In the next three months, we will witness the difference between a Black man successfully running for president against an old school Republican and the elitist, corporate but law following Republican party that used to exist, and a Black woman trying to best a racist, xenophobic and sexist cult leader in the age of the new, so much more hate filled Republican party. Since 2015, as the cult of Trump has solidified, people who had racist tendencies and thought they had better keep them to their small group of friends, or to themselves due to “political correctness” are out in the world. They are trying to drown immigrant children in swimming pools, slapping an 11-year-old Black child in the face for standing in line with his mostly white class, actually burning a cross to intimidate Black neighbors in South Carolina in 2023. In surveys, nearly 90 percent of MAGA cult members have been convinced that white men are oppressed – more so than any other ethnic group! This has been a head scratcher for me: who runs the world?
Interestingly, while I haven’t done any snooping into past racist insults to Obama, birtherism, created and magnified by Trump, is the most prominent racist insult during Obama’s campaign – when he was clearly born in Hawaii. Trump is now trying to stoke the same stupid insult – that because Harris’ parents were immigrants, even though she was born in Oakland, Calif., she is somehow not eligible to run for president. This gets even dumber when you realize that the VP qualifications are the same as that of the president.
We are already seeing the stupidity of a number of Republican elected officials using the new insult to Black folks: you are a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hire. In the case of Harris, this is particularly stupid, because she was elected fair and square – in a number of elections. This new “DEI hire” insult is what a lot of people are equating with the new N word, and it is being used a lot in most inappropriate ways. We also are seeing the many ways stupid men can insult women for living their lives – that troll JD Vance had previously called Harris a “childless cat lady who has no stake in the government because she does not have kids!!” Has anything like that ever been said about a male politician?!
When I learned Biden was answering my prayers and stepping down from what had already become a disaster of a campaign, it felt like the only right answer for Kamala Harris to replace him. I still believe that we will win, but I am shocked – either at myself for underestimating the fundamental racial and sexist hatred of millions of white Americans, or at the actual stupid and pathetic insults this brilliant and accomplished woman of color is enduring on a daily basis.
Donald Trump is super angry about having to face an opponent who makes him look old and highlights his unique brand of dementia. While the cult still worships him, he is going more and more off the planet of sanity with his obsessions with sharks, Hannibal Lecter, low water showers and toilets, and so much other stuff that leaves the sane population scratching our heads. For the population who is not permanently glued to Fox and Newsmax, the contrast between an energetic, youthful appearing, former prosecutor who appears to care about issues such as women’s rights, and a sloppy, rude and crude liar with no policy positions and a constant chip on his shoulder about all the ways he has been wronged should make Harris a shoo-in. But, truly the only way we can honestly lose, I believe, is if the hatred for Black people, and the persistent ideas of women’s inferiority bring Trump back to power.
So how do we combat the hundreds of years that have made so many white Americans believe that they are superior to people of color? How do we combat the centuries of bad religion that convinces conservative members of all desert religions that women are inferiors?
It is simplistic to say that Kamala Harris needs to show the world who she is, what she has accomplished so far, and what she intends to do. It may be simplistic to believe that enough Americans can be convinced to vote for Harris because she is the person we need to stop the Christofascists in the Trump camp, but millions of people seem to be responding with outrage and fear to the 900-page plan to take over the government – Project 2025. This race promises to be transformative in one way or another: we will either end with a fascist government, millions of people will leave voluntarily and by force, tons of jobs would go unfilled (do we really believe native born Americans will pick the crops?) No matter what the liar Trump says, there would be a national abortion ban, including drug induced terminations, and likely birth control restrictions that will eliminate many methods that have helped families plan their futures. Or we live in a country that is deeply flawed in wealth inequality, spends far too much of our tax dollars on war, especially the war on Gaza, and has almost non-existent public transit, among the many problems. But, if Harris is elected, we who believe in a better future live to fight another day.
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A rendering of the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, courtesy of Andrew Foley, development director at Jonathan Rose Companies. Credit: GOA Architecture.
