Trump Idiots Demand Kamala Harris Release Her Long-Form Black Certificate
She’s also Indian. She can be both.
Is Kamala Harris Black? The answer's obvious, but America's especially dumb this year, so we'll have to address some absurd bad-faith arguments about the future vice president's ethnic background.
Conservative and self-proclaimed expert in Black-people-logy Mark Levin was among the first who attempted to de-sister Harris.
Mark Levin kicked off his show tonight by ranting unprompted about Kamala Harris' ethnicity. https: //t.co/w4Z2aLX9Yj
— John Whitehouse (@John Whitehouse) 1597196370.0
LEVIN: I want to take a look at Kamala Harris ... with you right now.
Just 10 seconds in and it's already gross. Levin shows us pictures of Harris's apparently non-negroid features (I'm surprised he didn't do a side-by-side with Stacey Abrams).
LEVIN: I'm not going to be a stickler about this, but the media will insist on it. Kamala Harris is not an African-American.
I'm not sure I agree 100 percent with your police work there, Mark.
For The People Reaction GIF by Kamala Harris Giphy
Not all Black people can dance, of course. My wedding video is People's Exhibit A. Still, Harris had me fooled, but I've only been Black professionally for 46 years. Let's further explore Levin's argument.
LEVIN: She is Indian and Jamaican.
Levin helpfully explained that Jamaica is in the Caribbean and India is “out there near China." He dismissively gestured into the distance when mentioning India.
Thanks to local genocidal crackpot Christopher Columbus, enslaved Africans were introduced to Jamaica in the 15th Century. The majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Kamala Harris ain't from Norway.
LEVIN: I only point that out ...
Because you're racist and uniformed?
LEVIN: If you dare raise that, you'reattacked .
No, you big snowflake baby, you're just told that you're wrong.
LEVIN: Her ancestry doesn't go back to American slavery.
First place, that's not what African-American means. Conservatives tried the same bullshit with Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya. It's sickening that the same people who resent The 1619 Project and keep telling Black people that “slavery is over, get over it" are seeking to restrict our identity to a confirmed history of enslavement. We don't define ourselves solely by the extent to which white people fucked us over. "Life is bigger than you, and you are not me."
The following section from Clint Smith's poem in The 1619 Project directly links Jamaica to the chains of the Atlantic slave trade.
I pull my index finger from Angola'
to Brazil & feel the bodies jumping from the ship.
I drag my thumb from Ghana
toJamaica& feel the weight of dysentery make an anvil of my touch.
I slide my ring finger from Senegal
to South Carolina & feel the ocean separate a million families.
The soft hum of history spins
on its tilted axis. A cavalcade of ghost ships
wash their hands of all they carried.
The reason so many Black women wept with joy when Harris was announced as Joe Biden's running mate is because she shares a cultural identity that Levin could never understand even if he tried. I understand there's a conservative impulse to diminish Black joy, but Levin can't erase that genuine connection with some half-assed race theory.
The moment I found out @KamalaHarris was picked for VP while live-streaming #ElectionCountdown. #VPPick #VPHarris… https: //t.co/uvec1Dy0Uo
— Maya Contreras (@Maya Contreras) 1597182206.0
It's not just conservatives showing their ass on this point. (If you missed Dinesh D'Souza and Diamond & Silk in Dok's post, go there after you're finished here.)
Author Thomas Chatterton Williams suggested (wrongly) that Harris's Blackness “in an American sense is contrived." Look, you don't have to dismiss the other parts of her heritage to recognize that Harris's life experiences are those of a Black woman. Racists also don't ask to see a signed notarized document confirming your Blackness before discriminating against you. There was nothing “contrived" about the distinct difference in how the media and punditry treated Harris last year compared to Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand. All four women senators were subject to misogyny but Harris's coverage repeatedly veered into misogynoir.
I believe you’re a serious and good faith interlocutor. It’s impossible to speak meaningfully with you about this o… https: //t.co/4nevYdE00L
— Thomas Chatterton Williams 🌍 🎧 (@Thomas Chatterton Williams 🌍 🎧) 1597244782.0
Zaid Jilani with the Intercept claimed that when Harris ran for district attorney almost 20 years ago in San Francisco, she "campaigned heavily towards Indian-Americans, highlighted the fact she used to go to temple as a child, her childhood, cultural upbringing."
What a scandal! Harris's mother was born and raised in India. If Obama fondly recalled eating his mother's green bean casserole at Thanksgiving, that doesn't mean his Blackness is arbitrary. Jilani argued that because "different aspects of [Harris's] heritage have been highlighted at different times based on the political environment," that means racial identity is fluid and subject to social dynamics.
Harris is authentically part of two rich cultural heritages, but we know her Blackness isn't “fluid." I'm reminded of what Zora Neale Hurston said.
I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again
Madame Vice President can relate.
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That's exactly what he's saying. They've gone so far right, there's no turning back.
I know that many people not from the South do make lots of jokes, but one reason certainly does have to do with terrible governments and politicians who especially nowadays have done all they can to put forward bigoted, ignorant, uneducated, and stupid people to run for office, and have succeeded.And related to that, these (almost all) Repubs have done whatever they can to defund and or destroy public education in their states. This does add to the stereotypes, of course.
The places I have enjoyed the most in the South have been areas where education is primary and still important. Places like Athens, GA, Charlottesville, VA, the Research Triangle Area of NC, and Austin, TX. But I have also enjoyed places like New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, El Paso, and Key West.This does not mean I haven't enjoyed other places in the South, whether it be a restaurant, a local festival, or particularly scenic areas - like the Blue Ridge Mountains, the mouths of the Mississippi River delta, or the desert of West Texas and the border areas below it along the Rio Grande.
Now mind you, there are plenty of educated and undereducated areas in other parts of the country. And in the same way we make jokes about the South we make jokes about other parts of our own states. Our county (County A) is much better than County B!And even in my own very educated county it's not all wonderful, as amongst our "educated" we have many faux progressives, fake liberals, and looney lefists.
So yeah, we'll probably still make lame jokes about the South, but many of us do know that there are plenty of good, smart, progressive people all over the South, and if you want ot make fun of rest of us, be reassured that we've got plenty of idiots out here too to make fun of. I certainly do it...