A float that took part in a Halloween parade in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 30 received backlash over what many parties described as a racist depiction of Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to The New York Times, the float depicted two people, one dressed as the former president and the other dressed as Harris, with the latter connected to the vehicle by what appeared to be chains connected to her wrists.
Diane Bailey, the Democratic Mayor of Mount Pleasant, described it as hateful and racist.
“It was a hateful and racist thing, and I just can’t tell you how worked up I get when I talk about it,” Bailey told the paper. “It shouldn’t be any place in this country, and I shouldn’t have to see it in my little town.”
Although no one said the name James Byrd Jr., the Jasper, Texas, man who was dragged to his death by Ku Klux Klan members in 1998, his lynching was alluded to by Bailey and one Mount Pleasant resident, Josh Huff.
The mayor also gave her take on the float to WPXI, “The worst part of it was that there was either a rope or a chain attached to the back of the vehicle, and there was a woman who was to resemble Kamala Harris in handcuffs and chained to the back of the vehicle as though they were dragging her.”
Mayor Bailey concluded, “This needs to stop. In this county, we need to go back to being educated adults, we need to go back to acting like adults.”
Daylon A. Davis, president of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP, described the float as a harmful symbol of racism in America.
“This appalling portrayal goes beyond the realm of Halloween satire or free expression,” Davis said in a statement. “It is a harmful symbol that evokes a painful history of violence, oppression, and racism that Black and Brown communities have long endured here in America.”
Joanna E. McClinton, the Democratic Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and a Black woman, said the values expressed by the float are inconsistent with the values of the state she represents.
“Depicting Vice President Harris in chains at the hands of her opponent is grounded symbolism from our country’s painful past,” Rep. McClinton wrote on Twitter. “Exhibitions like these are never appropriate in a civil discourse and are inconsistent with our values as Pennsylvanians.”
McClinton also called on local leaders to condemn the hateful display and to hold the perpetrators accountable.
“With such a display of hate in their community, leaders should not be silent, so I’m calling on local officials, including my colleagues in the General Assembly, to join me in condemning this hate. Those responsible need to be held accountable and restore the community’s trust. We need to work together to move Pennsylvania forward, not backward.”
As McClinton alluded to in her statement, those who participated in the parade on that float have not yet been identified, according to the mayor, who informed the Times that participants in the parade are neither registered nor vetted.
Perhaps the most damning commentary regarding the float comes from local Huff. In his comments to WPXI, he compared what he witnessed at the parade to a lynching reenactment.
“This is not a good look, this is simulating a lynching down Main Street in Mount Pleasant. It is not the community I grew up in, not the community I came back to. It was dark. It was dark. This has been escalated way beyond what it should be. Somebody in power had to say hey, yeah, that’s fine. That’s okay.”
The Mount Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department, which has sponsored the parade for more than 70 years, took responsibility for allowing the float in the parade and vowed to do better in its efforts to support the community’s children in a Nov. 1 post to its Facebook account.
“We, the members of the Mount Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department, want to take a moment to sincerely apologize for allowing the offensive participants to take part in the Mount Pleasant Annual Halloween Parade last evening,” the fire department wrote. “We do not share in the values represented by those participants, and we understand how it may have hurt or offended members of our community.”
The fire department concluded their statement, “The annual Halloween Parade is a first come, first serve event and we have traditionally only provided safety & traffic control. We will be reviewing our planning processes to prevent a situation like this from happening again. Thank you for your understanding and support as we work to make our events more welcoming for everyone.”
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