Thursday, September 12, 2024

"Racism" is More than a Six-Letter Word


Not all bigotry is racism. And not all racial bigotry is racism. 

This should be obvious to everyone but isn't. It's not at all clear even to prominent and respected cable news hosts. As in the video below, CNN's Jake Tapper states

Donald Trump is actually traveling with some of these folks- conspiracy peddlers. We should note a veritable legion of doom of bigots and liars, perhaps no one as depraved as this woman, Laura Loomer. Here she is getting off of Trump's plane before yesterday's debate. Just on Sunday she posted an insanely racist message that if Harris, whose mom was an Indian immigrant, was elected "the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center" On the twenty-third anniversary of 9/11, we should also note Loomer posted last year that 9/11 was an "inside job." Trump continues to bring this person along on his travels with him. Why? I don't know.

It is indeed confounding, especially when Trump probably could be using Kellyanne Conway, the smooth and effective liar and architect of "alternative facts" and the "Bowling Green Massacre." There is no accounting for why Looper would spin a story about speeches transmitted from a call center., other than Loomer possibly associating Indians with call centers, while to most of us those places seem more internationally diverse. And a Harris White House probably will not, unfortunately, smell like curry.

Nonetheless, none of this qualifies as racism. Contending that someone's home or place of business will smell of her homeland cuisine is not racist. Nor is it racist to exaggerate the degree of dominance of one group in a call center racist. If Tapper really wants to grapple with racism, he should try this

They let- I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world.

There is nothing in there about smelly food or about people with foreign accents in call centers. Nothing about values, culture, or polytheistic religious beliefs. It pertains exclusively to blood- to race. It is discounting factors other than the inherited characteristic of race, which to Trump consigns a group of people, whatever their other characteristics, to inevitable inferiority. 

That is racism, something which Jake Tapper apparently does not understand. Fortunately, there is something similar which both Laura Looper and her boss, Donald Trump, also do not understand. At the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago in late July, the former President remarked of his Democratic opponent "She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?"

When Kamala Harris skipped out on her responsibility presiding over the Senate when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress, she didn't do so because she has identified as Indian. She is a member of the historically racially segregated sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, whose members she considers "family." and was speaking in Indianapolis at the racially segregated, ethically dubious, Zeta Phi Beta sorority. 

Harris was raised as a black woman, undoubtedly was thought of by peers as black, and has identified primarily as black. "I know Donald Trump's type," boasted the Vice President in late July. 

The Democratic nominee knows her opponent's type, a claim Donald Trump can't credibly make. Neither can Jake Tapper boast- accurately- that he knows racism when he sees it.



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