Kamala Harris' Impossible Choice
Kamala Harris is probably the target of more anti-black racism than anyone on earth but she’s a woman and of Asian descent as well so she’s also subject to intense misogyny and anti-Asian racism.
Pioneers must suffer stoically, knowing that people who hate them not for what they do or say but rather for who they are and what they represent will be looking for every reason to attack them, to angrily insist that they do not deserve what they’ve worked their entire lifetimes to earn.
So when Harris was asked if the United States was a racist country she was placed in an impossible position. If she was honest and responded that of course the United States is a deeply racist country her words would invite the wrath of Conservatives who already see her as someone motivated primarily by hatred of white people, our country and its sacred traditions of racism and whiteness.
Harris’ honest words about our country’s innate racism would be used as damning, incontrovertible proof that Harris was a race-baiting extremist who hated what she saw as a deeply racist country and was consequently unworthy of her tremendous power.
Nothing Harris could do or say could cause these people to feel any differently about her because they’re not responding to Harris’ actual words and deeds and actions, but rather to the cruel and unfair caricature that exists in their minds and the minds of other apoplectic Conservatives.
Harris knows that she can never win over these people any more than Obama could get the vote of Tea Party types who saw him as an Islamic terrorist; she can only hope to keep them from hating her with an even greater ferocity.
So Harris responded to Republican Senator Tim Scott’s assertion that our racist-ass country was not, in fact, racist the only way that she could, which was to say that our country was not racist.
For an unfortunately sizable portion of the American public, acknowledging that our country is imperfect and can be improved is tantamount to saying our country is evil and you hate it and you won’t rest until it is destroyed.
That’s why Black Lives Matter enrages people. As a core principle, Black Lives Matter acknowledges that we live in a society where police brutality and institutional racism have reached a crisis point and must be addressed.
The crazed cult of American exceptionalism insists that our nation is fundamentally PERFECT so anything that’s not perfect is, by definition, un-American or anti-American. Even racists generally acknowledge that racism is a bad, so the idea that our country could be racist and imperfect insults these people down to their very core.
So politicians who confront the ugliness of racism and sexism every day in deeply personal, deeply painful ways are forced by the grim realities of American politics to pretend that we live in a country that has transcended and overcome racism.
That’s because the American people do not want the unvarnished truth from Kamala Harris. Instead, they want a reassuring, flattering lie. That’s exactly what Harris gave them.
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