By now, everyone knows Trump had a disastrous appearance Wednesday at a gathering of black journalists. From the instant he opened his mouth, it was clear he wasn’t there to be interviewed. He was there for a fight, and he attacked the panel to ensure a fight. He wasn’t there for outreach to the black community. He was there to prove to other racists that black people are impossible to deal with and black women are especially nasty. He would have responded in exactly the same way had the initial question been “welcome Mr President, how was your flight up here today?”
It was an extremely ill advised tactic. Journalists responded strongly to this aggressive attack against their profession. Trump lives in a world made up of wedge issues, and he incorrectly presumed an attack on black journalists would be perceived as an attack on black people rather than an attack on journalism. He also thinks white people don’t care if black people are attacked. In a very real way, this election is a test of whether or not attacks on black people are sufficient to ensure electoral victory by a white man.
He’s not crazy, because it’s a strategy which has mostly been true throughout American history. Such things worked for him only 8 years ago. It’s reasonable to see his successful national campaign then as a reaction for daring to put a black man in the White House. White supremacists assume every white skin holds someone just like themselves. Even white people who present as anti-racist are just as bigoted, they believe, you just have to find the right psychological button to push.
The Vice President’s response, as with everything she’s said and done since coming to the top of the Democratic ticket, has been flawless. Trump’s approach to this journalistic group isn’t just the same shtick he would have used in 2016, it’s the approach George Wallace would have used when he ran for President in 1968. It’s OLD. It’s LAME. It’s also counterfactual to an extent people are just TIRED of tolerating. Everyone knows Kamala Harris is of Black and South Asian descent by way of the Caribbean. She’s always been proud of her entire heritage, in a way all of us should be proud of our lineage. A way that respects the ancestry of others while finding inspiration in those who came before ourselves, personally. Harris has never tried to hide her black heritage or her South Asian heritage either one. She shouldn’t have to.
The whole thing further highlights the ridiculous nature of white supremacy. Trump’s miscalculation is informed by the nonsensical One Drop protocol. Because Kamala Harris has a single drop of black blood, she cannot be other than black. Because she’s open about claiming her South Asian heritage, she’s a traitor to her “real” race. It’s dumb. It’s old. It’s strange. It doesn’t reflect reality.
Kamala Harris, however, reflects the reality of what it is to be and American in the 21st Century, where women are just as entitled as men to be whomever they wish to be, and the melting pot becomes real because it now encompasses heritage broader than white men who trace back to multiple European countries.
