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Let's not pretend David Perdue wasn't being racist about Kamala Harris | CNN
Anushay Hossain writes that Sen. David Perdue's purposeful mispronunciation of Sen. Kamala Harris' first name was racist and "familiar to too many immigrants and people of color across America who have personal and painful stories of being bullied over our names."
www.cnn.com
10/18/20
Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican who is facing a tight reelection battle, intentionally mispronounced Sen. Kamala Harris' name at a Friday rally in Macon, Georgia, where he took the stage before introducing President Donald Trump. Does anybody aside from Trump's toxic base find this racist behavior funny? The answer is no. Sabrina Singh, Harris' press secretary, was quick to call out Perdue's behavior. "Well that is incredibly racist," she said on Twitter, urging voters to cast their ballots for his Democratic rival Jon Ossoff. A spokeswoman for Perdue's campaign pathetically attempted to gaslight and defend the senator's remarks. "Senator Perdue simply mispronounced Senator Harris' name, and he didn't mean anything by it," said Casey Black. Black can keep her attempt to spin for her boss because too many immigrants and people of color across America have personal and painful stories of being bullied over our names. As the clip of Perdue quickly became viral online, people of color started sharing their traumatic experiences of being "otherized."
The point is we all have our own Perdue story. People with different and "ethnic" sounding names have all been ridiculed and mocked. That's why watching Perdue go after Harris triggered many of us because our names are a fundamental part of our identity. They tell the story of not only who we are but where we came from. They tell the story of America. There is obviously also a larger dog-whistle at play here that's insinuating that names that sound foreign and non-White and are less American. But who gets to decide what names are American or not American enough? As much as Trump and his Republican admirers might seem to want to take us back to an America of the past, their outdated racism shtick is reeking of GOP desperation to win the election at any cost. Dear White Men: Learn how to pronounce Sen. Kamala Harris's name. She's not going anywhere --
comma-la
If Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) can't handle pronouncing that name without the racial overtones, then he belongs nowhere near the US Capitol building in D.C.