NEW YORK/JAMAICA –  Jamaican Americans here who had hoped to see someone of their heritage ascend to the presidency of the United States have been left “disappointed, devastated, and shocked” by the defeat of Vice-President Kamala Harris by former President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election. Many have already began serious soul-searching over the unexpected outcome in which Harris, a daughter of a Jamaican father lost all seven battleground states where American elections are lost or won.

“I really believe this country is just not ready to elect a female for president,” Florida-based retired real estate broker Juliet Mattadeen told the Jamaica Observer. Her grief was shared by many of those who offered their views on the result in interviews with this newspaper. “I am totally shocked; it’s as if I am in a different world,” said Hyacinth Davis, a retired educator of Georgia who also attributed Harris’s gender as the big reason for her loss.  Retired New York health-care worker and founding president of the Ex-Correctional Officers Association of Jamaica, Keith Smellie, said he was “deeply disappointed and devastated” about the results, which he described as “certainly not what I anticipated”.  He added that he believed that the former president “was able to use the state of the economy and the border [immigration] issue effectively against the vice-president”.

The election result was a particularly bitter pill to swallow for Stafford Grant, head of the Jamaica Ex-Servicemen and Women Foundation. Grant, who is based in Pennsylvania, said he was “totally shocked”.

“It [result] does not reflect what we saw on the ground leading up to and during the turnout Tuesday,” said Grant, who was among several Jamaican and Caribbean nationals who formed Caribbean Americans United in Support of Harris shortly after she became her party’s presumptive nominee in July. He worries about some of the policies the former president has advocated he will be carrying out, as he believes they will be detrimental, especially to Jamaicans and other Caribbean people. “We will now have to remain more focused and use the laws where and when necessary to protect ourselves,” he argued. (Jamaicaobserver)…[+]

Photo: TRUMP… was able to use the state of the economy and the border [immigration] issue effectively against the vice-president. (Photos: AFP)