Monday, Sept. 16, 2024 | 2 a.m.
A lot of final week’s presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump proved to be well-trodden floor. The sound bites and speaking factors, at instances rambling and incoherent (Trump) or rational but repetitive (Harris), have been largely what we’ve heard earlier than.
However when David Muir, one of many two ABC Information anchors moderating the talk, requested Trump about his feedback associated to Harris’ racial identification, it felt considerably illuminating.
Citing Trump’s quote from July, “I didn’t know she was Black till a variety of years in the past when she occurred to show Black and now she needs to be often known as Black,” Muir requested the previous president why he believed it was applicable to weigh in on the racial identification of his opponent.
“I don’t and I don’t care. I don’t care what she is. I don’t care,” Trump stated.
He instructed that Muir or some Individuals have been making a giant deal out of one thing that he “couldn’t care much less” about. With that response, Trump each condemned his personal actions and diminished the significance of his phrases.
It jogged my memory of childhood arguments when a bully’s verbal put-downs backfire and the one clapback she or he can give you is: “I don’t care.”
However Trump does care about race, no less than when it creates a perceived benefit for him.
If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have issued an government order in 2020 that banned federal entities and contractors from offering worker coaching on so-called divisive ideas and dangerous ideologies associated to race and gender.
As Harris said in her response, Trump’s give attention to race has been a fixture of his profession.
It was there within the late Nineteen Sixties when Trump started working for his father’s actual property firm, which might later be investigated for racial bias by the U.S. Division of Justice.
It was there in 1989, when Trump took out commercials in 4 New York Metropolis newspapers calling for the execution of the Central Park 5, the group of Black and Latino boys wrongfully accused of rape.
It was there within the years 2011 via 2014 when Trump continued to falsely insist that President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen.
Harris outlined a timeline through which Trump has drawn on race and racial stereotypes to affect and manipulate the American individuals.
If that’s not sufficient, PBS painstakingly documented what Trump has stated about race from 1973 via 2020. Generally his report is conflicting, however any contradictions that may appear to replicate advanced fascinated by race typically resulted in some kind of non-public achieve.
It’s straightforward to get caught up within the trivialities of race and politics — these are ties that run deep in America. However what Trump confirmed in Tuesday’s debate is the larger image: a persistent and deeply entrenched view of race on this nation that’s caught on silly.
We have to speak about race however we have to speak about it in methods which are productive towards bringing a lot wanted change: addressing systemic racism, the legacy of slavery, racial and gender discrimination, financial and racial segregation.
That’s not the identical as selling racial stereotypes or questioning somebody’s biracial identification.
It’s a long-standing custom in American politics to demonize one group of individuals so as to retain energy. It’s a normal play within the political playbook to enchantment to the “widespread man” whereas providing up marginalized individuals — on this case, immigrants, individuals of colour, individuals with disabilities and girls — for ridicule or branding because the evil component destroying the nation.
Trump’s rebuttal, that Harris needed to attain “many, a few years” into historical past to seek out proof of his racial recklessness, solely served to underscore Harris’ level that it has been there all alongside.
Trump claimed there’s nothing to see there now, however within the span of the two-hour debate he repeated baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are consuming cats and canines, “the pets of the folks that dwell there,” he stated.
Muir shortly debunked this lie however as soon as once more Trump had tossed out a remark that marked Black and brown individuals as savage and inhuman.
Trump says he doesn’t care about race, however it will appear he cares very a lot.
If he didn’t, he wouldn’t maintain speaking about it in all of the incorrect methods.
Nedra Rhone is a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Structure.
