Trump deploys ‘angry black woman’ trope against Kamala Harris

President Donald Trump quickly jumped on the offensive against Senator Kamala Harris after last week’s announcement that she would be Joe Biden’s vice president, with the president and his allies appearing to grapple with lingering stereotypes about black women who seem to undermine their ambition or assertiveness. power.

In an interview last week with Fox Business network presenter Maria Bartiromo, Trump embarked on a slew of attacks on women he saw as his top 2020 targets of the election season. He said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., “comes out and she barks,” was “not even a smart person” and called her a poor student. He also said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, was “freaking out.”

Still, his distaste for Harris, who identifies as black and American Indian, stood out as he took most of his time attacking the senator’s character.

“And now you’ve got – kind of – a crazy woman, I call her, because she was so angry and – such hatred of Judge Kavanaugh,” Trump told Bartiromo. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it. She was the most angry of the bunch and they were all angry.… They’re seriously ill people.” He was referring to Harris’s sharp questioning at against Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, after allegations of sexual assault by professor Christine Blasey Ford surfaced.

The “mad woman” remarks followed comments Trump had made to reporters at the White House swimming pool the day before. Trump called Harris a “bad” woman and said she was “probably more mean than even Pocahontas to Joe Biden” during Democratic debates, referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Trump’s remarks raised eyebrows for their portrayal of a black woman as inherently and hopelessly “angry,” a trope that encourages people to dismiss a candidate’s qualifications or the otherwise valid political criticism they raise.

According to Tamara Winfrey Harris (unrelated to the California Senator), author of “Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Shattered Narrative of Black Women in America,” the stereotype is rooted in ideas of slavery and has persisted until These days.

“The idea arose when black women in this country were enslaved that we were tougher and warmer 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 supposed to work in the field alongside men and as hard as men, so there was this idea that black women were more robust and less feminine than other women .

She added that he had become even more of a staple by the mid-20th century, transforming into a character known as “Sapphire,” based on a character of the same name in the series, “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” . Sapphire, said Winfrey Harris, has been described as harassing and aggressive, which has played into that stereotype.

“It pushes black women, especially if they’re browsing a mainstream space, to shrink so they don’t have that flashback.” She added, “Sometimes that ends up being silent when we have a perfect right to speak, swallowing our anger when we should be angry.”

Trump’s ‘mad woman’ jokes aren’t the first time he or other GOP operatives have deployed the ‘angry black woman’ trope, with some elected officials other than Harris dismissed as rude while their counterparts white males largely escape similar characterizations.

In 2018, after Representative Maxine Waters, D-California, denied any involvement of her staff in a data breach that included the personal information of some U.S. Senators, Ari Fleischer, who was the White House press secretary under the former President George W. Buisson, tweeted that his refusal was “angry“And” suggests that she doesn’t have the temperament to be a member of Congress. Yet, during the same week, during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Sen. John Cornyn of R-Texas and others repeatedly asserted Kavanaugh’s “right to be angry” on allegations of sexual assault.

On several occasions, Waters, a frequent and vocal critic of Trump, has been described by the President as a “low IQ” person whose “crazy rants” make her a lopsided face of the Democratic Party. Similarly, Trump also insulted Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., After criticizing the president for his callousness during a call 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 White House chief of staff, then described Wilson as “an empty barrel.”

As for Harris, Trump’s campaign maintains that his attacks on the Democratic vice president’s choice are not racist. Notably, Trump and his daughter Ivanka donated $ 8,000 to then-prosecutor Harris when she ran for California attorney general. On Tuesday evening, Trump’s senior adviser Katrina Pierson noted that past contribution should neutralize any accusations of prejudice.

“I will note that Kamala Harris is a black woman and has donated to her campaign,” Pierson told reporters, “so I hope we can crush that racism argument now.”