Trump’s Racial Identity Politics
The same old culture war is now directed at Kamala Harris
It was weird to see Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference. His ensuing diatribe against Black people could be seen as “weird” except that his othering and despising of Black people was normal — and not just for Trump, for America.
There is little new in Trump or what he says. His rhetoric is a rehash of right-wing rhetoric heard for over 170 years in the United States. It’s not correct to say that Trump says the quiet parts out loud. Right-wingers have been saying their feelings of othering and despising Black people out loud for a very, very long time.
What may sound new to some people is Trump and his surrogates’ rhetoric that Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t Black, or “turned Black,” or whatever they sputter at the moment. The right-wingers’ confusion about Harris speaks to their racial identity politics. In simplest terms, identity politics is that one is defined by one’s race, and race is an either/or existence, meaning there is no, or definitely should not be, race mixing.
