"In Kamala Harris, Ghanaians see someone at the table who looks like them. But that doesn’t mean that trust was baked into the equation."
March 30, 2023
I don't know about baked equations, but do Ghanaians think Kamala Harris looks like them?
I'd say this photo caption — at Politico — is an embarrassing/offensive racial gaffe:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
62 comments:
I know a fair amount about Ghanians. Not only does she not look like them, she doesn't think like them. Nor does she speak like them. They'd be embarrassed to have to call her one of their own.
"a colonial slave port where Africans from all over the continent were brought"
Did she ask the Ghanaians to atone and pay reparations for enslaving her ancestors? If not, why not?
What does an upper-class Indian woman's posing as black tell us about the political exploitation of race in the U.S. and the world?
Kamala Harris fails Ghana's "paper bag test."
But don't worry.
All that was baked into the equation.
Heartbeat away.
Worrying about offensiveness is a triviality, as well as the news article.
All blacks look the same to the lily white staff at politico
She always looks baked to me. Would she, could she, act any dumber if she was stoned all the time? IDTS.
This reveals wishful thinking in the racial identity crowd. I never perceived Kamala to be Black, despite knowing of her political presence long ago. Indian? Sri Lankan? Mixed race European? But to quote Lincoln...You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time...
Grasping at straws to preserve a failing vision. What else is news? Grass is green? Sky is blue? Water is wet?
"In Kamala Harris, Ghanaians see someone at the table who looks like them. But that doesn’t mean that trust was baked into the equation."
Whoever wrote that thinks that Ghanaians are awfully stupid. Europeans can tell an American from a mile away, and I assume Africans can as well. Ghana has six major tribes, and they think in those terms. Not, "Oh, you are black as well. We shall rejoice!"
She should stay there.
said a young woman named LaToya, who did not want to give her last name out of fear because of anti-LGBTQ sentiments in the country. ... "When you come to a place like this, you can be yourself.”
Wow is this article poorly written.
Regarding Politico, I infer that all black people look alike to them. Back in the 1960s that was a serious insult; I never thought 60 years later it would come true, and in a left wing news source.
She doesn't look anything like the other Ghanaians in the photos.
Politico has built an impressive reputation as an organization that will say literally anything to push their narrative.
I spent a lot of time in Africa and had lots of conversation there about American Blacks. I can tell you that Black Africans tend to look askance at American Blacks and tend to feel little connection with them. And they particularly find American Blacks coming over there in their dashikis to connect with their roots, to be rather tedious (I don't know that Kamala did any of that).
The other thing about Africans is that they are lovely, friendly people who are exquisitely polite. Certainly Kamala was treated with genuine cordiality. I'm sure that most of those who met her were star-struck by her position and gave little regard to her color or her attenuated racial connection with them.
Slavery was more a disgrace to the human race than to any particular race. The people of Ghana are just as likely to be descended from slave dealers as from slaves....I read the article. What a crock. He quotes a woman who doesn't want to give her full name because she's afraid of repercussions because she's part of the LGBetc. community. The quote said "When you come to a place like this, you can be yourself"....I don't think the writer of the article was being subtly ironic. Elsewhere he writes: "Harris earned rave reviews for her speech at the Munich Security Conference..." If his gig at Politico doesn't work out, maybe he can go on to become her next press agent.
In reality, Africans don't think American Blacks look like them, or behave like them. You want to see authentic racism, ask your average African immigrant how they feel about American Black people.
Now that is some laughable shit.
Richard Pryor after his trip to Africa: just looking at the people, I realized there was something my family hadn't told me.
It's racist, but the audience here isn't Ghanians -- it's Americans (at least, the sort of American who reads the Washington Post). And there are a lot of Americans for whom a particular racial binary -- White vs. Black -- is so dominant in their thinking that they have difficulty recognising or acknowledging racial categories and sub-categories outside that binary grouping. E.g., the occasional piece about minorities in the tech industry that completely fails to acknowledge that Asians exist, occasional pieces that suggest some frustration about Latino racial identity, and stuff like this, that slots an American into the category "Black," assumes that everyone in Africa uses the same category and is therefore going to look at the American and think "he/she looks like me," and -- most importantly -- actually gives a shit. You got this sort of thing all the time with Obama too. Journalists will definitely be able to find people who tell them what they want to hear here -- foreigners aren't stupid and they know there's advantage in getting powerful Americans to feel some connexion to them -- but I'm skeptical that it means much on the Ghanian side. I don't think the average Japanese citizen became markedly more sympathetic to Peru when Fujimori became President (although I suppose the Japanese government did acknowledge him as a Japanese citizen when he had to flee Peru for the usual sort of thing).
Why does 'looking like' someone matter?
So I should automatically trust old white guys?
Once again, during the summer when I'm on the golf course, I am a couple of shades darker than Kamala.
Do I get a high position in government?
The D party is the party of Bull Conner and slavery...deal with it.
Btw, I have a number of Indian (from India) friends, most of whom are darker than almost every black person I know.
Where are their affirmative action programs and racial set-asides?
Oh, sorry. Their ancestors weren't 'enslaved people.'
But that was almost 200 years ago. Get off your asses and live your lives.
If you can't or won't, my only conclusion is that you are incapable of competing with other racial groups on an even footing.
Ball's in your court...
“I’m so proud and so happy to see her in Africa. It was emotional that she made it here and that Ghana is her first African country. She clearly loves Africa and she loves Ghana,” said a young woman named LaToya, who did not want to give her last name out of fear because of anti-LGBTQ sentiments in the country. She had watched Harris’ speech at Black Star Square, a Ghanaian monument representing the nation’s freedom from colonialism. “Based on her smiles, she clearly enjoyed it here. When you come to a place like this, you can be yourself.”
You can be yourself in Ghana, but you just can't give your last name out of fear.
"Embarrassing/offensive"
Embarrassing, definitely. Offensive? I guess not to me.
But stupid. So freaking stupid. These race-obsessed people . . . .
My favorite part was when she was talking to them like they were 3 year olds.
that Indian Honky?
Seriously though at least in East Africa there is a lot of resentment about Indians colonizing the local economies
Politico must be viewing through some of those 19th Century one-drop racist lenses. "They all look alike!"
Compare Harris to Ronald Reagan's vice president, who said:
"Naht Ghana do it. Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture."
Americans are shamefully uninformed about the multiplicity of tribal, cultural and linguistic variations within Africa. Kamala doesn't even look African to Africans.
Of course, Ghanians don't think Kamala Harris looks like them. They're not dumb.
Like so many successful American "blacks", she has a significant amount of non-African ancestry. And looks it.
Hopefully Ghanians will look at her and think......."we can do better".
Diversity politics with an appeal to empathy.
The suggestion that only someone with African heritage would be moved by the slavery sites is offensive. Do they think a European-American would ho-hum and rush through?
A lot of the article is a tongue bath, but if Harris is genuinely interested in foreign diplomacy then good for her.
Quemala Harris is finding her footing talking about the future of Africa.
Another day with no comments until evening. Is this the beginning of another deletion?
If you compare the face of the Irish singer, Hozier, with the faces of Kamala Harris and Bob Marley you can see the similar underlying facial structure which is Irish, not Ghanian. My point simply is that we need to look beyond skin color to see who someone "looks like."
Hozier https://goss.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Hozier-1068x1338.jpg
Bob Marley https://africhroyale.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/bob-marley.jpg
Kamala Harris https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/81yIAi1rG1L-1-197x300.jpg
Kamala Harris's background is partly Anglo-Irish. Her Harris ancestors came to Jamaica from Northern Ireland as part of a short-lived experiment to provide labor on Jamaican plantations after slavery was abolished there in 1837. Communities in the Ulster plantation area which were founded with Scottish and English settlers by Cromwell in the 17C had a surplus, impoverished population by 1837. An effort was made to send these Anglo-Irish to the Jamaica plantations; it ended because the story ran through Ireland that these people were enslaved when they reached Jamaica. The emigration lasted long enough that Irish are the second largest ancestry group in Jamaica. Most intermarried with Jamaicans of African ancestry. This is the background of Bob Marley and of Kamala Harris, through her father.
The Anglo-Irish are part of the background of Thomas Jefferson and you can see the resemblance to Bob Marley and Kamala Harris in this picture
https://hearthandfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Thomas-Jefferson.jpg
The "Scotch-Irish," the group to which Thomas Jefferson belongs, was another Anglo-Irish group, It left Ireland and came the USA in the colonial era.
And here is one of Sally Hemings descendants:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/78/93/ee789328302264b5f27bfe14b6084dc0.jpg
Nothing says cultural connection with African women than doing your photo op at Vibration Studios, complete with a neon sign on the wall saying "Vibrate." (Found at the Politico link)
And who says Kamala can't connect with shoeless Ghanaians,
https://clture.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screen-Shot-2020-10-26-at-12.14.52-PM-e1603729727155.jpg
Maybe Politico still goes by the "One-drop" rule. Whatever the case, judging people by their looks is superficial and good on the Ghanian's if they hold a higher level of judgement for developing trust.
Aren't all Ghanians, half-Indian, and half-black with some Irish mixed in? And maybe Kam can have lunch with the great-great grandson of the Ghandian Chieftan who sold Kam's great-great-grandfather into slavery.
AA, see the quote at the beginning of the post for the spelling of Ghanaians. It’s Ghana-ians (gan-AY-ans) rather than Ghan-ians.
Contact me for more pedantry, absolutely free!
Ghanians are quite used to dealing with people who look like them, but might otherwise disagree with them, might be untrustworthy, or have any number of other qualities that would make them poor partners. Our journalistic caste doesn't seem to have any conception that looking like someone is not a necessary or sufficient basis to work with them.
I'd prefer not to take this into "Democrats R the Real Racists", so I'll just stop at pointing out the oblivious stupidity of what was in the article.
What a dopey caption. Superficial outward appearance is everything. Yet I'd bet that, to most Africans, Kamala Harris does NOT look like them. Not even close.
I think the color that the leadership of Ghana finds pleasing in Kamala Harris ' visit is the promise of American greenbacks. They can't possibly see her fair skin as anything that makes them think of the people of their own country.
After succesfully sorting out our border invasion, bringing her greatness and eloquence to countries in need.
The equation is fully baked.
Politico thinks in intersectionality terms, so everyone who is dark skinned and has origins in Africa is in the category, which is good enough for them. It is racist thinking, but "acceptable" racist thinking.
I doubt the people of Ghana think the same way. Most of the African countries are artificial constructs of the colonial days. The different ethnic groups and tribes forced together often do not like each other, even if they have the same skin color and are part of the same political unit. You sometimes see "what if" maps of what the map of Africa should have looked like if followed nationalist guidelines of putting the same ethnic groups together. What they tend to miss is if allowed to form naturally, most likely the political borders would be formed after the local powers fought each other to a standstill and ejected (or worse) anyone they didn't want in their borders.
I especially think they do not see her as one of them, given she is half Tamil, that group's origin being the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. I'm not sure they would even see her Jamaican father as one of them.
To be fair, she does look like the Ghanaians who ALSO had ancestors that owned slaves.
Condoleeza Rice looked a lot more the Ghanaians and she actually had something to say to them when she visited.
She looks more like a Westernized woman than an African woman.
In fact, for almost 150 years, Ghana, on Africa’s west coast, was the center of the British slave trade. Western traders arrived in ships loaded with manufactured goods to barter or trade for slaves. Those who were sold had often been captured in tribal warfare; some had simply been kidnapped to sell to European slave traders.
===========
So possibly ancestral connection
Hope she demand reparation from them
east africans are very sensible sort, kamala has little in common with them,
To be fair, she does look like the Ghanaians who ALSO had ancestors that owned slaves.
Owned "people of color" slaves, traded them from the interior "people of black" tribes... communities.
The first time Langston Hughes got off the boat in 'motherland' Africa, he thought he'd be welcomed as coming home. It was a revelation to find that they thought of him as American, not African.
Had a Somali taxi driver in DC who, as we drove by a group of African Americans just hanging out, told me that they had it backward. Instead of comparing themselves to the people in Africa and other poor countries who had to leave their homes in order to make a living, they compare themselves to "the millionaire on the hill," and so are left embittered.
Seven year ago, when my mother, who lived in S. Florida, had to go to a rehab hospital for three months, I visited her twice and got to know the Nigerian nurse who mostly took care of her. Name was Glory, and she was aptly named. She had three daughters who, she said, were soon to be of marrying age. I asked whom she wanted them to marry. "Nigerian boys, first, of course," she said. "After that, white Americans." "Not African Americans?" "No, never, never." "Why?" "Their culture. It's antithetical to everything I was raised in and which my husband and I raised our girls in."
I frequently visited, in an effort to free him from prison, a Ghanaian who'd been falsely accused and wrongly convicted of rape in Santa Barbara. In prison, he was caught in no-man's land. The American blacks hated him, and if he hung out with whites, they hated him even more. Heartbreaking.
looking like someone is not a necessary or sufficient basis to work with them
Au contraire, Critical Racist's Theory (CRT) presumes diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry, political congruence) including color blocs (e.g. "people of color") as a matter of faith and religious/ethical prescription, thus wet get Hutu vs Tutsi, Mandela's Xhosa vs Zulu, Kenyan elite vs deplorables, the Chinese internal and transnational racial "politics", etc.
looking like someone is not a necessary or sufficient basis to work with them
... conservative females vs liberal females vs progressive males dressed in women's clothing.
'Slavery was more a disgrace to the human race than to any particular race.'
Slavery was more a natural condition of the human race.
Fixed it...
'Maybe Politico still goes by the "One-drop" rule.'
The one drop rule was promulgated by the Democrat party in the American South, and a variation of this was used by Nazi Germany to determine who was Jewish.
It's not well known, but Tiger Woods is (heritage-wise) more Asian than he is black.
Yet, he is always referred to as the 'Greatest black golfer' in history.
So I guess black trumps Asian...
Ghana has hyenas, so her laughter is familiar.
So, just to be Clear..
Leftists, like gadfly, igna, Mark, and Politico; All think that 'one dark skin looks like another?
Right gadfly? igna? Mark? Politico?
The Chinese now own Africa. And look nothing like Africans.
Kamala's father, Prof. Donald Harris, didn't think Jamaicans identified with Kamala either, after she advocated legalization of pot and bragged about having smoked pot and gettting high, like they are known to do in Jamaica.
“ 'My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their graves right now,' Professor Harris said, 'to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.'
Kamala’s father just called out his daughter for playing identity politics. He is making it crystal clear she is just a huckster pandering to minority voters. He added, 'Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.' ” Kamala’s Dad Says His Parents ‘Turning In Their Graves’ Over Her Latest Sick Stunt - 2019
Once a huckster, always a huckster?
Blogger The Drill SGT said...
that Indian Honky?
Indian Ho. There, erased it for you.
"...said a young woman named LaToya, who did not want to give her last name because she is a wish-fulfillment character made up for this Politico story..."
The article refers to Kamala as "the usually stoic Harris."
So, who's the brainless airhead doing all that imappropriate cackling?
Post a Comment