I agree that’s what he should do. But I also think that MAGA Republicans are racist enough to think that pushing racism is the better strategy. That’s why they keep doing it even when the better politicians on Capitol Hill told them to stop.
That was bad. I mean really, really bad. I see where Trump was going with the whole “Kamala isn’t really black” thing, but I can’t imagine that argument is going to resonate with enough Black voters to help Trump win the election. If anything, I think Trump just did a lot of damage to his campaign.
I appreciate this perspective, especially because Black communities in the USA have saved the whole country from some evil stuff multiple times and have not, in general, seen policies or attitudes change much in response.
I’d still be surprised if any sincere person of any background votes for a such a transparently venal politician as Trump.
Very few Indonesians, especially women, want to live in the US. Unless this person has explicitly said, “I don’t want to live in the US because randos question the racial heritage of my children” (and you know her, I don’t - perhaps she has specifically voiced this as a primary concern), I sincerely doubt that this is a central reason for her feelings.
I am speaking as someone who knows about a jillion Indonesian-White American mixed couples who have lived for years in both the US and Indonesia, and who has had(and currently has) reasonably close friendships with Indonesian women in mixed marriages.
The hierarchy of identity. Liberal media > race.
(that would be Trump’s answer, not mine)
I suspect he assumes that the people who would have a problem with it were never going to vote for him anyways.
And, unlike @split_p_j, I do see some desperation in this tactic. It’s the type of play you only need to do if you don’t have anything better.
Trump isn’t super popular with the Black community. That’s why he’s going for this tactic. Republicans all assume that black people will go for the Black candidate.
Hence the other tactic I see on Twitter: Black people (or, at least, accounts with Black avatars) saying “I’m Black and I’m voting for Trump.” They are worried about losing what Black support they had.
His attempt to use this invented conflict to divide Democratic support shows how desperate he is; this is the best he can come up with?
Trump’s behavior is about the worst cite possible for anything about African-American culture. Trump doesn’t have any “calculated strategies”, because Trump never calculates anything.
Now, it may be that these antics will, in fact, win him some number of African-American votes. But it’s still (like most things Trump does) a mistake, because that’s not where the most voting flexibility is. Turnout is low among black people, and there’s a lot more black people who can be persuaded to vote, than there are black people who can be persuaded to vote for the guy who wants to kill them.
I mean, I don’t know that I’d call 55% a ‘vast’ majority.
Is Barack Obama ‘black’? A majority of Americans say no. - The Washington Post
I’ll expect y’all to report the screaming on Xitter and Facebook over the days.
I assume it’s blowing up. The talking heads on CNN are breathless about it.
I willing bet Trump did this just to get headlines and on top of the news.
His campaign was absolutely caught flat-footed when they suddenly had a new opponent. They don’t have a lot of time to prepare to fight her, so they had to scramble for something. Yes, I think it’s very desperate.
True. To some extent, his acting like that will suck away some media attention focused on her momentum. That’s why you have to be careful about wrestling with pigs.
It’s being seen as a wedge issue because the demographic he is targeting doesn’t really care about the economy since they see themselves as being left out for years while voting for Democrats the whole time.
That’s what he was trying to say with the “black job’s” thing in the debate. It was cringe but seen by some as him at least trying to address the issue, unlike the Democrats.
This is not how I personally think, I’m just letting you know a mindset that could determine the outcome.
He keeps going to this point because he just has to swing a small percentage of minds, mainly younger people. He’s being advised to do this.
Ok, I’m trying to understand this. Obama’s not considered Black?
The NABJ “advocates for Black journalists worldwide.” How do they define “Black?” As only descended from slaves? Would they not welcome someone like Obama as “Black?”
I remember talking with three A-A women (ages probably ranging from early 30s to 50s) while working on Obama’s reelection in Toledo, OH. They were the first people to tell me about the difference between “Black” and “African-American.” Before that I thought it was largely interchangeable. They told me Barack was not African-American, but he was Black. Just like Bob Marley, Idris Elba, etc. He (like Marley and Elba) weren’t descendents of slaves. They wouldn’t fall into that ethnicity (well, plus the latter two aren’t American).
They said Black is a race and you can come from Haiti, Jamaica, Nigeria, Kenya, England, South America, etc. and be Black. Kamala Harris would fall into this AIUI. African-American is an ethnicity, a culture. She, like Obama, would not be considered African-American.
If I’m wrong about this, I’m happy to learn, but the article that I posted upthread, written by a young African-American woman seems to be saying the same thing.
I can imagine there are some folk who supposedly wish to narrowly define what constitutes Black as descendants of American slavery. About the closest I’ve come to encountering such an attitude is among people who (rightly IMO) question some of the challenges for any reparations programs.
But assume someone has the Black-defining attitude split-p-j suggests. How many of those folk go through those mental gymnastics to then demonstrate how much they LOVE South Asians, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, etc? Or being happy about the family of recent African immigrants who moved in next door?
And has there ever been a major candidate who whines about questioners (most often women) being mean and nasty towards him? How does that come across appearing as anything other than a whiny baby?
I saw the flaw in that poll right off. It has “mixed race” as an option, which is technically true. But it didn’t permit saying both that he is mixed race and Black.
My statement was not that most Black people don’t see him as mixed. I suspect most do. But everyone called Obama the first Black president. There were celebrations. He got 93% of the Black vote, while running (in part) on being the first Black president. Definitely not a lot of backlash for claiming to be Black.
That’s as good a theory as any. I think we have three possibilities:
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It is, as @split_p_j says, a deliberate strategy to peel off Black voters who don’t see Harris as “Black” and can be convinced to vote for Trump because they are annoyed at what they see as her posturing.
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It is, as you posit, a deliberate strategy to create controversy and stay in the headlines.
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It is an example of Trump running off at the mouth with no filter and zero reflection or strategy behind his words.
I had figured #3 when I watched the clip, but #1 and #2 are certainly possibilities. I guess we’ll have to see if Trump continues that line of attack on Harris; if he does hammer it home over and over, I guess it is a deliberate strategy. (Probably a terrible one, though. I can’t imagine that the number of additional votes he’ll get from Black voters as a result will be more than the number of Black voters who were apathetic and might not have voted but who will now be energized to vote for Harris as they see a viable alternative to Trump’s racist lunacy.)
Racial relations in the United States are not that simple, and some of the people you bring up follow the one drop rule.
Regular descendants of course embrace them as black, since they are standouts. So it’s kind of like see, they are black too.
African-American is reserved for descendants of American chattel slavery since we can’t put a country of origin in front of it. Black is generic.
Go ask any immigrant from Africa if they call themselves African-American. They’ll laugh at you.
I did once know a white fellow from South Africa who did call himself African-American, for that reason. Then again, that guy was just plain insane, so probably not the best example.
I’ve also seen posters in schools that describe Nelson Mandela as a “great African-American”. The flaw in which is left as an exercise for the reader.
That’s what I said too.
So then, how are people like Obama and Harris not Black?
Is this addressing something I said?