Trump Thinks Harris’s Sisterhood Is a ‘Sorority Party.’ He Should Think Again.

A few weeks ago during the presidential debate, Donald Trump chided Kamala Harris for not attending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress in July because, Trump said, “She was at a sorority party of hers. She wanted to go to the sorority party.”

In fact, on the day of Netanyahu’s speech, Harris was in Indianapolis to address the Grand Boulé, or national convention, of Zeta Phi Beta, a historically Black sorority.

However: Harris met with Netanyahu in Washington the next day. Also: Contrary to how Trump put it, Zeta Phi Beta isn’t “her” sorority — she’s a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. And Trump’s “sorority party” riff was more than just a tossed-off line. He was insinuating that Harris had heedlessly abandoned a significant occasion for something frivolous.

Harris’s sisterhood and its peer organizations are anything but frivolous. Trump’s flip remark illustrated just how little he seems to understand the centers of power within the Black community and how valuable they may be in this election.

Informally known as the Divine Nine, there are five historically Black fraternities and four historically Black sororities that are officially organized as the National Pan-Hellenic Council. All but one were formed over a century ago, in the years following the Supreme Court’s heinous (and ultimately defunct) Plessy v. Ferguson decision that helped both to enshrine the “separate but equal” principle and to legitimize Jim Crow.

With that as a historical backdrop, Black fraternities and sororities served as both bulwarks and battalions of Black self-reliance. They have social justice and social service coded into their DNA.