"I talked to Meta’s Black AI character. Here’s what she told me. Is this the new era of digital blackface?"

Writes Karen Attiah in The Washington Post... and this is well worth a free-access link.

Attiah asks the AI character, "How do you celebrate your African American heritage?" This nonexistent person — billed as "a Proud Black queer momma” — answers:

Through music, food and tradition! My family loves cooking soul food for holidays like Juneteenth and Kwanzaa — my mom’s fried chicken and collard greens are famous! [...] How about your heritage? Any special traditions?

Annoyed at AI's posing as a real person — which seems like blackface — Attiah conducts an interrogation:

"If White women have historically been both the beneficiaries of affirmative action efforts and its biggest detractors, why are we not interrogating them on what this ruling means?"

"Why are Black people being made to answer for and about these systems, which we neither created nor greatly benefit from?..."

Asks the WaPo columnist Karen Attiah, in "White women have helped sink the affirmative action ship."

"For years, people marched, got tear-gassed, donated and literally put their lives on the line in the hopes of Black emancipation — not a Black influencer McMansion."

Writes Karen Attiah in "Black Lives Matter needs to get its (real expensive) house in order" (WaPo).

[T]he Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation secretly purchased a $6 million, 6,500-square-foot mansion near Malibu, Calif., using donated funds. According to memos quoted in the report, the foundation’s leaders settled on a tactic of describing the mansion as both a “safehouse” and a place providing “recording resources and dedicated space for Black creatives to launch content online and in real life focused on abolition, healing justice, urban agriculture and food justice, pop culture, activism, and politics.” Huh?... 

I emailed BLM’s national organization. They did not respond to questions. The lack of transparency is a serious betrayal. During the Trump years, many of us wanted to protect the movement from attacks by the right. But we can’t defend a BLM national leadership that arrogantly refuses to be accountable to Black victims and communities....

From the top-rated comment over at WaPo: "This isn't just a blunder, it sounds like they're heading down the road toward tax fraud. Frankly, the IRS needs to do a better job at enforcement of laws pertaining to non profits."

"White women. Again."

Making their own decisions on various issues, according to their own different beliefs and convictions. Why on earth is that a problem? It’s success! https://t.co/FWK0zHIWIS

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) November 5, 2020

Donald Trump calls a woman "sweetie" and — accepting her kiss — gives a return air kiss.

Because of the content of the previous post,  I'm calling attention to what happens at the end of this clip:



The details of what's going on there are described, by Dylan Byers at CNN, in "Behind Trump's 'job interview' with Alicia Watkins."

Identifying herself as a 9/11 survivor and Afghanistan/Iraq war veteran, [Alicia] Watkins asked Trump if his new hotel in Washington would include a veterans employment program. Trump said it would, and asked her to come to the podium for a job interview.

"What are you looking for? What kind of a position? Come up here, you look so smart and good," Trump said. "Do you mind if I do a job interview right now?"

Oh! He commented on her looks: You look so smart and good.

Watkins, who came to the stage wearing a media credential, told Trump that she did "design," "briefs" and "all kinds of decorations." Trump then passed her along to one of his aides, and told the crowd: "If we can make a good deal on a salary she's probably going to have a job."...

Trump himself was asked about his exchange with Watkins after Monday's press conference.... "I felt good about her," Trump responded "I looked at and I have a gut instinct. We're allowed to have that. I looked at her. She asked a positive question.... She seemed like a good person to me."

I wonder if the whole thing wasn't planned and staged. In this C-SPAN clip of her talking to reporters afterwards, at 3:58 — for what it's worth — she says it wasn't planned.

The Washington Post reporter who — based on a single word, "beautiful" — said Trump "hit on" her.

At 2:34 yesterday, WaPo's Karen Attiah tweeted:

So. I got hit on today by Donald Trump.

No context. No detail. It wasn't until 7:02 PM that she put up a column: "I asked Trump a policy question. Then he called me 'beautiful.'" Trump had been talking with a group of WaPo editors for over an hour and:

As the meeting ended and we were walking out of the room, I thanked Trump for taking my question. He turned to me and said, “I really hope I answered your question,” and added casually with a smile, “Beautiful.” I was stunned. I didn’t say thank you, and I don’t think I smiled. He then walked out to meet with my Post colleagues briefly before heading to the elevator. I stayed in the conference room for a few minutes as it sunk in that the potential GOP nominee for president thought it was okay to comment on my appearance. Did he just say that?

The first thing I need to know is, what was Attiah's response to his "I really hope I answered your question"? If she said "yes, thanks" or nodded or gave any kind of positive response, then "beautiful" would tend to mean "Great" as in I'm glad you're satisfied with my answer.

It's at least ambiguous. I can understand the psychology of a woman wondering if she was just called beautiful, but this was a very particular woman, a reporter who seems eager to hurt Donald Trump. She stayed in the conference room thinking... exactly what? That she could immediately tweet out "I got hit on today by Donald Trump."

You know, "hit on" goes way beyond getting called "beautiful." Even if we were to assume she's correct and Donald Trump was pushing the social norms and giving a woman a personal compliment in the workplace, it's a big step from there to "hit on." Speaking of social norms... when is it okay to say that another woman's husband is "hitting on" you? Whenever he tells you you're really pretty? If a woman told people my husband "hit on" her and it turned out he'd just said, commenting on her appearance, "beautiful," I'd regard her as delusional or dangerous or both.

Here's the next paragraph in Attiah's column:

Planning out how to question Trump in a way that was illuminating was like planning for asymmetrical warfare against an opponent who doesn’t follow the same rules as you do. Who doesn’t believe in rules. Who thinks that rules won’t help make America great again....

But what rules are you following?!

I'm looking at the transcript of the whole discussion with WaPo's editorial board, and it's interesting that Trump does make a comment — an unambiguous comment — about personal appearance. It's directed at the whole group:

TRUMP: I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here.  Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?

So, yeah, maybe he does have a way of disarming people — or trying to — by suddenly making a surprising and positive remark about physical appearance. He also threw in "the hell." It's an exuberant, casual style of speech.*

Should he not be talking like that? Well, he would not be the front-runner if he hadn't plunged ahead, talking in his unique, entertaining way. Reporters are only jumping on what they can call mistakes because he's been doing so well.

And each little dust-up like this "beautiful" gets conversation going on all sides, and it's hard to predict or watch what's going on in other people's minds. Who knows how many women smile on the man who is generous with the compliments and how many men rankle at what might seem like oversensitive "feminist" sulking over a simple, perfectly nice compliment?