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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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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:

Republicans didn’t give Kamala Harris the label DEI candidate, Democrats did. Republicans value Americans as Americans, Democrats value people by the color of their skin. Republicans choose the most qualified person for the job, Democrats choose by the right skin color. So when Democrats say they’re going to make DEI picks, that they’re going to pick people by the color of their skin, then their picks are going to face that accusation. What Joe Biden did to Justice Jackson! Ketanji Brown Jackson, I might have some disagreements with her politics and how she decides cases, but she is a very smart very accomplished very qualified woman. And what Joe Biden did to her, he went out and he said he would appoint a Black Woman. And he did that for himself, he did that to try to buy votes, he did that so people would think he was a good guy. But when he did that, he helped himself, but he gave Justice Jackson an asterisk she’s going to carry around for the rest of her life. She will always have to deal with that comment that Joe Biden made to benefit himself, that she was only chosen for her race and her gender. If Joe Biden hadn’t said that, if he had chosen her and said she was the most qualified, she wouldn’t have to deal with that. So you have to ask, when Joe Biden talks about DEI, is he trying to help you, or is he trying to help himself?

Idk, just playing Sorkin, I’m sure Trump is better at this than me.

Trump’s instantly infamous remarks* at the NABJ conference have been universally decried and only sporadically defended.

I just watched that video, and wow! Trump did a fantastic job with the first 5 minutes of that interview. Whatever you think about his candidacy, there's a lot to learn about rhetoric here. He instantly disarms a very hostile question and builds great rapport with the crowd. I wish I had 1% of his skill as a speaker.

I was annoyed by (one of) the interviewer's immediate leaping on the term "black jobs" (which was, previously , gleefully repeated by the press in the vein of "binders of women"--a pointless, meme-level, no-issue-whatsoever jibe) when he was talking about black employment. If he has said "jobs for African-Americans" I wonder if she would have had the same reaction. At least he basically ignored her. (I also noticed her continual use of the word "Sir" as if she had read somewhere that this is a way to make a sentence sound polite if you add it at the end of a question.)

Putting "Sir" at the end of the question with the right intonation doesn't sound respectful; it sounds hostile. It's a way of fulfilling the forms of politeness while conveying contempt.