President Donald Trump quickly jumped on the offensive against sen. Kamala Harris after last week’s announcement that she would be Joe Biden’s running mate, with the president and his allies seem to believe in persistent stereotypes of Black women who are seen to be undermining their ambition as a claim to power.
During an interview last week with Fox Bart network anchor Maria Bartiromo, Trump launched in a fierce attack on women he is considered to be his top 2020 goals of the election season. He said rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., “goes out and she kicks,” was “not even a smart person” and called her a bad student. He also said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “Was stone-cold crazy.”
However, his aversion to Harris, who identifies him as a Black and Native American, stood out because he took most of his time to tackle the senator’s character.
“And now, you have – sort of – a crazy woman, I call her, because she was so angry and – so hateful of Justice Kavanaugh,” Trump told Bartiromo. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it before. She was the most angry of the group and they were all angry … These are seriously ill people.” He referred to Harris’ pointed question to Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation. of the Supreme Court of 2018, after allegations of sexual assault by a professor, Christine Blasey Ford, surfaced.
The “crazy woman” remarks followed remarks made earlier in the day by White House poll reporters. Trump called Harris a ‘nasty’ woman and said she was “probably closer than even Pocahontas to Joe Biden” during the Democratic debates, referring to sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Trump’s remarks raised eyebrows for her portrayal of a Black woman as inherently and irredemably “angry,” a trope that encourages people to dismiss the qualifications of a candidate or the otherwise valid political critics they give.
According to Tamara Winfrey Harris (no relation to the California senator), author of “The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America”, the stereotype is rooted in ideas from slavery and has persisted to this day.
“The idea came up when Black women in this country became addicted that we were harder and tougher than other women,” she said. ‘At the time, the idea was that [white] women are delicate and need to be protected, but Black women were expected to work alongside men in the field and as hard as men, so the idea was that Black women were firmer and less feminine than other women. “
She added that in the middle of the 20th century it became even more of a match, turning into a character troupe known as’ Sapphire, ‘based on a character of the same name on the show,’ Amos’ n ‘Andy. ‘Sapphire,’ said Winfrey Harris, was portrayed as stubborn and aggressive, something that played into this stereotype.
“It causes Black women, especially when navigating a mainstream space, to shrink themselves in order not to get that blowback.” She added, “Sometimes it results in staying calm when we have the right to speak out, swallowing our anger when we need to be angry.”
Trump’s “crazy wife” quips are hardly the first time he or other GOP operatives have deployed the tropical “angry Black woman”, in which some elected officials other than Harris are fired, while their white male servants are largely similar in character. evade.
In 2018, after rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Denied any involvement by her staff in a data breach involving the personal information of some U.S. senators, Ari Fleischer, who was the White House press secretary under former President George W. Bush, tweeted that her denial was “angry“And” suggests that she does not have the temperament to be a member of Congress. However, during the same week, during hearings on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, and others repeatedly affirmed Kavanaugh’s right to be angry “over the allegations of sexual assault.
On several occasions, Waters, a frequent and acclaimed Trump critic, has been described by the president as a “low IQ” individual whose “crazy rants” make her an unhinged face of the Democratic Party. In the same way, Trump has also imposed insults to reps. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., After criticizing the president for insensitivity during a conversation with Myeshia Johnson, whose husband, an army sergeant, was killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017. The president called Wilson “wacky,” and John Kelly, then a White House staffer, followed what Wilson described as an “empty barrel.”
As for Harris, Trump’s campaign maintains that his attacks on the election of the Democratic Vice President have no racist ties. Notably, Trump and his daughter Ivanka donated a combined $ 8,000 to then-prosecutor Harris as she ran for California attorney general. On Tuesday night, Trump senior adviser Katrina Pierson noted that the contribution of the past should neutralize all accusations of prejudice.
“I will note that Kamala Harris is a Black woman and he has donated to her campaign,” Pierson told reporters, “so I hope we can reduce this argument for racism now.”
