December 14, 2019

What's going on here between 0:34 and 0:35? What exactly does it mean — that young blonde woman (just before the image of Scarlett O'Hara and "Mammy")?

113 comments:

rhhardin said...

Our Black Foremothers was my favorite book that I never read, in the 80s when this was all getting started. The company librarian wouldn't order it.

I did buy for myself Carol Adams's The Sexual Politics of Meat.

Creative crazy is an audience share. Twenty years later it's all mainstream, is the funny thing.

Bay Area Guy said...

Is Kammy even black? I thought she was Indian (dot forehead, not Commanche squaw) Jamaican.

It's all so confusing.

Spiros said...

The political correctness norm does not seem to influence Black politicians as much as it does White politicians.

wendybar said...

Another Liberal Race Baiter.....This is why she will always lose. She isn't the victim she thinks she is.

wild chicken said...

Good hair/bad hair. Becky. Privilege. Etc.

Susan said...

Now show Diamond and Silk.

Those ladies are nobody's victims.

rhhardin said...

Black women run the world from the HR department.

Michael K said...

They got OJ off. That white bitch stole our black man!

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Black women are the most government dependent race/gender demographic in the country. Yeah, they’re going to have an extra-tough time being taken seriously. We call this human nature.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

And could you troll any more blatantly, Althouse? Obamaphones!

rhhardin said...

Just yesterday I was thinking about why quantum computing was never going to work.

Put 50 guys like that in a film and see if there's a contrast that might be sex linked.

Automatic_Wing said...

We wuz Kangs an' shit.

PB said...

The backbone of the party? Really? Project much, Kamala?

rhhardin said...

The Schrodinger equation is the only fundamental physics equation that's hugely verified but describes the evolution of something that does not exist.

rhhardin said...

There were hugely skilled math typists who were black, back in the day before computers did the typing and formatting. Real artists.

AllenS said...

Maybe as soon as that white girl is ID-ed she be stabbed until the feathers come out of her pretty white face.

rehajm said...

...as in the other 53 seconds, images of what Kamala looks like losing.

madAsHell said...

I really liked the "BUT WE STILL DO", and then it paused for a beat on the woman flipping her dreadlocks, her do, over her shoulder.

It's almost a Trump-like troll, but it doesn't appeal to me as a voter.

Lucien said...

I think the blond white woman is there to show how disconnected societal images of beauty are from black women’s Struggle with the fragility of their existence.

rhhardin said...

Thylias Moss, black Oberlin graduate, used to do really great poetry. Harold Bloom cited her as an ideal for the future. googles
The Warmth of Hot Chocolate

rhhardin said...

It would be nice to show black women not having faith, belief and a vision, but doing something well. It might indicate it's hard work, though, which is a turnoff.

Ann Althouse said...

I was offended to see the sudden, stark image of a white woman, presented — it felt to me — for blaming and booing.

The text at that point is "almost always nothing has told us that you can or should have that vision." The implication seems to be that a generic white woman HAS been "told" that she "can" and "should" have a "vision." Then up pop Scarlett and Mammy. What does that mean? It's all imputation and emotional static. Are white women being blamed for holding back black women or are white women "merely" the empty mindless repositories of privilege bestowed on them by those beings who appear nowhere in the video — men

n.n said...

Diversity and exclusion.

rhhardin said...

My impression is that Thylias Moss has gone native now, being faculty somewhere like Michigan, but I could be wrong.

Will Cate said...

Yeah, that's really weird. The message would seem to be that white women (or black men) don't have to do any of those things.

Ice Nine said...

Since the narrator has chosen to generalize, I guess I will too. Black women have never shown me that much. They are - at best - simply average women. Their trite line, "I'm a *strong* Black woman," that they just seem to have to say all the time, is a paradigm of sad psychological compensation.

Michael The Magnificent said...

What's going on here between 0:34 and 0:35?

Token white woman mandated by federal diversity laws?

rhhardin said...

Cite some Anne Carson writings. She's not black but is Canadian, which is the same thing.

minnesota farm guy said...

What is the context of this? Part of her campaign for VP? I have not observed Harris closely, but the word "pander" comes to my mind immediately. Is this the way she bombed out in her campaign before?

Thinking some more it seems a bit callous of Harris, who apparently put an inordinate number of black men in prison, to say " you can do it , honey, now that I've put the men away!"

Ann Althouse said...

I presume Kamala Harris is "running" for vice president, and we know — WaPo told us — that she's the #1 contender.

How ham-handed is it to express hostility toward white women? Those 2 seconds were entirely unnecessary, and the "Gone With the Wind" follow-up was amateurish, childish, trashy propaganda.

AllenS said...

Has anyone thought about what black women think when they see a black man with a white woman?

rhhardin said...

Marge Piercy, Strong Woman
https://marecromwell.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/a-strong-woman-poem-by-marge-piercy/

traditionalguy said...

Being Scarlett O'Hara's house slave was a good inside job antebellum. Then Rhett Butler hired her and finally she got an Academy Award for being the one everybody trusted. Kammie should do so well.

gspencer said...

"Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party"

Pssst, Kamala, it's over. You can stop pandering now.

Ken B said...

Blaming and booing is right.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

What it means to me is that she is as vacuous and pathetic as I sized her up as, about 5 minutes after I observed her in action on the Senate floor.

William said...

I wonder what Kamala's feelings are on the dust up between Oprah and Rusell Simmons. What are the chances that some reporter asks her about it?.....Kamala seems to have had a somewhat privileged life. I wonder if she has ever reflected on all the generations of caste privilege that her Indian ancestors enjoyed. Does she think that she owes any type of reparations to the untouchables in India?

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Ann Althouse said...

How ham-handed is it to express hostility toward white women? Those 2 seconds were entirely unnecessary, and the "Gone With the Wind" follow-up was amateurish, childish, trashy propaganda.

Maybe why her presidential campaign failed.

Nah, it was racism, pure and simple!

RK said...

Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party

So now the Dems are openly admitting that they're the party of dependency and perpetual victimhood.

Nancy said...

Kamala looks white with these other women.

Automatic_Wing said...

I was offended to see the sudden, stark image of a white woman, presented — it felt to me — for blaming and booing.

Get used to it! Beckys are class enemies now.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

It was a blonde woman, but was it a white woman? Althouse makes an impeachment-like inference.

rhhardin said...

Black racism is a way of avoiding noticing that blacks are not as smart IQ-wise as whites; namely "the reason we're not doing well is that the whites are holding us back."

Rather than whites doing everything they can to promote blacks. But jobs are IQ tests.

The answer isn't self-sufficiency but good character. Everybody does better working with other people and fitting in where you fit in.

Self-sufficient people wind up in poverty. Make your own pencils to get the idea.

Birches said...

Those two scenes are followed by a shot of the debate stage. She's implicitly telling the audience that she was held back because of society. It has to be, why else would you show Mamie?

Thatvad could have been inspiring. But as is? Weird. The splices aren't even long enough to get the message they intended.

Ray - SoCal said...

Agree, ham handed production that tried so hard.

GingerBeer said...

Professor, Harris entered and exited the D primary to "run" for the VP slot. As she brings nothing electorally to the table, she's left preening for the cameras as usual.

Limited blogger said...

Who is narrating? Is that Kamala? Sounds weird.

Limited blogger said...

Need Scott Adams to break down that short video.

I was not persuaded.

rhhardin said...

Her campaign would get the biggest boost from a famous esperanto palindrome.

Yancey Ward said...

Left Bank has the same opinion I did on watching it- the lady is extremely light colored black, like Kamala Harris herself. In a different age, she would be passing as white.

LA_Bob said...

"There is no one more fragile in terms of her safety and security than a black woman in America"

The Tutsis in Rwanda, especially 25 years ago, might have disagreed.

Also, I wonder if the blonde woman wasn't one of those "one-drop of Negro blood" people. I think it might take more subtlety than this video creator can muster to impute Althouse-like interpretations of their intent.

Clark said...

I am going to go with light-skinned, straightened and dyed hair. (Which allies me with Left Bank and Yancey Ward.)

Michael K said...

Has anyone thought about what black women think when they see a black man with a white woman?

Or vice versa. My dental hygienist was an Ethiopian black woman who grew up in Israel. She was one of the Ethiopian Jews rescued during the civil war there. She is married to a white man and both go to Israel every year as she still has relatives there, We talked about the racial problems of American blacks. It is similar to what I have seen with medical students I taught. African and West Indies blacks have no issues.

She told me she would get hate stares from black women when she was out with her husband. They live in Irvine where the average house prices are close to a $million. The hate stares were coming from neighbors,

gilbar said...

i'm hung up on the opening
there is no one more fragile in terms of her safety and security, than a black woman
IN AMERICA

Is she saying that black women, in America; are most in jeopardy ?
what group, in America is most likely to be killed dead in a violent death? Not black women

If she saying that black women, in America; are more in jeopardy than black women, in africa?

Is she just saying that black women in America are THE MOST FRAGILE? Yes; That's what she said
She SAID that Black women, in America; are WEAKER, and LESS RESILIENT; than ANYONE ELSE

I'm Sorry! I'm NOT BUYING INTO THAT RACISM!!! OR THAT SEXISM!! OR THAT ANTIAMERICANISM

Just an old country lawyer said...

"It ain't fittin'! It jes ain't fittin'!

Ken B said...

Interesting speculation from Left and Yancey, but she looks white to me. So does Vivien Leigh.

bagoh20 said...

The two seconds is designed to subliminally add a dash of racist anger to the stew of victim-hood disguised as confidence. Like a touch of salt, it brings out the central flavors.

Kevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kevin said...

Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party and those running to lead our nation must show up for them

Black women are the new children.

Kevin said...

Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party and those running to lead our nation must show up for them—not just with words, but with action.

Shorter Kamala: Why didn't anyone show up for me?

FullMoon said...

Wasn't Mammy the frequent voice of reason for impetuous Scarlett? Slow her down?

Been awhile since I have seen the whole thing.

Anyway, white girl in by accident, they recorded over an old vcr tape.

Kevin said...

What's going on here between 0:34 and 0:35? What exactly does it mean — that young blonde woman (just before the image of Scarlett O'Hara and "Mammy")?

Oh, I think you got the message loud and clear.

Without that shock to your subconscious, you might think white women also fit her description.

gilbar said...

Dr. K points out, that...
African and West Indies blacks have no issues.


and yet; WHO do The Powers That Be, keep presenting us with?
Colin Powell, whose parents were from Jamaica
Barry O'Bama, whose dad was from Kenya, and who grew up in Indonesia
Kamela Harris, whose dad was a mulatto from Jamaica

Barry and Kammy's mom's weren't even from Jamaica they were from Kansas, or the Indian Territories* (modern day Oklahoma, i think)

WHERE are our ACTUAL African American Slave descendants? WHERE IS Condoleezza Rice??



the Indian Territories* it's a joke! lighten up!

Kevin said...

Women as a victim group is a transitory state for the Dems.

White women are going to wake one day to find their whiteness negates their womanhood.

MadisonMan said...

Would've been a more memorable tweet has she said black women are the blackbone of the party.

DanTheMan said...

I'm special because I'm a white man. - Hate crime
I'm special because I'm a black woman - Conventional wisdom

Achilles said...

Racist.

MadisonMan said...

Also: If there is no one more fragile than a black woman, as per Harris' claim -- exactly how can something so fragile be a backbone?

What an incoherent argument!

JaimeRoberto said...

Black women in Africa are probably more vulnerable than black women in America.

Beasts of England said...

The message was clear: don’t let that gay white dude become the VP nominee. Ho’s before Down Low’s.

West Texas Intermediate Crude said...

Bragging about "getting out of bed every morning," and "getting our hair done"???
WTF???
I have gotten our of bed over 20,000 times in my lifetime. Not enough hair to "Do It" anymore, but lets say 10,000.
Where's my trophy?

Amadeus 48 said...

Going for the Veep spot.

The Dems have to have a black person on the ballot to stem the interest in Trump in the black community. They particularly want to hold on to black women, their most loyal supporters.

I suppose Trump will spend some time on Harris as Veep nominee reminding black women what sunk Harris for POTUS: how many black men and women Harris threw in jail, while Trump has been fighting to redress injustices to black men.

I think the blonde woman is a "one drop" black person.

For those with a tolerance for Mark Twin, see Pudd'nhead Wilson, and consider what Roxy and the real Chambers looked like.

Amadeus 48 said...

The GWTW clip was a tribute to the loving, loyal service that Mammy gave to the O'Haras without complaint or proper compensation, together with an implicit critism of the limited opportunities offered to great black talents like Hattie McDaniel (although she did get an Oscar for her performance).

AllenS said...

OK, so some people think that the blonde woman is a 1%-er? Ha ha. Just think about a video of American Indians, and at 34 and 35 seconds a picture showed Elizabeth Warren. Ha ha.

Amadeus 48 said...

As to the blonde woman in the ad, more than one drop. Maybe 1/32 to 1/8--but who cares?

In any case, more than Rachel Dolezal.

Earnest Prole said...

Who is Kamala Harris?

whitney said...

Black women are obsessed with their hair. And I mean I kind of don't blame them, of all the races on Earth they got the crappiest hair. I mean everyone has these long silky drapes of hair, and white women get them in different hues, and they got a Brillo pad. But it's always all about the hair.

Yancey Ward said...

Harris and her staff are politically tone deaf, but not so tone deaf as to put a white woman like that in the ad without a clear reason for doing so.

Really, how black is Beyonce or Mariah Carey?

Anonymous said...

That "fragile in terms of safety and security" line make me think of that video J.Farmer linked in a earlier thread. The one with that fragile young lady going ape-shit beating the crap out of that white boy with apparent impunity.

Openidname said...

I wish our hostess had done one of her trademark breakdowns of the narration . . .

"We take care of those babies": Weird turn of phrase; not "our" babies? Especially when it goes on to say "our men" and "our community." Maybe it means "the babies we haven't aborted"?

"We fight having faith and having a belief and a vision": An unfortunate ambiguity there.

"Which we almost uniquely have the ability to do 'cause almost always nothing has told us that you can or should have that vision, but we still do": Surely not being told you can have "that vision" would give you less ability to "fight having . . . a vision," not more -- let alone a "unique" ability?

And what the hell are they fighting?

P.S.: "This is the best part of my day, that you are here." The stink of insincerity rising off of that is breathtaking.

Bilwick said...

"Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party . . . "

What an awful thing to say about Black women!

ken in tx said...

It looks like professor Ann is being mugged by her erstwhile leftest comrades. She sees that they hate her because of her race.

Bay Area Guy said...

Didn't Kammy quit even before the Iowa Caucus? Why is she making any videos at all?

Achilles said...

Bay Area Guy said...
Didn't Kammy quit even before the Iowa Caucus? Why is she making any videos at all?

Because she made a deal to be Veep.

rcocean said...

Scarlett: Why should I buy her a present when she called us both mules?

Rhett Butler: Mules? Why mules?

Scarlett: Yes, she said we could give ourselves airs, and get ourselves all slicked up like racehorses but we were just mules in horse harness and we didn't fool anybody.

Rhett: I never heard anything more true. Mammy's a smart old soul and one of the few people I know whose respect I'd like to have.

chickelit said...

It's clickbait and it works.

Friendo said...

bagoh20 @ 12:49: you magnificent bastard!

Wince said...

Wasn’t Kamala the one always talking about racial “Dog Whistles”?

Althouse pointed out a racial dog siren in that video.

richlb said...

It's Rachel Dolezal you racist.

DavidUW said...

Well done Kamala.
Black women are 6% of the population.

That'll win you....NOTHING.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Looks like the work of the IRA.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I don't see Kamala as black. Is she even black?

h said...

What is going on between 34 and 35. First, it's nice that the format allows second-by-second rewind so I can see clearly what is there. I believe that the intent of the film maker was to show the great variety of "black women" from those who appear to be blonde and white to those stereotypical big and very black mammies. Nothing nefarious. I expect the blonde white "black woman" is a famous singer who is not known to me.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Shorter Democrat message of empowerment:

Just remember, you're a victim.
Just remember, you're a victim.
Just remember, you're a victim.
Just remember, you're a victim.
Just remember, you're a victim.

Heartless Aztec said...

Hattie MacDaniel was tbe first person of color to win an academy award for acting in tbe Best Supporting Actress category. The first person of color invited to the gala in 1939. She fits into the commercials theme.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Kamala is almost as black as Barry. Mention Kamala and "Vision" in the same paragraph and I figure that vision is Willie's balls slappin her chin. Not sorry... Reeses!

rcocean said...

Kamala Harris for Vice President?

Fiddle-de-dee.

gilbar said...

BleachBit-and-Hammers said... I don't see Kamala as black. Is she even black?

Only if you think that Tamils (Indians) are black; which would be insulting to tamils

Automatic_Wing said...

Mammy > Kammy.

chickelit said...

I just listened. Who does the croaky voiceover?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Can we get a chart.
A melanin-gender-ancestry-victim chart.
I don't want to offend anyone.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Is she auditioning for VP? or is this thing old?

Amadeus 48 said...

chicklit--I am assuming you are making a sincere inquiry at 7:13. It is Kamala.

gilbar at 6:35--Kamala's father is Donald Harris, a black guy from Jamaica who is an economics prof at Stanford. Kamala's mother was from India and had Tamil heritage, as you say.

Josephbleau said...

"Wasn't Mammy the frequent voice of reason for impetuous Scarlett? Slow her down?"

The line I remember is when Mammy told Scarlet that a decent woman don't show her bosom before 6 o'clock, when Scarlet wore a low cut dress to the afternoon cotillion.

rcocean said...

Harris' father came from Jamaica and was a mulatto. The Grandfather was a white man with some Slave-holding ancestry . Kamala's Mother was a Hindu. Kamala grew up in Berkeley and graduated from a HS in Montreal Canada. She's lived her whole Adult life (after college) in the Bay Area and Sacramento. She's married to a Jewish guy.

So that's how "Black" she is.

Bunkypotatohead said...

It's OK to be white.

Jupiter said...

"I was offended to see the sudden, stark image of a white woman, presented — it felt to me — for blaming and booing."

Yeah, that's a man's job. A white man's.

Gandydancer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gandydancer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gandydancer said...

Are you sure that that "young blonde woman" is white?

I would have thought she was, but maybe Kamala was just pointing out that she's not the whitest-looking "black" woman

Browndog said...

When everyone tells me that the "single African-American woman" is the most noble of of all...

...I know the opposite is true.

They are certainly the most violent among us.

zefal said...

When Althouse suddenly realizes she's not considered one of them by the thems.

FIDO said...

Althouse at her most disingenuous or perhaps willfully blind.