Over the weekend, on Saturday, Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. As usual, Mr. Trump launched into a rambling, racist, anti-immigrant, and lie-filled diatribe. However, among his most ridiculous and vile attacks was this one aimed at Vice President Kamala Harris:
“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala. And I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.”
There is no bottom to Trump.
This is the very same person who, in 2015, mocked a New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski, who has a congenital chronic condition called arthrogryposis, which impairs movement of his arms. That said, Trump’s derision and insulting of Kamala Harris is particularly egregious and offensive because it is rooted in misogynoir.
In 2010, Moya Bailey, a professor at Northwestern University, first used the term misogynoir to describe the specific type of oppression that Black women experience often characterized by a combination of racism and sexism.
Kamala Harris is a Black woman.
To be clear, Kamala Harris is mixed race. She and her sister younger sister, Maya, were born in Oakland, California to an Indian mother and a Black Jamaican father. However, contrary to Trump’s claims, Harris has long identified herself as Black.
When I first heard Trump’s words on the news, it was on Sunday. And as a self-imposed rule (borrowing from the Sunday Truce on The Wire) on Sundays, I don’t discuss or share post about Donald Trump, especially on social media. So, as I said on social media, “Until Monday comes around, I’ll be listening to 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up.””
And did.
The utter disrespect that Trump showed to Harris is nothing new. Trump has a long history of showing disdain for Black women, and other women of color, including when he took aim at “The Squad” in Congress (Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib) via tweet in 2019.
Now, it’s Monday. And while I found some catharsis in listening to music, I am again reminded of these words from Toni Morrison:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”
As Big Sean says on “I Don’t F*** With You”:
“I ain't f_ckin' wit'chu / I got a million trillion things I'd rather f_ckin' do.”
Yet still, much like writing about water being wet, here I am writing about a racist being racist and a sexist being sexist. Is this a distraction? Am I and other Black people being distracted? In this case, I don’t think so. There is a marked difference between explaining your reason for being and explaining the threat being posed to your being.
I recently came across a lengthy quote from the German Lutheran theologian and Nazi resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.”
Bonhoeffer goes on to write: “Against stupidity we are defenseless.”
Why?
According to Bonhoeffer:
“Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.”
Donald Trump is particularly dangerous because he is both malicious and stupid. He is unpersuaded by and impervious to facts. And despite the protests of people over years, over decades—despite the exposing of his mammoth malfeasance, corruption, ill intentions, ineptitude, and incorrigibility—Trump holds a firm grasp on the helm of the Republican Party, as well as the hearts and minds of his alabaster acolytes and audience. Thus, part of the work from which we ought not be distracted is sounding an alarm.
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