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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.
I had been thinking about this whole shebang and wanting to formulate a comment on it, but I was struggling, probably because my brain secretly felt exactly what you write, but wasn't able to put it into words as well as you. Ultimately, I'm torn between this and what I was originally feeling/wanting to talk about.
...what I was originally feeling/wanting to talk about was that this really is prime "JUST TELL ME HOW THE FUCK RACE IS SUPPOSED TO WORK" territory. I got a feeling of that from what Trump said, and I wonder if it is at all plausible for the right to just triple down and constantly just demand that leftists actually explain how it's supposed to work. Because everyone knows it's broken. Everyone knows that it doesn't work. The emperor is truly naked. Just constantly point at the naked emperor and openly remind everyone that everyone can see that he's naked. There is example after example after example (Dolezal, Warren, the entirety of the definition of 'hispanic', etc.) Hell, I'm still remembering Trevor Noah making basically exactly this same point WRT Obama. Just over and over again say, "Why don't you tell me how this is supposed to work?" Don't tell them how you think it's supposed to work. Just ask them to explain.
They won't. They can't. They know they can't. So they're just going to go to the columns of places like the NYT and say how aghast they are that anyone would even ask the question. So ask it. Again and again and again. If Trump and however many high-profile Trumpists that he can control can bring a version of this up (hopefully a milquetoast version like, "Why don't you just tell me how you think race is supposed to work?") basically every time they have a mic in their face, the pressure of the question remaining unanswered will be glaring. Honestly, a sustained messaging campaign of, "Why don't you just tell us how you think race is supposed to work?" could be the single best... or single worst... thing to happen to race relations in this country in a while.
I think that's a tactical mistake, because it puts them in the position of authority. It makes you look like you're a student asking teachers to the professor, begging them to explain it to you more simply because you didn't do the assigned reading.
The stronger tactic is do your research, and then be unafraid to speak up with your own views on the subject. Don't back down, debate with them. Let the viewers at home decide who was right. Of course this only works if you both have the power to not get cancelled, and also enough rhetorical skill to debate a hotly contested issue on camera under pressure. Trump is one of the very few right-wingers who can do both of those things.
Possibly so. On the other hand, if the people "in authority", the "teachers" and "professors", are constantly and visibly completely unable to muster even the tiniest shred of plausible explanation, it eats away at any perception that they do, indeed, merit those descriptors.
Maybe if you have some power to really hammer them with questions for a long time, like a senate hearing. But most journalists don't have that power, politicians will just dodge whatever questions they don't like and end the interview or move on to a new subject. It was actually quite unusual for someone like Trump to sit down for a long form, hostile interview like he did with the NABJ.
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