Here’s a polite suggestion to both corporate media and the Kamala Harris campaign: if you do not want race to be a topic in the political debates of 2024, quit making race a topic in the political debates of 2024.
My best guess for the "first Indian-American Senator" remarks is the fact that there have already been African American senators, and so they go with the thing that would make headlines. This has been criticized by many "anti-woke" people when it comes to movies and other forms of media in which they say that "X is the first Muslim black trans woman in a wheelchair"- it's just a way to push the narrative that we are making progress by ironically having to reach so deep in order to find some new unique category that people can indicate as a sign of more inclusivity.
From my mother's side I am Scots. From my father's side I am Bohemian German and also Irish.
The history of my peoples includes the massacre at Culloden. It includes the genocide of Magdeburg, and the betrayal of the Sudeten Germans to the tender mercies of the Third Reich. It includes massacre at Drogheda and the Great Famine in Ireland.
The history of my peoples also includes John Napier, the first mathematician to devise and use logarithms. It includes James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations unified the scientific understanding of electricity, magentism, and radiation.
Yet I wasn't at Culloden. I wasn't at Drogheda. I wasn't at Magdeburg. While I know how to use logarithms, I can hardly claim to be inventive or even original in their use.
This is the case with identity. We each have a rich tapestry of ancestors, all of whom contributed to the unique singularity that is each individual being. Yet that tapestry is still not who we are, is not even the majority of who we are. We are also the product of experience, and environment, and even a little dumb luck.
We should be proud of our lineages, and we should remember our lineages. We should not conflate our lineages with who we as individual are.
It's even more crazy to believe that such identity politicking works on people. The fact that black women are stating that they will vote for Harris BECAUSE she is a black woman is something that would have been considered racist years ago, and yet it's not only acceptable but expected in these circumstances.
My family history is unfortunately rather limited due to the circumstances of my family, so in some sense I am upset but also envious of people who can trace their history back to a great degree. But it also gives me a better perspective on the idea of cultural appropriation and why, in some sense, I find it to be related to one's lack of understanding their own culture while being envious of those who are not ethnically like "us" but are nonetheless more knowledgeable and wise to said culture.
It's something I've thought about writing given my circumstances but like many things I haven't had time and I find it more difficult to put so much effort towards Substack these days...
It seems to me that your argument is straying here.
Because the question was not whether Ms. Harris has emphasized one side of her heritage or not, it was whether Trump believes that she benefited from her black heritage. Now it appears that he thinks she did not, because according to his answer, he had no idea of her black heritage until recently. Because, as he said (you know, the part Reuters had trouble with) that she’s NEVER acknowledged her black heritage until recently.
So, 1. What he said was untrue (as you pointed out, she has emphasized both sides of her parents’ ethnicity at different times) and 2. He avoided the original question.
What exactly were you arguing? I got lost…
I like what you do pointing out bias in mainstream media, but I guess it’s also important to check your own.
First, yes, I am on the Trump train. I made a post to that effect previously for exactly that reason.
No, Trump was not 100% accurate about Kamala Harris' self identification.
However, much of not most of the media coverage of her racial identification has selected one or the other. Very rarely has it fused them into a "mixed race" rubric, and that only in an offhand fashion.
There's no rule saying she has to do that, but there's a disingenuousness in selecting "Black" now and pretending she hasn't selected "Indian-American" in the past.
There's a certain cynicism in emphasizing one or the other depending on the political audience and the political moment.
There's an even more obnoxious cynicism in the corporate media playing "gotcha" journalism with the issue of race.
Did Trump call her and the media out for that cynicism? Yes, I think he did.
Was that a substantive answer? Given the tenor of the question and the obvious hostility of the questioner, it was the best answer he could give. It's not the answer many people wanted, but interviews are like that; sometimes the answers are not to our liking.
Consider this hypothetical: Rachel Scott could have addressed the "DEI Candidate" attack by focusing on Harris record, both as Vice President and prior. She could have taken the tack that the Trump team was belittling Harris' accomplishments with that labelling. That would have addressed the charge in a substantive way that also called attention to her accomplishments.
Instead, Harris and the media want to have this discussion about race, only it's a discussion where Harris and the media have done more flip flops than John Kerry.
This is the door they opened. It's rather silly of them to cry about what comes through it now.
You see, your bias comes out when you say that this was the best answer he could have given. Really? Because he didn’t directly answer at all. I can infer a particular answer, but he completely sidestepped the question. As usual.
I understand that I’m an idealist, and we’re talking about politics.
However, is there something wrong with wanting a political candidate to answer a question, even if it’s a hostile audience (he chose to go there)?
It seems to me that the best answer he could have given would have been something along the lines of, “I can’t say whether KH has succeeded only because of her DEI status… [side note: wouldn’t Indian-American also qualify as DEI, and thus, his argument regarding her ‘blackness’ becomes even more moot?]…, however, her work with the Biden administration and its obvious failures speaks for itself…” blah blah blah (to be clear, I don’t agree with this position, but it seems like it would be his general sentiment). He could even bring up the fact that he thinks she’s flip flopped about this and taken advantage of her race/sex as long as he answers the question—which he did not. And not only did he evade the question, he told untruths while doing so.
How is this the best answer possible. Your bar has truly been set very low
I also look at these things from a perspective of tactics and strategy. Political journalism—and political interviews especially—are best apprehended as a form of rhetorical combat.
Politicians are not going to answer questions directly and substantively if they can help it, because it’s not in their best interest to do so. Boilerplate and jingoism have been the politician’s best friend since the days of Demosthenes in ancient Athens.
Ronald Reagan gives a good exemplar of this. In 1977 he was asked about what he thought America’s Cold War strategy and policies towards the Soviet Union should be. His response was epic and ultimately non-responsive:
My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win, and they lose.
If one is expecting a Nixonian level of policy analysis, Reagan’s response is going to be highly unsatisfactory. However, it was a powerful soundbite that set out a theme that Ronald Reagan very much wanted to set.
Does it answer the policy question? No.
Is it a tactically effective response to a question? Yes.
So we look at the question and the response.
Tactically, Trump would be unwise to answer Rachel Scott’s yes/no question with either a yes or a no. If he answers “yes” he risks alienating voters who don’t view Harris as a “DEI candidate” even if they don’t like her politics. If he answers “no” he opens himself up for questions about why he isn’t taking his supporters to the woodshed on the topic.
This is the essence of the “gotcha” question—one where all of the available direct answers are bad choices.
This means that the one thing Donald Trump is not going to do is answer the question directly. Again, this is the nature of politics, and if Rachel Scott did not anticipate Trump would seek to reframe the question then she was ill-prepared for the interview and shame on her.
How did Trump reframe the question? Again, look to his response. Rather than address Kamala Harris’ status as a black woman/black candidate directly, he mentions that she’s promoted her Indian heritage in the past—the heritage that Rachel Scott carelessly forgot to mention. So he mentions it. And he makes the very obvious point that promoting Indian heritage is by definition not promoting Black heritage.
This is a flaw of identity politics. When Kamala Harris—or any politician—seeks to align with particular ethnic/racial demographics, the moment he or she highlights that alignment, any alignment with any other demographic is automatically diminished.
When I say “I am Scots” I am quite obviously not saying “I am German”. In truth I am of Scots, Irish, and German ancestry, but if I am going to align with the clans from the highlands of Scotland I’m not aligning with the Bohemian Germans from what is now Czechia. I’m not aligning with the Irish.
Am I required to pick Scots or German or Irish? Not at all. Am I allowed to identify with Scots more than German or Irish? Absolutely. But if I identify as Scots in one setting and Irish in another and German in yet another, at what point do these identifications become manipulation and not honest projections of self?
Kamala Harris has identified as black and has identified as Indian-American. By bringing this point to the fore Trump avoided the question which he absolutely did not want to answer and did so in a way that allowed him to acknowledge all her ancestry, which broadened the topic in a way Rachel Scott was not prepared for. He sidestepped the issue and left the matter in a realm Scott was not prepared to address.
Tactically, in that environment and given that context, yes, that was the best response he could give. No, it was not an answer—but answers of the sort you want are never going to happen because it’s not in a politician’s interest to give them.
For better or worse I'm in the position of always promoting my Substacks. So I have to wander into others. Plus it is a way to spot the latest news stories.
There's a lot of reading and research that goes into writing a Substack!
My view: God made Man in His image. The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal. Physical appearance, ethnicity, creed, sex, and other class characteristics may increase the diversity of God's creation of Man, however, all men and women are created equal and should be endowed with much more than the rights given to men and women by God, especially those which promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of contentment. Equal opportunity. The corporate media Satanic construct as they are promote division and class conflict with no option for impartiality and justice. And in the past yes, there was definitely unequal and unjust treatment of men and women because of the class characteristics and the bigoted perception of those who interpreted the guidelines on a rather arbitrary and capricious basis, for which every single person in the modern era is being compelled to compensate for the sins of their forbears. In Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, declares that each person is responsible only for their own sins and corporate sin is a different animal altogether. Paraphrase. I would love to put the Satanic corporate media entity conglomerate in their rightful place...in the eternal fires of the Hinnom valley in the region of Yerushalayim. Otherwise known as Gehenna, or the fires of Hell. That being said, live well and prosper.
Well said! I wish that everyone in America could read this so that they would begin to THINK. Why is the MSM so inconsistent, arbitrary, superficial, and flat-out stupid regarding race (in addition to most other topics)? Why don’t they realize that what matters in candidates are their platforms, priorities, characters, and visions?
I don’t know what Trump’s ethnic heritage is - nor do I care - but does the MSM endlessly refer to him as a ‘Irish-American’ or ‘English- American’ or whatever he is? No - it’s never even a consideration. Nor should it be - we are all AMERICANS, a predominantly immigrant nation.
A textbook I read for a biology course I took a few years ago emphasized this: in terms of biology and genetics, there is no such thing as ‘race’. A person has a gene for eye color, a gene for hair color, etc., but there is NO gene for race! The best you can say is that there are ‘ethnic groups’ - people who have interbred for so long that they have similar dominant genes expressing the same characteristics. Furthermore, ‘race’ is an “artificial social construct”, just as ‘nationality is an artificial social construct. (If San Antonio suddenly became part of Mexico, you would then be a ‘Mexican’, but nothing about your biology or genetics would change, right?)
If Harris has any brains at all she should start articulating an actual platform and vision for her Presidency. Only a small, Woke subset of America will be enamored with her ‘racial status’ and current image. The rest of America wants to know - what would she DO as President?
Hatred and bigotry are hardly new sins, and certainly not unique to America.
Racism, however, is very much a new sin, relatively speaking. The word "race" did not begin to be broadly applied to human beings until the 18th century. Perhaps the earliest example of the word "race" being used to subdivide humanity is an essay published by François Bernier in 1684. One of the earliest notable exemplars of "race" being used this way in the English language comes from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes On The State Of Virginia".
The timing is, I suspect, significant. In 1776, Jefferson and the American intellectual elite threw their energies behind the Declaration of Independence and the proposition that "all men are created equal". This is a problem when you own slaves. Slavery was never an issue throughout most of human history simply because human thought did not focus much on the issue of equality until the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment. The early Christians were committed egalitarians, but beyond that Western thought just didn't concern itself with equality until the Enlightenment.
The Age of Enlightment was also the time frame when Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus set forth his pivotal taxonomy, which is a foundational aspect of modern biology, first presenting the structure in Systema Naturae in 1735.
The early biologists were rather infamous for grouping creatures together on the basis of their most obvious characteristics, and for distinguishing between species on the basis of their most obvious characteristics. This was something Darwin to pains to discredit and challenge in Origin of Species in the 19th century.
It takes no great insight to see how the language of "race" and "racism" comes to be: with an intellectual movement promoting human equality colliding with plantation systems throughout the British Empire with significant economic investment in slaves, a simple embrace of human equality was, for many of the intellectual elite, an economic impossibility. Even though Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal", and channeled Locke from his 1690 Second Treatise on Government in doing so, had he followed through with that principle in his own life he would have been impoverished overnight, and not just at the end of his life when he was overburdened by debt.
The human tendency to want to classify everything, coupled with Linnaean taxonomy coming increasingly into vogue, offered the economic elites a neat way to square that circle. By reimagining African slaves as being of a different race, they were no longer part of the "all men are created equal". With that one rhetorical sleight of hand, the problem of owning slaves while preaching equality was solved. What started out as the clumsy and crude efforts by early proto-biologists to "organize" the natural world quickly gained currency because of its value as a moral escape route out of a very uncomfortable hypocrisy.
It is important to note this evolution of thought regarding race, because the uncomfortable truth is that even the Abolitionists were far from racial egalitarians (nor was Abraham Lincoln, who very explicitly stated publicly that black people could never be equal to white people).
It is this history of the concept of racism and its relatively recent antecedents within human thought that makes Dr. Martin Luther King's stance on segregation and racism so important. Both in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and his famous "I have a dream" speech, he very specifically attacked the base concept of classifying people this way. Segregation is sinful, as Dr. King powerfully articulates, drawing on the work of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, it replaces the natural and proper "I-thou" relationship with an "I-it" relationship, effectively reducing humans to the status of objects.
Dr. King was focused on segregation specifically, but it takes no great insight to understand that the sin lies not just in the segregation, but in the labeling and categorizing itself. It is this "othering" that is sinful, and it does not require black codes or Jim Crow laws to be a pernicious and evil influence in the world. As we saw with the rise of the perjorative "anti-vaxxer", there is no limit to human capacity for othering, labeling, categorizing, and, finally, hating.
I won't make out Donald Trump to be some paragon of ethnic virtue and comity. I don't have to. He's not the one who's putting this toxic language of race into the fore. Conservatives are not the ones putting this toxic language of race into the fore--although many conservatives are complicit in perpetuating it.
Kamala Harris could have been the person best suited to speak truth to the ugly power people invest in the language of race. She could have been someone who could have said "it's all bullshit." Indian mother, Jamaican father, and educated in majority white schools as a child, she was better positioned than even Barack Obama was to smash the false idol of race and put an end to that toxic rhetoric once and for all. Instead, she's doubling down on it and using it as a political lever to further her political ambitions.
During her campaign, Kamala makes mistakes that give her an image of, frankly, a ‘twit’. Meanwhile, ominous events are happening internationally - war brewing between Iran and Israel, NATO falling apart over Ukraine, etc. Voters increasingly start realizing, “wait - do I want Kamala to be Commander-in-chief of the American armed forces as we’re dragged into WW3? Nooooooooo!”
My best guess for the "first Indian-American Senator" remarks is the fact that there have already been African American senators, and so they go with the thing that would make headlines. This has been criticized by many "anti-woke" people when it comes to movies and other forms of media in which they say that "X is the first Muslim black trans woman in a wheelchair"- it's just a way to push the narrative that we are making progress by ironically having to reach so deep in order to find some new unique category that people can indicate as a sign of more inclusivity.
It's the lunacy of identity politics.
From my mother's side I am Scots. From my father's side I am Bohemian German and also Irish.
The history of my peoples includes the massacre at Culloden. It includes the genocide of Magdeburg, and the betrayal of the Sudeten Germans to the tender mercies of the Third Reich. It includes massacre at Drogheda and the Great Famine in Ireland.
The history of my peoples also includes John Napier, the first mathematician to devise and use logarithms. It includes James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations unified the scientific understanding of electricity, magentism, and radiation.
Yet I wasn't at Culloden. I wasn't at Drogheda. I wasn't at Magdeburg. While I know how to use logarithms, I can hardly claim to be inventive or even original in their use.
This is the case with identity. We each have a rich tapestry of ancestors, all of whom contributed to the unique singularity that is each individual being. Yet that tapestry is still not who we are, is not even the majority of who we are. We are also the product of experience, and environment, and even a little dumb luck.
We should be proud of our lineages, and we should remember our lineages. We should not conflate our lineages with who we as individual are.
The identitarians don't seem to understand that.
It's even more crazy to believe that such identity politicking works on people. The fact that black women are stating that they will vote for Harris BECAUSE she is a black woman is something that would have been considered racist years ago, and yet it's not only acceptable but expected in these circumstances.
My family history is unfortunately rather limited due to the circumstances of my family, so in some sense I am upset but also envious of people who can trace their history back to a great degree. But it also gives me a better perspective on the idea of cultural appropriation and why, in some sense, I find it to be related to one's lack of understanding their own culture while being envious of those who are not ethnically like "us" but are nonetheless more knowledgeable and wise to said culture.
It's something I've thought about writing given my circumstances but like many things I haven't had time and I find it more difficult to put so much effort towards Substack these days...
It seems to me that your argument is straying here.
Because the question was not whether Ms. Harris has emphasized one side of her heritage or not, it was whether Trump believes that she benefited from her black heritage. Now it appears that he thinks she did not, because according to his answer, he had no idea of her black heritage until recently. Because, as he said (you know, the part Reuters had trouble with) that she’s NEVER acknowledged her black heritage until recently.
So, 1. What he said was untrue (as you pointed out, she has emphasized both sides of her parents’ ethnicity at different times) and 2. He avoided the original question.
What exactly were you arguing? I got lost…
I like what you do pointing out bias in mainstream media, but I guess it’s also important to check your own.
First, yes, I am on the Trump train. I made a post to that effect previously for exactly that reason.
No, Trump was not 100% accurate about Kamala Harris' self identification.
However, much of not most of the media coverage of her racial identification has selected one or the other. Very rarely has it fused them into a "mixed race" rubric, and that only in an offhand fashion.
There's no rule saying she has to do that, but there's a disingenuousness in selecting "Black" now and pretending she hasn't selected "Indian-American" in the past.
There's a certain cynicism in emphasizing one or the other depending on the political audience and the political moment.
There's an even more obnoxious cynicism in the corporate media playing "gotcha" journalism with the issue of race.
Did Trump call her and the media out for that cynicism? Yes, I think he did.
Was that a substantive answer? Given the tenor of the question and the obvious hostility of the questioner, it was the best answer he could give. It's not the answer many people wanted, but interviews are like that; sometimes the answers are not to our liking.
Consider this hypothetical: Rachel Scott could have addressed the "DEI Candidate" attack by focusing on Harris record, both as Vice President and prior. She could have taken the tack that the Trump team was belittling Harris' accomplishments with that labelling. That would have addressed the charge in a substantive way that also called attention to her accomplishments.
Instead, Harris and the media want to have this discussion about race, only it's a discussion where Harris and the media have done more flip flops than John Kerry.
This is the door they opened. It's rather silly of them to cry about what comes through it now.
You see, your bias comes out when you say that this was the best answer he could have given. Really? Because he didn’t directly answer at all. I can infer a particular answer, but he completely sidestepped the question. As usual.
I understand that I’m an idealist, and we’re talking about politics.
However, is there something wrong with wanting a political candidate to answer a question, even if it’s a hostile audience (he chose to go there)?
It seems to me that the best answer he could have given would have been something along the lines of, “I can’t say whether KH has succeeded only because of her DEI status… [side note: wouldn’t Indian-American also qualify as DEI, and thus, his argument regarding her ‘blackness’ becomes even more moot?]…, however, her work with the Biden administration and its obvious failures speaks for itself…” blah blah blah (to be clear, I don’t agree with this position, but it seems like it would be his general sentiment). He could even bring up the fact that he thinks she’s flip flopped about this and taken advantage of her race/sex as long as he answers the question—which he did not. And not only did he evade the question, he told untruths while doing so.
How is this the best answer possible. Your bar has truly been set very low
I am on Trump’s side.
I also look at these things from a perspective of tactics and strategy. Political journalism—and political interviews especially—are best apprehended as a form of rhetorical combat.
Politicians are not going to answer questions directly and substantively if they can help it, because it’s not in their best interest to do so. Boilerplate and jingoism have been the politician’s best friend since the days of Demosthenes in ancient Athens.
Ronald Reagan gives a good exemplar of this. In 1977 he was asked about what he thought America’s Cold War strategy and policies towards the Soviet Union should be. His response was epic and ultimately non-responsive:
My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win, and they lose.
If one is expecting a Nixonian level of policy analysis, Reagan’s response is going to be highly unsatisfactory. However, it was a powerful soundbite that set out a theme that Ronald Reagan very much wanted to set.
Does it answer the policy question? No.
Is it a tactically effective response to a question? Yes.
So we look at the question and the response.
Tactically, Trump would be unwise to answer Rachel Scott’s yes/no question with either a yes or a no. If he answers “yes” he risks alienating voters who don’t view Harris as a “DEI candidate” even if they don’t like her politics. If he answers “no” he opens himself up for questions about why he isn’t taking his supporters to the woodshed on the topic.
This is the essence of the “gotcha” question—one where all of the available direct answers are bad choices.
This means that the one thing Donald Trump is not going to do is answer the question directly. Again, this is the nature of politics, and if Rachel Scott did not anticipate Trump would seek to reframe the question then she was ill-prepared for the interview and shame on her.
How did Trump reframe the question? Again, look to his response. Rather than address Kamala Harris’ status as a black woman/black candidate directly, he mentions that she’s promoted her Indian heritage in the past—the heritage that Rachel Scott carelessly forgot to mention. So he mentions it. And he makes the very obvious point that promoting Indian heritage is by definition not promoting Black heritage.
This is a flaw of identity politics. When Kamala Harris—or any politician—seeks to align with particular ethnic/racial demographics, the moment he or she highlights that alignment, any alignment with any other demographic is automatically diminished.
When I say “I am Scots” I am quite obviously not saying “I am German”. In truth I am of Scots, Irish, and German ancestry, but if I am going to align with the clans from the highlands of Scotland I’m not aligning with the Bohemian Germans from what is now Czechia. I’m not aligning with the Irish.
Am I required to pick Scots or German or Irish? Not at all. Am I allowed to identify with Scots more than German or Irish? Absolutely. But if I identify as Scots in one setting and Irish in another and German in yet another, at what point do these identifications become manipulation and not honest projections of self?
Kamala Harris has identified as black and has identified as Indian-American. By bringing this point to the fore Trump avoided the question which he absolutely did not want to answer and did so in a way that allowed him to acknowledge all her ancestry, which broadened the topic in a way Rachel Scott was not prepared for. He sidestepped the issue and left the matter in a realm Scott was not prepared to address.
Tactically, in that environment and given that context, yes, that was the best response he could give. No, it was not an answer—but answers of the sort you want are never going to happen because it’s not in a politician’s interest to give them.
Very good piece.
Thanks! One thing that I think the media is going to overlook is that while they're going on about race Trump's ads are hitting Harris on her record.
While they're chasing him down the race rabbit hole he's defining Harris record in the minds of voters.
Has she filed her paperwork yet….to be an official candidate?
She filed the paperwork tail end of last week. She had a social media posting about it.
Thanks for the info. BTW-Substack is my only social media.🙂
For better or worse I'm in the position of always promoting my Substacks. So I have to wander into others. Plus it is a way to spot the latest news stories.
There's a lot of reading and research that goes into writing a Substack!
It’s very obvious you put in the time to write! You’re an excellent writer and it’s much appreciated!
My view: God made Man in His image. The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal. Physical appearance, ethnicity, creed, sex, and other class characteristics may increase the diversity of God's creation of Man, however, all men and women are created equal and should be endowed with much more than the rights given to men and women by God, especially those which promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of contentment. Equal opportunity. The corporate media Satanic construct as they are promote division and class conflict with no option for impartiality and justice. And in the past yes, there was definitely unequal and unjust treatment of men and women because of the class characteristics and the bigoted perception of those who interpreted the guidelines on a rather arbitrary and capricious basis, for which every single person in the modern era is being compelled to compensate for the sins of their forbears. In Deuteronomy, God, through Moses, declares that each person is responsible only for their own sins and corporate sin is a different animal altogether. Paraphrase. I would love to put the Satanic corporate media entity conglomerate in their rightful place...in the eternal fires of the Hinnom valley in the region of Yerushalayim. Otherwise known as Gehenna, or the fires of Hell. That being said, live well and prosper.
Well said! I wish that everyone in America could read this so that they would begin to THINK. Why is the MSM so inconsistent, arbitrary, superficial, and flat-out stupid regarding race (in addition to most other topics)? Why don’t they realize that what matters in candidates are their platforms, priorities, characters, and visions?
I don’t know what Trump’s ethnic heritage is - nor do I care - but does the MSM endlessly refer to him as a ‘Irish-American’ or ‘English- American’ or whatever he is? No - it’s never even a consideration. Nor should it be - we are all AMERICANS, a predominantly immigrant nation.
A textbook I read for a biology course I took a few years ago emphasized this: in terms of biology and genetics, there is no such thing as ‘race’. A person has a gene for eye color, a gene for hair color, etc., but there is NO gene for race! The best you can say is that there are ‘ethnic groups’ - people who have interbred for so long that they have similar dominant genes expressing the same characteristics. Furthermore, ‘race’ is an “artificial social construct”, just as ‘nationality is an artificial social construct. (If San Antonio suddenly became part of Mexico, you would then be a ‘Mexican’, but nothing about your biology or genetics would change, right?)
If Harris has any brains at all she should start articulating an actual platform and vision for her Presidency. Only a small, Woke subset of America will be enamored with her ‘racial status’ and current image. The rest of America wants to know - what would she DO as President?
Hatred and bigotry are hardly new sins, and certainly not unique to America.
Racism, however, is very much a new sin, relatively speaking. The word "race" did not begin to be broadly applied to human beings until the 18th century. Perhaps the earliest example of the word "race" being used to subdivide humanity is an essay published by François Bernier in 1684. One of the earliest notable exemplars of "race" being used this way in the English language comes from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes On The State Of Virginia".
The timing is, I suspect, significant. In 1776, Jefferson and the American intellectual elite threw their energies behind the Declaration of Independence and the proposition that "all men are created equal". This is a problem when you own slaves. Slavery was never an issue throughout most of human history simply because human thought did not focus much on the issue of equality until the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment. The early Christians were committed egalitarians, but beyond that Western thought just didn't concern itself with equality until the Enlightenment.
The Age of Enlightment was also the time frame when Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus set forth his pivotal taxonomy, which is a foundational aspect of modern biology, first presenting the structure in Systema Naturae in 1735.
The early biologists were rather infamous for grouping creatures together on the basis of their most obvious characteristics, and for distinguishing between species on the basis of their most obvious characteristics. This was something Darwin to pains to discredit and challenge in Origin of Species in the 19th century.
It takes no great insight to see how the language of "race" and "racism" comes to be: with an intellectual movement promoting human equality colliding with plantation systems throughout the British Empire with significant economic investment in slaves, a simple embrace of human equality was, for many of the intellectual elite, an economic impossibility. Even though Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal", and channeled Locke from his 1690 Second Treatise on Government in doing so, had he followed through with that principle in his own life he would have been impoverished overnight, and not just at the end of his life when he was overburdened by debt.
The human tendency to want to classify everything, coupled with Linnaean taxonomy coming increasingly into vogue, offered the economic elites a neat way to square that circle. By reimagining African slaves as being of a different race, they were no longer part of the "all men are created equal". With that one rhetorical sleight of hand, the problem of owning slaves while preaching equality was solved. What started out as the clumsy and crude efforts by early proto-biologists to "organize" the natural world quickly gained currency because of its value as a moral escape route out of a very uncomfortable hypocrisy.
It is important to note this evolution of thought regarding race, because the uncomfortable truth is that even the Abolitionists were far from racial egalitarians (nor was Abraham Lincoln, who very explicitly stated publicly that black people could never be equal to white people).
It is this history of the concept of racism and its relatively recent antecedents within human thought that makes Dr. Martin Luther King's stance on segregation and racism so important. Both in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and his famous "I have a dream" speech, he very specifically attacked the base concept of classifying people this way. Segregation is sinful, as Dr. King powerfully articulates, drawing on the work of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, it replaces the natural and proper "I-thou" relationship with an "I-it" relationship, effectively reducing humans to the status of objects.
Dr. King was focused on segregation specifically, but it takes no great insight to understand that the sin lies not just in the segregation, but in the labeling and categorizing itself. It is this "othering" that is sinful, and it does not require black codes or Jim Crow laws to be a pernicious and evil influence in the world. As we saw with the rise of the perjorative "anti-vaxxer", there is no limit to human capacity for othering, labeling, categorizing, and, finally, hating.
https://blog.petersproverbs.us/p/you-shall-not-hate
I won't make out Donald Trump to be some paragon of ethnic virtue and comity. I don't have to. He's not the one who's putting this toxic language of race into the fore. Conservatives are not the ones putting this toxic language of race into the fore--although many conservatives are complicit in perpetuating it.
Kamala Harris could have been the person best suited to speak truth to the ugly power people invest in the language of race. She could have been someone who could have said "it's all bullshit." Indian mother, Jamaican father, and educated in majority white schools as a child, she was better positioned than even Barack Obama was to smash the false idol of race and put an end to that toxic rhetoric once and for all. Instead, she's doubling down on it and using it as a political lever to further her political ambitions.
Suffice it to say, I am not impressed.
Well, I’m endlessly impressed with YOU, Peter! I always learn from your writings, and your wisdom. Thank you!
I ADORE how knowledgeable you are!
I read a lot and have a fantastic memory--not quite eidetic but damn close.
Continue to "divide and conquer" is the likely bet.
Here’s what I hope happens:
During her campaign, Kamala makes mistakes that give her an image of, frankly, a ‘twit’. Meanwhile, ominous events are happening internationally - war brewing between Iran and Israel, NATO falling apart over Ukraine, etc. Voters increasingly start realizing, “wait - do I want Kamala to be Commander-in-chief of the American armed forces as we’re dragged into WW3? Nooooooooo!”
Trump wins!