The Whitewashing of Kamala Harris

[PunkinPi]

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I have thought of this, and various other experiments (“What’s the Talented Tenth? Who’s Barbara Jordan? Where’s Howard?”) as I watch the coverage—misguided, mistaken, or simply absent—of presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris. And I’ve tried to figure out why, when we know Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and the media continue to disdain or dismiss the one right there on the stage.

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Yet when Kamala’s message is clear as day, the media doesn’t want to hear it. At last week’s debate, she called for Elizabeth Warren to join her is asking Twitter to suspend Trump. The blue-checks were aghast: Former Obama staffer and Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor railed, “I cannot believe @KamalaHarris is pushing this suspend Donald Trump’s twitter account bullshit at a presidential debate. It’s so small ball,” while his co-host Jon Lovett, Obama’s former speechwriter, called it “one of the more pathetic stunts I’ve seen in a debate.” Chris Hayes quipped: “Kamala 2020: I Will Get Trump to Log Off” while Nate Silver at 538 was bewildered: “She decides to take her big stand on whether Trump is violating the Twitter Terms of Service?”

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In fact, they are so uninterested, they tend to leave her out of stories entirely. Usually, the media fact-checks supporters. Kamala Harris needs supporters to fact-check the media. Into this vacuum has risen #khive, a doughty Twitter group of hilarious, ride-or-die Kamala supporters. (Confession: I’m a frequent retweeter.) It was #khive that corrected the Daily Beast when it gave Pete Buttigieg credit for Kamala’s drug-cap proposal; that reminded the Washington Blade that Harris, whose participation in the LGBTQ community is legendary, had also just released a comprehensive plan; #khive that pointed out that Kamala had focused on Black maternal health long before Warren; #khive that informed the journalist who said Elizabeth Warren was first out of the gate with a plan for the rights of sex workers that—you got it. A #khive member created a master thread of all the times Kamala was erased by the media, and it continues to expand. But a thread tweeted to thousands is no match for an article seen by millions.

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Reporters do not only erase Harris from the story. They erase the depressingly regular racist eruption, such as the mortifying hymn Warren sang at the LGBTQ debate featuring white, Black, and “yellow” children. There was no mention of that in the media the next day—only glowing clips of a clever joke she’d made. At the last debate, Bernie, for the 800th time, equated “working class” with white. The chattering heads debated how healthy he looked. Voters of color and LGBTQ voters regularly express discomfort with Warren’s lengthy stint as a Republican; with Bernie’s pivot from every question about race and discrimination to class. Indigenous leaders have yet to find Warren’s explanation for claiming to be “Native American” satisfactory. But giving voice to these concerns is equated with giving Trump ammunition.

More here --> https://www.damemagazine.com/2019/10/21/the-whitewashing-of-kamala-harris/