dances with a childrens group at the Des Moines Steak Fry on September 21, 2019.Elation in struggleMany public views of Harris dont reflect Trumps framing. The vice presidents anecdotes, smile, laugh, and evenshockerdancing in public have inspired a tidal wave of fan posts and videos celebrating her energy and what media scholar Jamie Cohen describes as her endearing awkwardness.For these observers, Harris embodies the idea of Black joya national movement that started in 2020 after George Floyd was killed. As NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior writer Lindsey Norward explains:Black joy is an essential part of the complete story of Black people in their fight for dignity and reclamation . . . the unfettered ability to go and enjoy all of the good things about life.Black joy is embodied in all kinds of actions, from personal fashion to sports to voting. It offers a powerful antidote to pervasive images of Black trauma.Act of self-definitionIn a book that I coedited with Wake Forest University political science professor Julia Jordan-Zachery, we examined a related concept: Black Girl Magic. Our book described how Black girls and women maintain their humanity in the face of hostility by fostering community, countering invisibility, and creating spaces for freedom.Sometimes, this means drawing attention to their struggles. One essay in the book cites African American Policy Forum executive director Kimberl Crenshaw, explaining the hashtag #SayHerName, which was coined to raise awareness of Black women victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence.Although Black women are routinely killed, raped, and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality, Crenshaw wrote. Yet, inclusion of Black womens experiences in social movements, media narratives, and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities of color.On July 23, 2024, Harris released a statement expressing grief at the senseless death of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot in her Illinois home by a sheriffs deputy who responded to a report of a prowler. The deputy has been fired and charged with murder, based on bodycam footage from another deputy that showed him threatening Massey after she rebuked him and then shooting her.Sonya Massey deserved to be safe, Harris wrote. The disturbing footage released yesterday confirms what we know from the lived experiences of so manywe have much work to do to ensure that our justice system fully lives up to its name. In other words, Harris said Masseys name.Writing her own storyOur book argued that in the age of Trump, whom Black women almost universally see as hostile to their interests, finding the balance between humanity and magic is more important than ever for Black girls and women.As then-First Lady Michelle Obama said in a speech at the March 2015 Black Girls Rock awards, young Black girls often hear voices that tell you that youre not good enough, that you have to look a certain way, act a certain way; that if you speak up, youre too loud; if you step up to lead, youre being bossy.Around this time, author and social media influencer CaShawn Thompson began tweeting #BlackGirlMagic because, she said, magic is something that people dont always understand. Sometimes, our accomplishments might seem to come out of thin air because a lot of times, the only people supporting us are other Black women.The hashtag went mainstream at the 2016 Black Entertainment Television Awards, where actor and activist Jesse Williams delivered an impassioned discourse about race in America. He ended with a subtle nod:[T]he burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. Thats not our job, alrightstop with all that . . . the thing is that just because were magic doesnt mean were not real.Williams was respectfully referencing the #BlackGirlMagic movement, alluding to the fact that Black girls and womens identities include resistance against narratives that exclude them and a willingness to define themselves for themselves.Harris has confronted this challenge many times through her career as a district attorney, state attorney general, senator, and vice president. Now she has to invent herself again as a presidential candidate. And even with a large campaign staff, Harris will have to do this for herself.As Nobel laureate Toni Morrison observed, the Black woman has nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.Our book highlighted the emotional fortitude that Black women draw on to accomplish so many feats while breaking unfathomable barriers. Its no exaggeration to call what they do magic.Harris will need plenty of support for a successful campaignfrom Black women and many others. There will be serious issues to debate, from border security to foreign policy to the economy. But Harris also has a real opportunity to contrast her humor and positive energy with a very dark vision from the GOPwithout letting them dictate when its okay for her to laugh.Duchess Harris is a professor of American Studies at Macalester College.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.