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Steelmanning the Strawman: Trump Has A Point About Kamala
OR
Bill DeBlasio is Blacker than Kamala Harris
TLDR: Trump’s attacks against Kamala, while characteristically garbling a more logical point, get at a deeper truth: why should black Americans (or anyone else) vote for Kamala as a Black Candidate when her experience of blackness (inasmuch as such a thing exists) is atypical? This demonstrates how progressive racialists lack a cohesive philosophy of why diversity is good, and who qualifies for diversity points and why.
Trump’s instantly infamous remarks* at the NABJ conference have been universally decried and only sporadically defended. As is typical, Trump has made a mush of a very incisive argument: when progressives tell us that Kamala Harris is an historic candidate for being a black woman, what does that mean? When they say, or at least imply, that Kamala Harris’ Blackness gives us a reason to vote for her, what are those reasons and why should we care about them?
To be clear, Kamala Harris is of course, literally half black and has never hidden that fact or pretended otherwise to my knowledge. She had a Jamaican black father, an Indian mother, attended Howard University (the premier Historically Black College), where she joined a black sorority. We can’t rule out that she lied about her race in some small way at some small point, perhaps lied to somebody in high school, or misreported her race on some official documents where she thought it might benefit her. But let’s compare her to another Democratic politician who traded on a questionable claim to blackness, one who I think was very briefly her competitor in the 2020 presidential primary:
Bill Deblasio is Blacker than Kamala
Kamala starts the comparison with a significant lead, on DNA and her Howard degree and whatnot. But let’s consider some other metrics! Bill has more black kids than Kamala does. Bill has more black spouses than Kamala does. Bill’s immediate family (prior to his divorce anyway, but we’ll ignore that for the exercise) had more black people in it than Kamala’s. Kamala hasn’t had a close relationship with her black father in decades, leaving only her sister; Bill had a black wife and black kids. Even if we expand a bit to give Kamala credit for her brother in law and nieces and nephews, Bill pulls away further: his wife had three siblings who probably also had some kids. Bill DeBlasio had more black loved ones than Kamala has now.
That may seem meaningless, but think about how black advocacy groups construct the idea of a leader being “one of [us]” as an important factor. Barack Obama said Trayvon Martin would have looked like his son. Bill DeBlasio could say that. Kamala Harris can’t. In all honesty, many of my friends have talked to me about “the talk” that their parents had with them, that cops would not treat them well and shouldn’t be trusted. Bill had that talk with his son, Kamala never has. When you hear about hate crimes on the news (let’s assume they’re a real fear ad argumentum) Bill would be worried about his wife and his kids, Kamala wouldn’t be worried about the Emhoffs or her mother.
So if DEI, in the sense that its important to put Black Women in charge, is about experiences, then DeBlasio should get more points than Kamala in some ways. But clearly he doesn’t, and no one would say he does. So what does it mean? It’s not in the blood, because no one would say that Harris or Obama before her are less black than Clarence Thomas. So it’s a minimum blood quantum, the one drop rule, but then after that nothing else matters. Which is either a silly way to insist that I make judgments about our country’s leadership, or an offensive one. Silly, because there’s no logical connection between the one drop rule and leadership if we don’t consider anything else, not experiences or percentages. If it's a DNA trait, we should see some who have more and some who have less. Offensive, because if the theory is that leadership is tied to non-Yakubian blood, then they should say that out loud, that this is a racial hierarchy. This dilemma becomes immediately apparent once we strip away the idea of questioning one’s experiences.
The question that Donald Trump is brave enough to ask, even if everyone else is too PC, isn’t “Is Kamala Harris Black?” It is, why should we care? If diversity is good, we should be able to measure its effects, and when it appears and when it doesn’t. I don’t know that Kamala ever lied about her heritage or altered her history. But she has certainly chosen to emphasize one aspect of her heritage where it offered her political advantages dating back quite a while. I’ve heard a hundred times that she grew up in Oakland, never that she spent a lot of time in Canada growing up. I’ve heard a lot about how she identifies with her distant father, little about the mother that raised her. And that just strikes me as, for lack of a better word, corny. I don’t like being told who to vote for based on race, but if you’re going to do it, then it becomes a political question that can be discussed, and it isn’t offensive to bring it up.
If only we could be having that discussion instead of a birther rehash.
*For what it’s worth, here’s how I would script an answer the question asked:
Idk, just playing Sorkin, I’m sure Trump is better at this than me.
Trump stepped into a fairly obvious trap. Remember: political progressives are the people who do things like call Bill Clinton the "first black president," say that Clarence Thomas is white, or flatly declare that black Americans who vote for Donald Trump "ain't black."
Scott Alexander explained this a long time ago but Americans in general still don't get it. Even the Leftists tried to explain this, by capitalizing "Black" and explaining why:
Being Black is important, because Black people share a sense of identity and community. Sometimes it is asserted that this has to do with being descendants of American slavery (DOAS), but if that were really true then Kamala would not be Black. No, the reality of Blackness is that Black is a voting bloc. People who deviate from that bloc, are not Black, even if they're black. White people are not a voting bloc; ergo they must not have a sufficiently shared sense of identity and community to be of value as a political unit. Kamala Harris is Black even if she ain't black; she could be Black if her parents were, say, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Sure, DOAS might find it tasteless or even offensive, but what are they going to do about it--vote Republican? Not a chance.
Audre Lorde once wrote,
This is the fundamental problem with the Identitarian Right. Yes, embracing the politics of grievance and oppression can allow one to beat the Left at their own game sometimes (often in hilarious ways), but then one is fundamentally playing the Left's game. Arguing about whether Rachel Dolezal is "really Black" means focusing your attention on categories over which you have no actual control. It means turning away from the real individuals around you to obsess over cultural judgments governed by a never-ending churn of bureaucrats and theorists and busybodies seeking to endlessly manipulate humanity for their own venal ends. "Fine, let's endlessly obsess over race (etc.)" is not the victory the Identitarian Right seems to think it is.
So yeah: Trump isn't really wrong. Harris is a grifter and a buffoon whose sex and ancestry are, as far as I can tell, the only reasons she was invited to join the Biden ticket in the first place. But even so, Trump's comment was a mistake, if his goal was to win the election; it wasn't the kind of comment that persuades the unsophisticated undecideds. Whether it ultimately costs him the election, well, I doubt that this particular comment matters, in the grand scheme of things. But while it would be nice if society at large could have a reasonable discussion about the interesting things happening in the intellectual background of his commentary... I think most people would be completely baffled by the attempt.
Well, or not vote at all. My wife is both black and Black (ADOS, urban, poor family, raised by grandmother etc.). She dislikes Kamala and doesn't think she is Black. That doesn't mean she is going to vote for Trump though she does like some of his economic and America First politics, but has other issues with him, which she felt might be assuaged by a Black VP pick. But she is considering not voting at all. And she isn't that far from voting for Trump honestly, or a slightly less crass version of him at least.
I think you're looking at what progressives think (note Biden had to walk back his comment later), and mixing that up with what Black voters themselves think. And obviously as a disclaimer not all white progressives nor all Black voters are the same. But I was at a family cook out and most of them do not like Kamala at all. A couple of cousins mentioned thinking of voting for Trump and it certainly didn't get them yelled at.
So being Black is seen as a voting bloc by the progressives (hence why they see Kamala as Black) , but it is also based upon a real thing, an (almost entirely ADOS) shared identity that is indeed closer than whites in general in the US. In the sense that any random US ADOS black person is likely to be closer culturally to any other random US ADOS black person, than any random white American is going to be to any other random white American. The comparison would be in white sub groups, like Cajuns or Amish, or WASPS. There are simply more different white groupings that people can be raised in. Whereas the Black community, spread from a single source in the fairly recent past, and was built on a nearly blank canvas due to the loss of whatever cultures they already had. It would be amazing if white people were a similar singular cultural bloc given the histories and numbers involved. To that extent I think it is true there is a Black identity and not a White one in the US as it stands currently. Being a voting bloc is downstream of being a cultural bloc.
Now it is true that groups can be assimilated into this Black identity and most of these are going to be black immigrants (Caribbean usually, although that is also complicated, see differences between Dominicans ("I no black, I Dominican" ) and Jamaicans), though some white people can also, usually "white trash" (See Eminem etc.). And that richer, more successful Blacks tend to remove themselves (remaining black, but not Black), and their families. But the fact remains I think that a much more similar US Black community, does indeed exist in a way that a US White community does not currently. So it is not that Black identity is more important than White, it is that it exists in a way White does not. And largely that is a good thing for white people. A singular White identity almost certainly means that Cajuns, Amish, Mid-westerners, WASPS, Borderers, Southerners et al, have all had to have their unique white identities erased.
To recap, to the progressive movement Kamala is black and Black, but to many Black people themselves, she is merely black. There is a real difference they see there. And that is why Obama derived significant Black credibility from his marriage to Michelle. And why Kamala lacking that, may not push many votes to Trump, but may well reduce Black enthusiasm for her (and thus turn out). Though of course smart Black Democrats should be aware of this, so should be working on something to boost her credentials here.
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