“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction,” the late great Toni Morrison once said. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”
For Donald Trump’s entire political career, he’s used racism as a tool to distract the public from matters more significant. In 2012, he resorted to birtherism while questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship to disrespect the nation’s first Black president. When launching his presidential campaign in 2015, he called Mexicans rapists to incite fear on immigration issues. He spent his presidency attacking other marginalized groups on their identity to rally up the most xenophobic and racist base of his supporters.
This week, Trump was welcomed to a convention panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists to publicly insult the Black women journalists interviewing him—and his Black and Indian female presidential opponent, Kamala Harris.
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“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump responded when asked by ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott if it was appropriate to call Harris a “DEI hire,” which many Republicans have been recently referring to her presidential candidacy as.
“She was Indian all the way, and all of a sudden she made a turn, and she became a Black person.”
It goes without saying, but this is a big fat Trump lie: Throughout her public life, Harris has long identified as being both Black and South Asian. Born in Oakland, California, to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, Harris graduated from Howard University, a historically black college and university (HBCU) and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, a historically Black sorority.
But this has been documented for years. And in a room of predominantly Black journalists who have covered Harris—it’s obvious they know this already as well.
So why did Trump resort to attacks on Harris’s racial identity? It’s simple: Distraction.
On a platform where Black journalists tried to get him to address issues pertinent to their respective community, he instead pivoted to attacking a Black woman who wasn’t even in the room. While currently dodging an opportunity to actually debate Harris in person, he took advantage of a Black journalism convention platform to test out a nasty campaign attack on her. Rather than most of the media address Trump’s lack of a serious agenda to engage Black voters, holding him accountable on his racist past with this community, we’re instead seeing them wrestle with Harris’s racial identity instead.
Mission accomplished!
Trump used a highly coveted Black media space to question the racial identity of a Black woman, and now the point has been officially missed.
Who loses yet again? Black voters—who once again have to witness their intelligence be insulted by Trump and the mainstream media.
Newsflash: A white man doesn’t have the right or credibility to verify or discredit the racial identity of a person of color. Full stop.
For all of the presumed gains that’s been previously reported regarding Trump and Black male voters, it’s been dampened by the meteoric rise of Black voter approval for Harris’s presidency.
Last week, thousands of Black women and Black male voters held respective virtual calls in support of Harris and fundraised over a $1 million apiece. We have yet to see similar energy for Trump’s campaign by Black voters—despite his audacious (and arguably false) claim that he was the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln.
Trump, left, and Rachel Scott at the National Black Journalists Association convention.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via GettyWhile this recent line of attack from Trump won’t help him gain traction with Black voters, it allows him to once again avoid addressing any legitimate questions they have with his campaign. During the NABJ convention panel that was originally set at an hour, Trump’s campaign cut it short at only 35 minutes right as he was being asked about Project 2025—a controversial right-wing policy plan that could adversely impact Black Americans. For all that Trump said on that stage, he never mentioned it—a missed opportunity for those who still have questions regarding it.
Meanwhile, his very Black and Indian opponent called his latest stunt for what it is.
“It was the same old show—the divisiveness and the disrespect,” Harris said in response to Trump’s recent attacks while addressing members of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority (another historically Black sorority) during its 60th Biennial Boule.
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength,” she said.
May we all consider Morrison’s wise words and not let Trump’s racism serve as another distraction from the real issues that matter in this consequential election.
