New Kamala Controversy: Social Media Message Backfires Into 'Modern Racism'
Kamala Harris’ communications team must be as bad at its job as she is at hers.
The vice president is already known for babbling out streams of laughably pretentious statements clearly aimed at being inspirational but coming off as inane instead.
Now her social media squad has kicked off the week making her look even worse.
A Twitter post published Sunday to Harris’ personal account includes a picture of the veep with a caption targeted to a tiny minority of the United States population, with the exhortation, “My message to Black women and girls everywhere: Never ask for permission to lead.”
My message to Black women and girls everywhere: Never ask for permission to lead. pic.twitter.com/vimjDeItFG
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 19, 2023
It was obviously meant to be inspirational. But what it inspired was a reaction no image-crafter is aiming aim for: Disgust, anger and withering contempt.
First of all, for reasons only Harris’ PR squad could explain, Harris is pictured with a girl wearing a mask while the vice president’s face is uncovered.
For many Twitter users — like the redoubtable Christina Pushaw, rapid response director for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — the message conveyed by the girl wasn’t bold confidence but docility and obedience — not to mention physical discomfort.
Kids should not have to ask for permission to show their faces and breathe freely.
— Christina Pushaw (@ChristinaPushaw) February 19, 2023
Plenty of others had the same reaction:
Make damn sure that kid knows she’s a second-class citizen to you, Kamala.
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) February 20, 2023
All this picture does is remind us that you support masking children while you are unmasked yourself. You’re anti-science.
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) February 19, 2023
Why is the child masked but you are not? Aren’t you more the target age for Covid than she is?
You disgust me.
— James Bradley (@JamesBradleyCA) February 19, 2023
Second, the tweet addressed only “Black women and girls.”
Why is Harris’ encouragement restricted by race?
It might seem counterintuitive, considering the prominence of black entertainers in public life, black athletes in major sports, the number of black actors featured in television advertisements, and the endless pandering of progressives and politicians, but black Americans make up only about 12 percent of the population, meaning the “black women and girls” Harris is addressing account for about 6 percent of the people she is supposed to represent as a whole.
That’s pretty specific targeting, based solely on an accident of genetic makeup that determines skin color. And any honest appraisal of Harris’ tweet would call it what it is: Sheer racism.
Honest appraisals are a little hard to come by in the establishment media these days — as anyone who’s followed the saga of Hunter Biden knows — but, fortunately, they’re alive and well in social media.
“Yep, this. Its modern racism, veiled as altruism,” one Twitter user wrote.
Yep, this. Its modern racism, veiled as altruism.
— Chris Metcalf (@cmetdraws) February 20, 2023
What about just saying that No Females need permission to speak. Why bring race into it? I work in a man’s industry and have never had an issue about when to speak up even if it was flat out interrupting them just so I could be heard. The less you are afraid to speak out towards… https://t.co/AfzUZDERPw
— IrishCountryChick33 (@smckee3393) February 19, 2023
Why not all woman?? Im so sick of the one sided narrative …holy crap
— Noel Olivas (@noelolivasband) February 20, 2023
There are two possibilities here:
The first is that Harris and her staff gave careful consideration to the image and words in the tweet, weighed them all judiciously and decided this was exactly the “message” the vice president wanted to send. File that under “not likely.”
The second is that this was a slapdash affair, with a staffer grabbing an image at almost random. (According to Fox News, the picture is from July 2021. Kamala has had a lot of time in front of cameras since then. Surely they could have found a more recent picture with a little effort.)
As to the wording, leftists have become so used to speaking in racist terms, so used to dividing Americans into stratifications of skin tone, that no one batted an eye at a tweet from the vice president of the supposedly United States was explicitly racist and sexist. Nobody considered the possibility that the message would come off that Harris has apparently no encouraging words for white women and girls, Hispanic or Asian females, or men of any race at all.
In her two years as vice president, Harris hasn’t distinguished herself in office as anything but possibly the only politician in the U.S. who can make her bumbling boss look competent.
Her most public area of responsibility was the assignment to oversee southern border security, which has become a disaster of epic proportions, and one that’s going to be affecting the country long after Harris or anyone associated with the Biden administration is alive to see the consequences.
She’s a disaster as a vice president, former staffers say she’s a disaster as a boss.
And, as Sunday’s Twitter post showed, she’s surrounded by a communications team that’s as big as a disaster as she is.
Just another week in Kamala Harris world.
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