Cynthia Neal Spence’s 10 a.m. sociology class at Spelman College, was in her words, “fire” Wednesday morning.
The freshmen in Spence’s “My Body, My Choice,” class, which explores reproductive justice, were eager to talk about Tuesday night’s historic presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
After loudly debunking Trump’s claim that “You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month, and probably after birth,” the freshmen pivoted toward the subject of race.
In the 90-minute-long debate that some pundits saw as possibly shifting the balance in an already tight election, the topic of race only occupied about five minutes of it, but it was crucial.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Before Harris entered the presidential race, Trump had made incremental gains among Black voters, particularly men, who favored him over President Joe Biden.
Harris’ entry into the race energized a segment of the Black electorate and recent polling suggests that she is trending higher among Black voters than Biden was when he was atop the Democratic ticket.
Given the opportunity to clarify his previous comments on Harris’ racial identity, to address his calling for the execution of five Black and Latino teenagers falsely accused of raping a white woman decades ago in New York, and to quell the ridiculous notion that undocumented Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pet dogs and cats, Trump used Tuesday’s historic presidential debate to double down.
In a late July rally here in Atlanta, Harris issued a direct challenge to Trump, who had been on the campaign trail disparaging everything from her laugh to her race, saying at a convention of Black journalists that “all of a sudden,” Harris made a turn “and she became a Black person.”
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
“If you’ve got something to say,” she told the Atlanta crowd. “Say it to my face.”
When moderator David Muir asked Trump on Tuesday about why he questioned Harris’ racial identity, saying that she recently “turned Black,” the former president brushed it off.
“I don’t care what she is. You make a big deal out of something, I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is okay with me,” Trump said. “All I can say is, I read where she was not Black, that she put out, and I’ll say that. And then I read that she was Black.”
Listening to that exchange, Spence called Trump “a troubled man.”
Credit: Spelman College
Credit: Spelman College
“This notion of questioning Kamala Harris’ race, given her social-historical biography, is using it as a tactic to stir ideas about the performance of race,” Spence said.
Harris, instead of responding to the personal attack about her race, seized the moment to shift the conversation to Trump’s broader conversations and the long history of his racist remarks.
Harris deftly ran down a history of what she called, “the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”
She slammed him for refusing to rent properties to Black families in the 1970s and for spreading “birther lies,” about Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president.
She attacked him for taking out a full-page ad in 1989 calling for the death penalty against a group of young Black and Latino teenagers (known as the Central Park 5) who were ultimately exonerated for the rape and beating of a jogger in the park.
“I think the American people want something better than that, want better than this,” Harris said.
Adrienne Jones, an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse, said Harris delivered a prosecutorial master class in her attack on Trump’s racial sensibilities.
“She did that deftly, used the opportunity in that conversation, not only to talk about herself and her agenda, but to also put him on the defensive and appeal to America,” said Jones, who has also been an expert witness on voter suppression and America’s voting history.
Credit: Morehouse Colleg
Credit: Morehouse Colleg
At the same time, Jones said Trump continued to stoke racial tensions.
In one of the most bizarre moments of the debate, Trump repeated false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating their neighbors’ pets.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Muir debunked the claim.
“He relied on fearmongering. He attacked immigrants,” Jones said. “He leaned on his penchant for stoking racial division. He didn’t have anything productive to say.”
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Trump also accused Harris of trying to “divide” people and dismissed her claims as dated and irrelevant.
“This is a person that has to stretch back 40, 50 years ago because there’s nothing now,” he said.
Harris, whose mother was born in India and whose father was born in a tiny village in Jamaica, has always identified as Black, while closely embracing her South Asian roots. She is a graduate of Howard University, one of the most prestigious HBCUs in the country. At Howard, she pledged into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the oldest Black sorority in the world.
As an aside that has gained traction on social media, Trump accused Harris of hating Israel after skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address before Congress in July because “she was at a sorority party of hers.”
At the time of the speech, Harris was in Indianapolis speaking at Zeta Phi Beta Sorority’s national convention.
“Former President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the credibility of the importance of our national convention is not only disheartening, but also disrespectful to us and the other historically Black Greek Letter Organizations that make up the Divine Nine,” Zeta Phi Beta said in a statement on Wednesday.
In 1989, Trump took out a full-page advertisement in New York City newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty for four Black teenagers and a Latino teen who were falsely accused of having raped a jogger in Central Park. Their convictions were overturned, but Trump never apologized nor walked back his comments.
That continued during the debate.
“They admitted, they said, they pled guilty, and I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person — killed a person ultimately,” he said, adding that “a lot of people” agreed with his actions then.
One of the five, Yusef Salaam, is now a New York City councilman representing Harlem. He was in Tuesday night’s spin room representing Harris when he came face-to-face with Trump after the debate.
“I am Yusef Salaam, one of the Exonerated 5,” Salaam said to him.
“That’s good, you’re on my side!” Trump quipped, smiling and waving his hand as he turned away.
“No, no, I’m not on your side!” Salaam shot back.
Reached Wednesday, Salaam would not immediately comment on the exchange.
But in watching the debate, Jones is not clear that Trump lost it — at least not in the traditional sense.
“There is an arena where Trump did an excellent job,” Jones explained.
She said the former president used the debate to play to his base, which has always solidly supported him. He now has a new collection of debate clips that — minus his interactions with Harris — he can isolate and run new ads on.
“He got all of his points in, especially as he is appealing to FOX and his MAGA supporters. He was speaking to his base and everything he has been saying, he said again during the debate,” Jones said. “He did what he went there to do — create a package of sound bites that work for his side. And we can’t discount that. Just because Kamala did a good job doesn’t mean minds are going to be changed in a tight election.”
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