The United States had its first Black president and its first female president over a half-century ago.
They were fictional, they were on screen, their names were Douglass Dilman and Leslie McCloud, and in the decades that followed there have been many others.
Yet none quite lines up with Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 2024 election who is a biracial woman. Even after the United States elected a biracial president – Barack Obama – who has been the subject of two biopics, filmmakers have not created fictional equivalents. Nor have the presidents on screen been of South Asian descent.
Instead, almost all the presidents of color on American screens have been Black and they have been men, while almost all the female presidents have been white. While the representation on screen of most Black presidents avoided any discussion of race, the representation of women has uniformly focused on gender.
So as people engage in the inevitable discussion of the meaning of Harris’ candidacy, it’s high time to revisit those fictional presidents. Together they reveal how the presidency, in this case the fictional presidency, struggles with race and gender – just like the country at large.
And along the way, this may help create a watch list for people when they need a break from what promises to be a bruising presidential campaign.
The doubting − and doubted − president
The first Black president was Douglass Dilman, played by James Earl Jones in the 1972 film “The Man.” “The Man” situated racial politics front and center. Dilman is a reserved academic-turned-senator serving as president pro tem of the Senate before a series of freak accidents brings him to the presidency. He finds himself thrown into office facing doubts from Black activists and vicious opposition from white politicians who will not accept his legitimacy. In the Oval Office, he tells his daughter: “I’m the wrong one. … They were expecting a Black messiah.”
The United States had its first Black president and its first female president over a half-century ago.
They were fictional, they were on screen, their names were Douglass Dilman and Leslie McCloud, and in the decades that followed there have been many others.
Yet none quite lines up with Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 2024 election who is a biracial woman. Even after the United States elected a biracial president – Barack Obama – who has been the subject of two biopics, filmmakers have not created fictional equivalents. Nor have the presidents on screen been of South Asian descent.
Instead, almost all the presidents of color on American screens have been Black and they have been men, while almost all the female presidents have been white. While the representation on screen of most Black presidents avoided any discussion of race, the representation of women has uniformly focused on gender.