vox--2020-08-14--Why the surge in racist misinformation about Kamala Harris is so worrisome

Within hours of Joe Biden announcing that he had selected Kamala Harris as his presidential running mate , conspiracy theories as well as racist and sexist misinformation about her proliferated online .
Much of this harassing dialogue recycled or built on earlier false claims spread about Harris .
And the actions social media has already taken — or avoided — are stoking anxieties about the role of misinformation in the campaign to come .
On QAnon and other right-wing Facebook pages , memes compared Harris to Rachel Dolezal and wrongly claimed she was not African American .
On Twitter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pointed out that Harris ’ s sister takes hydroxychloroquine , without the context that she uses the medication for lupus , not Covid-19 .
And countless posts questioned her eligibility to run for vice president , a problem that was exacerbated by a controversial Newsweek op-ed pushing the same baseless question .
On Thursday , President Trump , who infamously promoted the racist birther conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama , amplified the claims about Harris ’ s eligibility .
“ I heard today that she doesn ’ t meet the requirements , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ article ’ s author as “ very highly qualified , very talented lawyer.
” In response to a follow-up question on the topic , the president concluded , “ I don ’ t know about it .
I just heard about it .
I ’ ll take a look.
” The recent spike in misinformation highlights how quickly old conspiracy theories get recycled on social media when a new context presents itself , and how powerless platforms seem to be to stop it .
At the same time , the renewed onslaught of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highlights how Trump and his campaign are eager to use misinformation to their advantage as they find ways to attack the Biden-Harris ticket .
And as the Newsweek op-ed made clear , some media outlets are willing to participate .
” We are working in tandem with the DNC to be vigilant around monitoring the lies , misinformation , and conspiracies Trump and his allies spread , which is informing our response to combat their recycled attacks , including many laced with sexism and racism , with the truth , ” Matt Hill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s campaign , told Recode .
There has been a significant spike in misinformation about Harris in the few days since she was made the VP candidate .
According to research from the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs , there have been more than 150,000 instances of people sharing , discussing , or promoting misinformation online related to Harris in the past week .
Meanwhile , the progressive research group Media Matters found that right-leaning Facebook pages they analyzed posted about Harris twice as much as left-leaning groups in the past week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent more engagement than those on more liberal pages .
Social media platforms have each taken their own approaches to combating the surge in misinformation .
In response to online discussion about the false claim that Harris isn ’ t legally qualified to be president , Twitter included in its Trending section a link to a fact-checked post saying that Harris is indeed eligible for the position .
Similarly , a search for “ Kamala Harris eligible ” on YouTube pops up a link to a fact-checking page saying that she is eligible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violates certain policies and labeled some posts flagged by its fact-checkers as false .
But the immediate reaction to her selection signals a long road ahead for Harris and the Biden campaign when it comes to combating misinformation and disinformation .
Despite the actions taken by platforms , experts are still worried that the companies won ’ t be quick enough to stop the spread .
And as we ’ ve learned from mixed responses to Trump posts in the past , the president ’ s willingness to amplify misinformation is bound to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forward .
Misinformation about Harris is nothing new Much of the current assault of misinformation harks back to earlier rounds of fake news about Sen. Kamala Harris , as well as conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama .
Upon the announcement of Harris as the vice presidential pick , the fact-checking outlet Snopes was quick to point out a slew of false claims about her that its researchers had already analyzed , including the false claim that Harris is the aunt of the actor Jussie Smollett and the equally false assertion that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public school system she attended .
For example , false claims that Harris is not eligible to be president were circulating on social media as early as 2017 and have only grown in prominence since then .
Last year , CNN host Chris Cuomo had to apologize after he amplified the theory on Twitter .
Though YouTube has a rule banning birtherism , one video from 2019 with 100,000 views that claimed Harris wasn ’ t eligible to be president was still available on the platform earlier this week .
After Recode asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken down this week for violating the site ’ s rules about deceptive practices .
“ It ’ s much like birtherism with Obama , and Trump asking for his long-form birth certificate back in 2008 , ” said Jacquelyn Mason , a senior investigative researcher at First Draft , a nonprofit that fights online misinformation .
“ By saying Kamala is not an American Black person , they ’ re essentially saying that she has no claim to be president , and then also negating her African American heritage by saying that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Misinformation questioning Harris ’ s racial identity has continued to circulate at the same time .
At one point last year , a tweet promoting that racist narrative was shared and then unshared by Donald Trump Jr. And as digital researcher Ben Decker outlined in Politico last March , a meme comparing Harris to Rachel Dolezal first appeared on the infamous , now-banned r/The_Donald Reddit page and then spread throughout the internet .
He pointed out how that meme is now returning .
“ In a lot of ways , if you look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Harris since she was a presidential candidate , there ’ s no reason that it wouldn ’ t just continue , ” Decker told Recode .
“ Suddenly , all these pro-Trump conspiracy communities are constitutional law experts , trying to claim falsely that she ’ s ineligible to be vice president or president.
” There is growing concern that disinformation and racist and sexist online harassment aimed at the Democratic vice presidential candidate could spiral out of control .
After Biden announced that he would pick a woman as his running mate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coordinated and authentic attacks on the potential vice president lists , ” said Arisha Hatch from the Color of Change PAC , who added that misinformation from those attacks often amplified sexist and racist tropes .
Accordingly , lines of defense to protect Harris and her campaign are forming .
Earlier this week , several progressive and pro-abortion groups released a guide for the media for navigating gendered disinformation , and the same groups are building up a “ war room ” meant to respond to false and sexist attacks .
About 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg this month that the company change its algorithms , which they say amplify misogyny and “ gendered disinformation.
” At the time , the lead organizer of the letter , Rep. Jackie Speier , told Recode that when “ Biden announces his vice presidential pick , the onslaught on Facebook and other sites is going to be horrific.
” So far , it seems as though Speier was right .
Social media companies have a history of allowing misinformation to spread Historically , social media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including conspiracy theories and attacks on public figures .
How they ’ re treating the present assault on Harris is no different .
While companies like Facebook are sometimes willing to take down posts based on violations of specific policies they have written , these platforms often prefer to promote content from fact-checkers alongside posts that include misinformation rather than simply remove the posts themselves .
Facebook , so far , is dealing with some posts about Harris by enforcing some of its existing policies , such as its ban on bullying public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
However , Facebook is not actually removing content about Harris simply because it ’ s false .
Instead , it ’ s relying on labels from fact-checkers , which are also supposed to reduce the distribution a flagged post receives .
But it ’ s unclear how effective that method is .
One post with the most engagement on the platform in the day following Harris ’ s announcement , according to data collected by Media Matters , was from right-wing personality Candace Owens who questioned the senator ’ s racial identity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it did not remove the post .
A subsequent post from Owens that objected to the fact-checking was “ liked ” more than 100,000 times .
A Twitter spokesperson says the company is focusing on removing content where there ’ s “ a call to action that could potentially cause harm , ” and that it ’ s committed to taking enforcement action when tweets violate Twitter rules , which do allow inaccurate statements about political candidates .
Past precedent has led some to worry that this approach to misinformation won ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surge of conspiracy theories .
“ Do I think that [ Trump ] may give a primetime address about it ?
Probably not , ” said Angelo Carusone , president of Media Matters , when asked about Trump spreading misinformation about Harris .
“ Do I think that there ’ s an extremely high likelihood that his account — either his own personal Twitter account or the campaign accounts — amplify and distribute memes that are repeating and touching upon these narratives ?
Absolutely.
” Those seeking to spread such disinformation don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Carusone added , they just need to raise questions about the topic , which is powerful enough to inject a theory into the news cycle .
That seems to be a big part of what happened this week .
But despite the actions of the platforms , a major concern is that the narrative could ultimately be shared by the president himself , and his comments on Thursday demonstrate that he ’ s already willing to amplify the theory .
Dealing with posts from Trump is especially problematic .
Facebook has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the president .
After drawing criticism for not doing enough to moderate Trump , Facebook recently took down a Trump post in which he claimed that children are “ almost immune ” to Covid-19 .
That was the first time Facebook has ever taken down a Trump post .
Twitter , on the other hand , has taken a slightly more aggressive approach to the president ’ s posts and , earlier this summer , started applying labels to some posts that Facebook chose not to act on .
What remains to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a worry — is the extent to which the Trump campaign will use misinformation about the Biden-Harris ticket as a campaign strategy .
After all , it remains unclear how social platforms could effectively respond should the president do so even more explicitly .
But , somewhat similar to false claims about mail-in voting , spreading wrong and racist claims about Harris serves to weaken trust in the democratic processes .
And , importantly , the consequences could well go beyond the current upcoming election .
“ My biggest hope , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ is that the level of disinformation , the level of racist and sexist commentary that will be allowed and amplify doesn ’ t dissuade that next generation of leaders from taking the step to put their hat in the ring.
” Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network .
All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists .
Will you become our 20,000th supporter ?
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The reason is both lovely and surprising : Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it , too .
We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy .
That ’ s never been more important than today , during a public health crisis , racial justice protests , a recession , and a presidential election .
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Within hours of Joe Biden announcing that he had selected Kamala Harris as his presidential running mate, conspiracy theories as well as racist and sexist misinformation about her proliferated online. Much of this harassing dialogue recycled or built on earlier false claims spread about Harris. And the actions social media has already taken — or avoided — are stoking anxieties about the role of misinformation in the campaign to come.
On QAnon and other right-wing Facebook pages, memes compared Harris to Rachel Dolezal and wrongly claimed she was not African American. On Twitter, a post with 20,000 “likes” pointed out that Harris’s sister takes hydroxychloroquine, without the context that she uses the medication for lupus, not Covid-19. And countless posts questioned her eligibility to run for vice president, a problem that was exacerbated by a controversial Newsweek op-ed pushing the same baseless question. On Thursday, President Trump, who infamously promoted the racist birther conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama, amplified the claims about Harris’s eligibility.
“I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump told reporters, referencing the article’s author as “very highly qualified, very talented lawyer.” In response to a follow-up question on the topic, the president concluded, “I don’t know about it. I just heard about it. I’ll take a look.”
The recent spike in misinformation highlights how quickly old conspiracy theories get recycled on social media when a new context presents itself, and how powerless platforms seem to be to stop it. At the same time, the renewed onslaught of fake news about Kamala Harris yet again highlights how Trump and his campaign are eager to use misinformation to their advantage as they find ways to attack the Biden-Harris ticket. And as the Newsweek op-ed made clear, some media outlets are willing to participate.
“We are working in tandem with the DNC to be vigilant around monitoring the lies, misinformation, and conspiracies Trump and his allies spread, which is informing our response to combat their recycled attacks, including many laced with sexism and racism, with the truth,” Matt Hill, the deputy press secretary for Biden’s campaign, told Recode.
There has been a significant spike in misinformation about Harris in the few days since she was made the VP candidate. According to research from the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs, there have been more than 150,000 instances of people sharing, discussing, or promoting misinformation online related to Harris in the past week. Meanwhile, the progressive research group Media Matters found that right-leaning Facebook pages they analyzed posted about Harris twice as much as left-leaning groups in the past week, and the right-leaning posts saw 50 percent more engagement than those on more liberal pages.
Social media platforms have each taken their own approaches to combating the surge in misinformation. In response to online discussion about the false claim that Harris isn’t legally qualified to be president, Twitter included in its Trending section a link to a fact-checked post saying that Harris is indeed eligible for the position. Similarly, a search for “Kamala Harris eligible” on YouTube pops up a link to a fact-checking page saying that she is eligible. Facebook has removed some content that violates certain policies and labeled some posts flagged by its fact-checkers as false.
But the immediate reaction to her selection signals a long road ahead for Harris and the Biden campaign when it comes to combating misinformation and disinformation. Despite the actions taken by platforms, experts are still worried that the companies won’t be quick enough to stop the spread. And as we’ve learned from mixed responses to Trump posts in the past, the president’s willingness to amplify misinformation is bound to complicate things for social media companies going forward.
Misinformation about Harris is nothing new
Much of the current assault of misinformation harks back to earlier rounds of fake news about Sen. Kamala Harris, as well as conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama. Upon the announcement of Harris as the vice presidential pick, the fact-checking outlet Snopes was quick to point out a slew of false claims about her that its researchers had already analyzed, including the false claim that Harris is the aunt of the actor Jussie Smollett and the equally false assertion that she lied about racial integration in the Berkeley public school system she attended.
For example, false claims that Harris is not eligible to be president were circulating on social media as early as 2017 and have only grown in prominence since then. Last year, CNN host Chris Cuomo had to apologize after he amplified the theory on Twitter. Though YouTube has a rule banning birtherism, one video from 2019 with 100,000 views that claimed Harris wasn’t eligible to be president was still available on the platform earlier this week. After Recode asked YouTube about it, the video was taken down this week for violating the site’s rules about deceptive practices.
“It’s much like birtherism with Obama, and Trump asking for his long-form birth certificate back in 2008,” said Jacquelyn Mason, a senior investigative researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that fights online misinformation. “By saying Kamala is not an American Black person, they’re essentially saying that she has no claim to be president, and then also negating her African American heritage by saying that she’s not African American.”
Misinformation questioning Harris’s racial identity has continued to circulate at the same time. At one point last year, a tweet promoting that racist narrative was shared and then unshared by Donald Trump Jr. And as digital researcher Ben Decker outlined in Politico last March, a meme comparing Harris to Rachel Dolezal first appeared on the infamous, now-banned r/The_Donald Reddit page and then spread throughout the internet. He pointed out how that meme is now returning.
“In a lot of ways, if you look at all these nonsensically bogus attacks against Harris since she was a presidential candidate, there’s no reason that it wouldn’t just continue,” Decker told Recode. “Suddenly, all these pro-Trump conspiracy communities are constitutional law experts, trying to claim falsely that she’s ineligible to be vice president or president.”
There is growing concern that disinformation and racist and sexist online harassment aimed at the Democratic vice presidential candidate could spiral out of control. After Biden announced that he would pick a woman as his running mate, there was “a set of coordinated and authentic attacks on the potential vice president lists,” said Arisha Hatch from the Color of Change PAC, who added that misinformation from those attacks often amplified sexist and racist tropes.
Accordingly, lines of defense to protect Harris and her campaign are forming. Earlier this week, several progressive and pro-abortion groups released a guide for the media for navigating gendered disinformation, and the same groups are building up a “war room” meant to respond to false and sexist attacks. About 100 women lawmakers also demanded in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg this month that the company change its algorithms, which they say amplify misogyny and “gendered disinformation.” At the time, the lead organizer of the letter, Rep. Jackie Speier, told Recode that when “Biden announces his vice presidential pick, the onslaught on Facebook and other sites is going to be horrific.”
So far, it seems as though Speier was right.
Social media companies have a history of allowing misinformation to spread
Historically, social media companies have struggled to moderate misinformation, including conspiracy theories and attacks on public figures. How they’re treating the present assault on Harris is no different. While companies like Facebook are sometimes willing to take down posts based on violations of specific policies they have written, these platforms often prefer to promote content from fact-checkers alongside posts that include misinformation rather than simply remove the posts themselves.
Facebook, so far, is dealing with some posts about Harris by enforcing some of its existing policies, such as its ban on bullying public figures and accounts that misrepresent their identities. However, Facebook is not actually removing content about Harris simply because it’s false. Instead, it’s relying on labels from fact-checkers, which are also supposed to reduce the distribution a flagged post receives.
But it’s unclear how effective that method is. One post with the most engagement on the platform in the day following Harris’s announcement, according to data collected by Media Matters, was from right-wing personality Candace Owens who questioned the senator’s racial identity. And while Facebook fact-checked that content, it did not remove the post. A subsequent post from Owens that objected to the fact-checking was “liked” more than 100,000 times.
A Twitter spokesperson says the company is focusing on removing content where there’s “a call to action that could potentially cause harm,” and that it’s committed to taking enforcement action when tweets violate Twitter rules, which do allow inaccurate statements about political candidates. Past precedent has led some to worry that this approach to misinformation won’t be enough to contain the coming surge of conspiracy theories.
“Do I think that [Trump] may give a primetime address about it? Probably not,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, when asked about Trump spreading misinformation about Harris. “Do I think that there’s an extremely high likelihood that his account — either his own personal Twitter account or the campaign accounts — amplify and distribute memes that are repeating and touching upon these narratives? Absolutely.”
Those seeking to spread such disinformation don’t necessarily need to defend the theories, Carusone added, they just need to raise questions about the topic, which is powerful enough to inject a theory into the news cycle. That seems to be a big part of what happened this week.
But despite the actions of the platforms, a major concern is that the narrative could ultimately be shared by the president himself, and his comments on Thursday demonstrate that he’s already willing to amplify the theory. Dealing with posts from Trump is especially problematic. Facebook has been historically reluctant to fact-check claims made by the president.
After drawing criticism for not doing enough to moderate Trump, Facebook recently took down a Trump post in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to Covid-19. That was the first time Facebook has ever taken down a Trump post. Twitter, on the other hand, has taken a slightly more aggressive approach to the president’s posts and, earlier this summer, started applying labels to some posts that Facebook chose not to act on.
What remains to be seen — but is already very much a worry — is the extent to which the Trump campaign will use misinformation about the Biden-Harris ticket as a campaign strategy. After all, it remains unclear how social platforms could effectively respond should the president do so even more explicitly. But, somewhat similar to false claims about mail-in voting, spreading wrong and racist claims about Harris serves to weaken trust in the democratic processes. And, importantly, the consequences could well go beyond the current upcoming election.
“My biggest hope,” said Hatch, from Color of Change PAC, “is that the level of disinformation, the level of racist and sexist commentary that will be allowed and amplify doesn’t dissuade that next generation of leaders from taking the step to put their hat in the ring.”
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.


Birtherism 2.0, explained

Kamala Harris , born in October of 1964 in Oakland , California , meets all the constitutional criteria to serve as president — and therefore as vice president — of the United States .
Yet on August 12 , Newsweek published an op-ed by John Eastman , a professor at the Chapman School of Law and a fellow at the Claremont Institute , arguing that she does not .
The publication ’ s editors are at pains to argue that Eastman ’ s argument had nothing to do with the “ racist conspiracy theory ” of birtherism .
But Donald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into political clout specifically by avowing such racist theories , appeared to embrace Eastman ’ s theories the next day at a West Wing event , saying he ’ d heard from a highly qualified lawyer that Harris is ineligible .
There are several things in the mix here : racist dog whistles , constitutional theory , and a somewhat serious conservative push to overturn the legal basis of American citizenship .
But most of all , it ’ s a story of Trump ’ s love of bullshit — a form of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barely even trying to trick people .
He ’ s just saying things — willfully indifferent to their truth or falsity — and in doing so creating new shibboleths for his movement and his followers .
Just as it ’ s now an article of faith in Trumpist circles that Joe Biden is senile , that Hillary Clinton committed some kind of grave crime related to email server management , that something called “ Obamagate ” happened , and that vote-by-mail is different from absentee ballots , we will likely soon be hearing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supposed ineligibility .
None of it is true , and the details barely matter , but such is the phantasmagoria we inhabit in Donald Trump ’ s America , even as hundreds die daily of a viral disease without a cure .
The president must be a “ natural born citizen ” One of the several odd 18th-century lacunae in America ’ s founding documents is the provision that “ No Person except a natural born Citizen , or a Citizen of the United States , at the time of the Adoption of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Office of President.
” It is not entirely clear why the framers of the Constitution slipped this in , as it did not play a particularly prominent role in any of the surrounding debates .
At the time , the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , which had an elected monarch , was teetering on the brink of oblivion ; this was in part due to Russian meddling in elections and a track record of various German aristocrats getting themselves elected .
Legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar posits that fears along these lines were driving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ that a foreign earl or duke would cross the Atlantic with immense wealth and a vast retinue and use his European riches to buy friends and power on a scale that virtually no American could match.
” Regardless of the reason , the thrust is that immigrants can ’ t serve as president — something that became a prominent subject of debate in the mid-aughts when two popular governors , Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan , were seen as plausible presidential contenders absent ineligibility .
But then the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the 2008 presidential campaign , because of a conspiracy theory positing that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and because his opponent John McCain was in fact not born in the United States but on a naval air station in the Panama Canal Zone .
Various “ birther ” controversies have been with us a long time Everyone agrees that people like Schwarzenegger , born in Austria , and Granholm , born in Canada , are not eligible to serve as president .
Historically , however , controversies have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When Chester A. Arthur acceded to the presidency in 1881 upon the assassination of James Garfield , there was some suggestion that he was potentially ineligible due to the theory that he was born in Canada , rather than Vermont .
There was never any clear evidence that this was true , but in the face of conspiracy rumors , it may be hard to prove that a person is n't secretly Canadian .
• Later , during the 1916 presidential campaign , a Woodrow Wilson aide named Breckinridge Long argued that GOP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serve on the grounds that , at the time of his birth , his father was not an American citizen even though he was born in the United States .
• During George Romney ’ s short-lived 1968 presidential campaign , there was some discussion that he might be ineligible because even though his parents were American citizens , he was born in Mexico .
Note that even though these controversies relate to the same provision of the Constitution , they are raising distinct issues about qualification .
And in recent history , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three .
Obama was born in the United States to an American mother , but like Arthur , he ’ s been accused by conspiracy theorists of somehow faking his origins to obscure the “ reality ” that he was born in Kenya .
John McCain was born in Panama while his father was stationed there on military duty , just as the Romney family was residing in Mexico when George Romney was born .
Last but by no means least , Harris ’ s parents — like Hughes ’ s — were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ born .
The Obama/Arthur version of this has the structural characteristics of a conspiracy theory , while the other two do not .
But the Hughes/Harris version of the argument , which the Newsweek editors insist is non-conspiratorial , is much more sweeping in its implication .
The claim is not that Harris ( or Hughes before her ) pulled a fast one on the public , but that the children of immigrants are second-class citizens — “ native born , ” as Long put it rather than “ natural born.
” But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reality .
This is all nonsense Families don ’ t fake the facts of their children ’ s birth to set themselves up for eventual accession to the presidency .
It ’ s a ridiculous thing to say about someone , but the nature of the conspiratorial mindset is that once you get it in your head that the burden is on the other person to definitively disprove a wild allegation , you can go perennially unsatisfied .
As for the other two issues , they ’ ve never been litigated because the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not carry meaning in any other context of American law .
But the 1790 Naturalization Act did stipulate that citizens born abroad to US citizen parents were considered natural-born citizens .
Later updates of federal immigration law do not use that phrase , but the fact that it was signed by George Washington and written by a Congress that included James Madison and James Monroe is normally seen as imbuing it with import as to what the framers had in mind .
Certainly to the extent that one is concerned about the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nobility , there is no reason to exclude people who fit this category .
But while the Hughes/Harris case has not been specifically litigated with regard to the presidency , we do have a record of political contestation around related issues .
The 1790 Act provided a mechanism of naturalization for “ free white person [ s ] ... of good character ” and would thus presumably have excluded either of Harris ’ s parents from the possibility of citizenship .
These and related matters were the subject of ongoing political debate throughout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , culminating in the Supreme Court infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decisions in which Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that Black people “ are not included , and were not intended to be included , under the word ‘ citizens ’ in the Constitution , and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.
” Many Americans , including Frederick Douglass , Abraham Lincoln , and contemporaries in the Republican Party , never accepted the legitimacy of that reading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an ongoing historical debate , with scholars like Sean Wilentz taking Lincoln ’ s view , while others like David Waldstreicher agree on some level with the antebellum Southerners that the pro-slavery reading of the Constitution was “ correct.
” Academic arguments aside , there was a war over slavery , and the winning side amended the Constitution to state that “ all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof , are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
” Many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this doctrine .
Laws adopted in the 1880s blocked immigration to the United States from China , and in 1894 immigration officials sought to block Wong Kim Ark — the US-born child of Chinese people who ’ d immigrated before the Exclusion Acts but never naturalized — from reentering the country .
But the Supreme Court ruled that since he was born in the United States he was a citizen .
This kind of “ birthright citizenship ” model has historically prevailed in the Western Hemisphere , and despite periodic efforts by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undocumented immigrants shouldn ’ t count , that ’ s not how the law works .
Eastman , like Long before him , is trying to squint really hard at two constitutional provisions to perceive a difference between people who are citizens by right of birth and people who are “ natural born citizens.
” But there is simply no textual basis for that , or really anything to motivate it at all , other than a broad dislike of the birthright citizenship doctrine and a desire to find arbitrary ways to limit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ real world Another wrinkle in this is that , according to the New York Times , “ Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois powerfully impressed Mr. Biden ’ s search team , but his lawyers feared she would face challenges to her eligibility because of the circumstances of her birth overseas.
” Duckworth ’ s father was a US-born military veteran , but she was born in Bangkok to a Thai Chinese mother .
There is no serious legal argument that she should be disqualified — children are born abroad to US military personnel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they qualify for automatic citizenship has been the law since 1790 — but Biden ’ s team apparently decided to let hypothetical bad-faith legal arguments prevent them from selecting the woman who “ was regarded by Biden advisers as among the candidates likeliest to help him achieve a smashing electoral victory in November.
” This seems like a poor method of making strategic decisions , given that Eastman immediately proved that a sufficiently partisan judge can make up a legal doctrine to disqualify Harris too .
There ’ s no historical or textual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ district court judges do bizarre things all the time and sometimes the Supreme Court agrees with new made-up doctrines as happened in the 1980s with “ qualified immunity.
” But the idea of preemptively surrendering to the possibility of legal-based criticism or judicial shenanigans is odd .
While the idea that Harris is somehow a less natural citizen than those with non-immigrant parents connects to a real conservative ideological project , the original Obama conspiracy theory that made Trump famous did not .
To the extent it had any ideological content , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that any nonwhite person ’ s citizenship is provisional or up for dispute .
But perhaps most of all , it was just a mean thing to say about Obama , whom many Republicans despised .
In the technical terminology developed by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt , birtherism is a form of bullshit — a mode of discourse characterized not by intent to deceive but by willful indifference to factuality : Progressives have long maintained a jokey obsession with the idea of a “ pee tape ” supposedly being used by Russian intelligence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somewhat doubtful how literally “ peelievers ” really take their faith in the existence of said document .
But it serves as a metonym for general disgust with Trump as a person , for a belief that there ’ s something fishy about his admiration for foreign autocrats , and specifically for the view that there has never been accountability on the allegations that his campaign worked with Russian intelligence to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 .
Of course , you don ’ t see the top leaders of the Democratic Party making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considered inappropriate , even if for all I know they enjoy that sort of talk in the comfort of their own homes .
Trump has from the beginning made a political career for himself by “ saying the quiet part loud , ” and he rode that principle — from birtherism to saying Mexico is sending murderers and rapists to the United States — all the way to the White House .
The bullshit has continued , now targeting Harris as a Black and Asian woman and a child of immigrants .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stuff that isn ’ t true all the time , and he doesn ’ t particularly care if he gets called out for it or even if anyone believes him .
Will you become our 20,000th supporter ?
When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions , we weren ’ t sure how it would go .
Today , we ’ re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in .
The reason is both lovely and surprising : Readers told us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explanation and because they value that other people can access it , too .
We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy .
That ’ s never been more important than today , during a public health crisis , racial justice protests , a recession , and a presidential election .
But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive , and advertising alone won ’ t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Kamala Harris, born in October of 1964 in Oakland, California, meets all the constitutional criteria to serve as president — and therefore as vice president — of the United States.
Yet on August 12, Newsweek published an op-ed by John Eastman, a professor at the Chapman School of Law and a fellow at the Claremont Institute, arguing that she does not. The publication’s editors are at pains to argue that Eastman’s argument had nothing to do with the “racist conspiracy theory” of birtherism. But Donald Trump, who parlayed his considerable fame into political clout specifically by avowing such racist theories, appeared to embrace Eastman’s theories the next day at a West Wing event, saying he’d heard from a highly qualified lawyer that Harris is ineligible.
! Trump says he’s just heard today, from a highly qualified lawyer, that Kamala Harris “doesn’t qualify” to serve as VP, is not sure if that’s true or not. That article was absolute nonsense; Harris, born in California, indisputably qualifies. — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2020
There are several things in the mix here: racist dog whistles, constitutional theory, and a somewhat serious conservative push to overturn the legal basis of American citizenship.
But most of all, it’s a story of Trump’s love of bullshit — a form of non-factual discourse in which he’s barely even trying to trick people.
He’s just saying things — willfully indifferent to their truth or falsity — and in doing so creating new shibboleths for his movement and his followers. Just as it’s now an article of faith in Trumpist circles that Joe Biden is senile, that Hillary Clinton committed some kind of grave crime related to email server management, that something called “Obamagate” happened, and that vote-by-mail is different from absentee ballots, we will likely soon be hearing endless shifting stories about Harris’s supposed ineligibility. None of it is true, and the details barely matter, but such is the phantasmagoria we inhabit in Donald Trump’s America, even as hundreds die daily of a viral disease without a cure.
The president must be a “natural born citizen”
One of the several odd 18th-century lacunae in America’s founding documents is the provision that “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
It is not entirely clear why the framers of the Constitution slipped this in, as it did not play a particularly prominent role in any of the surrounding debates. At the time, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had an elected monarch, was teetering on the brink of oblivion; this was in part due to Russian meddling in elections and a track record of various German aristocrats getting themselves elected. Legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar posits that fears along these lines were driving the provision, with the framers worried “that a foreign earl or duke would cross the Atlantic with immense wealth and a vast retinue and use his European riches to buy friends and power on a scale that virtually no American could match.”
Regardless of the reason, the thrust is that immigrants can’t serve as president — something that became a prominent subject of debate in the mid-aughts when two popular governors, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, were seen as plausible presidential contenders absent ineligibility.
But then the provision got kicked higher into the spotlight during the 2008 presidential campaign, because of a conspiracy theory positing that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and because his opponent John McCain was in fact not born in the United States but on a naval air station in the Panama Canal Zone.
Various “birther” controversies have been with us a long time
Everyone agrees that people like Schwarzenegger, born in Austria, and Granholm, born in Canada, are not eligible to serve as president. Historically, however, controversies have arisen about several edge cases.
When Chester A. Arthur acceded to the presidency in 1881 upon the assassination of James Garfield, there was some suggestion that he was potentially ineligible due to the theory that he was born in Canada, rather than Vermont. There was never any clear evidence that this was true, but in the face of conspiracy rumors, it may be hard to prove that a person isn't secretly Canadian.
Later, during the 1916 presidential campaign, a Woodrow Wilson aide named Breckinridge Long argued that GOP nominee Charles Evans Hughes was ineligible to serve on the grounds that, at the time of his birth, his father was not an American citizen even though he was born in the United States.
During George Romney’s short-lived 1968 presidential campaign, there was some discussion that he might be ineligible because even though his parents were American citizens, he was born in Mexico.
Note that even though these controversies relate to the same provision of the Constitution, they are raising distinct issues about qualification. And in recent history, we’ve seen examples of all three.
Obama was born in the United States to an American mother, but like Arthur, he’s been accused by conspiracy theorists of somehow faking his origins to obscure the “reality” that he was born in Kenya. John McCain was born in Panama while his father was stationed there on military duty, just as the Romney family was residing in Mexico when George Romney was born. Last but by no means least, Harris’s parents — like Hughes’s — were noncitizen immigrants at the time Harris was born.
The Obama/Arthur version of this has the structural characteristics of a conspiracy theory, while the other two do not. But the Hughes/Harris version of the argument, which the Newsweek editors insist is non-conspiratorial, is much more sweeping in its implication. The claim is not that Harris (or Hughes before her) pulled a fast one on the public, but that the children of immigrants are second-class citizens — “native born,” as Long put it rather than “natural born.”
But none of it has any basis in reality.
This is all nonsense
Families don’t fake the facts of their children’s birth to set themselves up for eventual accession to the presidency. It’s a ridiculous thing to say about someone, but the nature of the conspiratorial mindset is that once you get it in your head that the burden is on the other person to definitively disprove a wild allegation, you can go perennially unsatisfied.
As for the other two issues, they’ve never been litigated because the phrase “natural born citizen” does not carry meaning in any other context of American law. But the 1790 Naturalization Act did stipulate that citizens born abroad to US citizen parents were considered natural-born citizens.
Later updates of federal immigration law do not use that phrase, but the fact that it was signed by George Washington and written by a Congress that included James Madison and James Monroe is normally seen as imbuing it with import as to what the framers had in mind. Certainly to the extent that one is concerned about the United States being taken over by minor German nobility, there is no reason to exclude people who fit this category.
But while the Hughes/Harris case has not been specifically litigated with regard to the presidency, we do have a record of political contestation around related issues.
The 1790 Act provided a mechanism of naturalization for “free white person[s] ... of good character” and would thus presumably have excluded either of Harris’s parents from the possibility of citizenship. These and related matters were the subject of ongoing political debate throughout the first half of the 19th century, culminating in the Supreme Court infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decisions in which Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that Black people “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”
Many Americans, including Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and contemporaries in the Republican Party, never accepted the legitimacy of that reading of the American Constitution. There is an ongoing historical debate, with scholars like Sean Wilentz taking Lincoln’s view, while others like David Waldstreicher agree on some level with the antebellum Southerners that the pro-slavery reading of the Constitution was “correct.”
Academic arguments aside, there was a war over slavery, and the winning side amended the Constitution to state that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Many people have long disliked the plain meaning of this doctrine. Laws adopted in the 1880s blocked immigration to the United States from China, and in 1894 immigration officials sought to block Wong Kim Ark — the US-born child of Chinese people who’d immigrated before the Exclusion Acts but never naturalized — from reentering the country. But the Supreme Court ruled that since he was born in the United States he was a citizen. This kind of “birthright citizenship” model has historically prevailed in the Western Hemisphere, and despite periodic efforts by conservatives to say that the children of undocumented immigrants shouldn’t count, that’s not how the law works.
Eastman, like Long before him, is trying to squint really hard at two constitutional provisions to perceive a difference between people who are citizens by right of birth and people who are “natural born citizens.” But there is simply no textual basis for that, or really anything to motivate it at all, other than a broad dislike of the birthright citizenship doctrine and a desire to find arbitrary ways to limit it.
Nonsense can matter in the real world
Another wrinkle in this is that, according to the New York Times, “Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois powerfully impressed Mr. Biden’s search team, but his lawyers feared she would face challenges to her eligibility because of the circumstances of her birth overseas.”
Duckworth’s father was a US-born military veteran, but she was born in Bangkok to a Thai Chinese mother. There is no serious legal argument that she should be disqualified — children are born abroad to US military personnel all the time and the fact that they qualify for automatic citizenship has been the law since 1790 — but Biden’s team apparently decided to let hypothetical bad-faith legal arguments prevent them from selecting the woman who “was regarded by Biden advisers as among the candidates likeliest to help him achieve a smashing electoral victory in November.”
This seems like a poor method of making strategic decisions, given that Eastman immediately proved that a sufficiently partisan judge can make up a legal doctrine to disqualify Harris too. There’s no historical or textual basis for disqualifying either woman, but district court judges do bizarre things all the time and sometimes the Supreme Court agrees with new made-up doctrines as happened in the 1980s with “qualified immunity.” But the idea of preemptively surrendering to the possibility of legal-based criticism or judicial shenanigans is odd.
A Trumpian world of “bullshit”
While the idea that Harris is somehow a less natural citizen than those with non-immigrant parents connects to a real conservative ideological project, the original Obama conspiracy theory that made Trump famous did not. To the extent it had any ideological content, it was just racism, a hazy sense that any nonwhite person’s citizenship is provisional or up for dispute. But perhaps most of all, it was just a mean thing to say about Obama, whom many Republicans despised.
In the technical terminology developed by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, birtherism is a form of bullshit — a mode of discourse characterized not by intent to deceive but by willful indifference to factuality:
For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
Progressives have long maintained a jokey obsession with the idea of a “pee tape” supposedly being used by Russian intelligence to blackmail Trump. It’s somewhat doubtful how literally “peelievers” really take their faith in the existence of said document. But it serves as a metonym for general disgust with Trump as a person, for a belief that there’s something fishy about his admiration for foreign autocrats, and specifically for the view that there has never been accountability on the allegations that his campaign worked with Russian intelligence to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Of course, you don’t see the top leaders of the Democratic Party making pee tape jokes. It would be considered inappropriate, even if for all I know they enjoy that sort of talk in the comfort of their own homes. Trump has from the beginning made a political career for himself by “saying the quiet part loud,” and he rode that principle — from birtherism to saying Mexico is sending murderers and rapists to the United States — all the way to the White House. The bullshit has continued, now targeting Harris as a Black and Asian woman and a child of immigrants. But it continues in part because Trump says stuff that isn’t true all the time, and he doesn’t particularly care if he gets called out for it or even if anyone believes him.
Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.


vox--2020-08-14--Shirley Chisholm’s historic presidential run helped lead to this moment

As Joe Biden ’ s running mate , Harris is the first Black woman and the first South Asian American woman to be named a vice presidential nominee on a major-party ticket .
In a speech announcing her candidacy , she acknowledged the legacies of the women who ’ ve run in the past .
“ Joe , I ’ m so proud to stand with you , ” Harris said Wednesday .
“ And I do so mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me whose sacrifice , determination , and resilience makes my presence here today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follows the groundbreaking efforts of several women who ’ ve pursued the presidency including Shirley Chisholm , the first Black woman to run in 1972 for the Democratic nomination ; Patsy Mink , the first Asian American woman to do so that same year , and Hillary Clinton , the first woman to win a major-party nomination in 2016 .
( Harris is the third woman to be on a major-party ticket as vice president , along with Sarah Palin in 2008 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 . )
Miami University history professor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in particular — and the intersectional policies she promoted — serving as a key milestone that led to this moment .
“ She bridged so many different constituencies and she was an excellent model of the power of grassroots campaigns , ” Brown told Vox .
In 1968 , Chisholm was the first Black woman to win a seat in Congress , and four years later , she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Sen. George McGovern , pushing a platform focused on racial and gender equity .
“ In the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing : anti-humanism , ” Chisholm wrote in her book , Unbought and Unbossed , which was titled after a campaign slogan she used to signal independence from party bosses .
Harris , during her presidential run in 2019 , honored Chisholm in her own campaign messaging as well .
Brown spoke with Vox about how Chisholm ’ s challenges with sexism and racism mirror those that many candidates continue to face and how the effects of her run for the presidency continue to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ edited and condensed for clarity .
When you look at the history of women running for president , what milestones stand out to you ?
The most famous woman to seriously run for president , historically , before Hillary Clinton — the first name that comes to mind is Shirley Chisholm in 1972 .
But , there are [ less ] famous women , like Victoria Woodhull who ran for president in 1872 , who get lost in the historical record .
I think they get lost in the historical record for several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case ] , 1872 is so far ahead of even women getting the right to vote and that campaign for suffrage .
How do you see Shirley Chisholm ’ s candidacy leading to this moment ?
I was hoping I would hear more acknowledgment of Shirley Chisholm ’ s contributions when President Barack Obama ran for the Democratic Party nomination because I believe she paved the way for him .
I was also hoping I would hear more discussion of Chisholm when Hillary Clinton ran for president because she also paved the way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the women who ’ ve tried to gain the candidacy for president , I think , because of two main reasons .
One , her fierce intellect and her oratorical skills .
She could give a speech .
She could bring the house down .
And I think because she was so smart , and also persuasive , she got attention .
Another reason , I think , is literally the historical moment .
So , being in the right place at the right time .
At the start of her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights movement and various institutions within it , they are gaining momentum , as well as the National Organization for Women , which supported Chisholm .
The organization is predominately white women , so there was criticism when she accepted the endorsement of the Black Panther Party .
Her rationale was that she wanted to receive support from anyone who would support her .
Because of that historical moment , she was able to reach a cross-section of constituents like no other woman had before .
One thing that ’ s not well-known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s actually of Caribbean descent .
So , her parents are from Barbados , and she ’ s very proud of her Caribbean ancestry .
When people think of Shirley Chisholm , often they think of her as Black American , but her Caribbean heritage really reveals the diversity within Blackness — cultural , ethnic diversity that is too often lost .
And she capitalized on that diversity to gain support .
So she had support from Caribbean immigrants in New York when she ran for office and when she ran for president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigrants across various backgrounds including Italian immigrants and Polish immigrants .
She had support from white American women because of her feminist politics .
She had support from working-class African Americans because of her commitment to working-class people .
She had support from mothers and women across racial lines because of her commitment to education .
She bridged so many different constituencies and she was an excellent model of the power of grassroots campaigns because she would meet people in their homes and meet them where they were .
She knew her candidacy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of color and women .
What are the policies that Chisholm was best known for ?
She was committed to improvements in child care access for working mothers and greater educational opportunities for all Americans , especially women .
In a 2002 interview , Chisholm said she was most proud of her work to increase the minimum wage for domestic workers and her work to make scholarships available for female college athletes .
When she first entered Congress , the powers that be tried to force her to serve on a forestry committee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived in an urban area and had very different concerns .
She often joked that perhaps she was assigned to that committee because someone had read the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , but her serious and determined demand to be moved to a committee that better suited her constituents should not be understated .
She courageously confronted deeply entrenched racism and sexism in Congress and paved the way for representatives of color and women to this day .
How did you see Shirley Chisholm confront the sexism and racism she faced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involving another older white male Congressman .
Every time he saw her in the hallway , he would confront her and say , “ I basically can ’ t believe that you ’ re making the same amount of money I make.
” And what he was implying is , “ Why in the world should a woman , and a black woman at that , make the same amount of money ?
” He did this so many times that she finally said , “ Any time you see me ” — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vanish ” — “ Any time you see me , don ’ t say anything to me , just walk away , I don ’ t want to hear you repeat this again , I don ’ t want to see you.
” It was a way of her very directly saying , “ I ’ m here and I ’ m here to stay , ” and , “ I do make the same money as you , ” and , “ Deal with it.
” She famously said in her lifetime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in politics ] , and she talked about the sexism she experienced from Black men , including Black men in the Congressional Black Caucus .
She felt that the Congressional Black Caucus ultimately did not support her bid for the presidency in 1972 because of sexism .
They said things like “ Well , at the end of the day , we have to support the candidate that ’ s actually electable and we know you can ’ t get elected.
” So , that hurt her feelings because underneath that statement , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Well , we don ’ t think a woman is ready to serve.
” Keep in mind this was a complicated issue : There were some Black men politicians who supported her and others who didn ’ t .
Are there parallels you see in the sexist and racist treatment that Shirley Chisholm faced and the attacks that are being used against Kamala Harris now ?
There are some similarities and some differences .
In the 1970s , 1972 , of course there were racist whites who outright said they didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were sexist people who said they didn ’ t want a woman elected .
But because it was the first time they had seen a woman make such a serious bid to become president — there had been previous women who ran , but Shirley Chisholm was the one , the first woman to gain a significant number of delegates at the Democratic National Convention — and I think , in some ways , white women , Black women , white men , Black men , Asian , Latino people , they just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ audacity .
But let ’ s add to that , in 1972 , those who might feel threatened by her just knew she didn ’ t have a chance to win .
So they saw her as this symbolic , audacious outlier who would not win , so she wasn ’ t a threat .
Today , I think the difference is two-fold .
We ’ re living in a post-Obama age and a current-Trump age that has brought racism and sexism to the surface like never before since the 1980s .
Since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendency to appeal to his base in a way with quite hateful , with destructive language about immigrants , about Black people , about women , it ’ s really stoked a type of racism and sexism that was more covert , that ’ s becoming overt again .
I think we are seeing , in an ironic way , a lot more overt racism and sexism against Kamala Harris compared to Shirley Chisholm , even though you might think it would have been the opposite because Chisholm ran in 1972 right after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chisholm was not seen as a candidate who could win , people did not perceive her as a true threat .
Now , because of the political work that Chisholm did — and other Black women in politics and women of color in politics , from Patsy Mink to Carol Moseley Braun , because of all that groundwork that ’ s been laid — now that a Black woman is truly on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate for a major party , I think you ’ re seeing this ugly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Oh , they can win.
” How do you think Biden and Harris should respond to sexist and racist attacks ?
I think that ’ s a tricky issue .
On the one hand , a good characteristic of leadership is to always have your eyes open and to acknowledge the truth and the ugliness of what ’ s going on around you because it shows you are aware and have the strength to persevere .
On the other hand , it would be a total waste of her time for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , sexist attack or comment directed at her .
I think of this famous quote by the brilliant novelist , Toni Morrison .
She has this quote in which she says , “ Racism wastes your time.
” So if you ’ re an African American intellectual and you spend all of your time trying to prove your intelligence and your worthiness and your dignity , you could write an opus , and a white , racist person could read that book and still think you ’ re inferior , so what a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea that racism wastes our time when we could be doing important work , that is the approach I ’ m leaning toward .
If there ’ s something egregious and so huge and central of an attack on her character , if someone is mischaracterizing her political record and you can tell that mischaracterization is rooted in sexism and racism , I think she should set people straight .
But more importantly , I think she needs to be forward-thinking and moving and focused on solutions for this country right now .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not had a Black woman as president or vice president until this point ?
My short answer is America has not yet had a Black woman president or vice president because of the racism and sexism that still persist in this country .
Systemic racism and sexism have contributed to the low number of Black women who served in politics on all levels .
However , in the past few years , especially since Trump ’ s election , we ’ ve witnessed a record number of women of color run for political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former Vice President Joe Biden ’ s selection of the first Black woman to serve as VP ?
It ’ s 2020 , it ’ s about time .
On the one hand , I ’ m happy he made the commitment , but on the other hand , I ’ m not doing somersaults because it ’ s 2020 .
I keep hearing the phrase “ representation matters.
” I agree .
But for me , it ’ s deeper than representation .
When we ’ re talking about politics , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ equity , and inclusion at universities , when we ’ re talking about the entertainment industry , it ’ s more than just representation .
The problem that I have with that idea is that the way that people talk about representation sounds so superficial , as if it ’ s a concept that ’ s literally and figuratively skin-deep , the idea that if we have a Black woman , it looks good .
Beyond saying representation matters , I say presence matters , meaning what is this candidate ’ s character @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personality in terms of her ability to negotiate for the good of the poor and working-class Americans — especially during a pandemic that ’ s exacerbating long-standing racial health disparities .
Will you become our 20,000th supporter ?
When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions , we weren ’ t sure how it would go .
Today , we ’ re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in .
The reason is both lovely and surprising : Readers told us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explanation and because they value that other people can access it , too .
We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy .
That ’ s never been more important than today , during a public health crisis , racial justice protests , a recession , and a presidential election .
But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive , and advertising alone won ’ t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Sen. Kamala Harris’s nomination for vice president marks a historic first.
As Joe Biden’s running mate, Harris is the first Black woman and the first South Asian American woman to be named a vice presidential nominee on a major-party ticket.
In a speech announcing her candidacy, she acknowledged the legacies of the women who’ve run in the past. “Joe, I’m so proud to stand with you,” Harris said Wednesday. “And I do so mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me whose sacrifice, determination, and resilience makes my presence here today even possible.”
Harris’s nomination follows the groundbreaking efforts of several women who’ve pursued the presidency including Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run in 1972 for the Democratic nomination; Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman to do so that same year, and Hillary Clinton, the first woman to win a major-party nomination in 2016. (Harris is the third woman to be on a major-party ticket as vice president, along with Sarah Palin in 2008 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.)
Miami University history professor Tammy Brown sees Chisholm’s candidacy in particular — and the intersectional policies she promoted — serving as a key milestone that led to this moment.
“She bridged so many different constituencies and she was an excellent model of the power of grassroots campaigns,” Brown told Vox.
In 1968, Chisholm was the first Black woman to win a seat in Congress, and four years later, she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Sen. George McGovern, pushing a platform focused on racial and gender equity.
“In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism,” Chisholm wrote in her book, Unbought and Unbossed, which was titled after a campaign slogan she used to signal independence from party bosses. Harris, during her presidential run in 2019, honored Chisholm in her own campaign messaging as well.
Brown spoke with Vox about how Chisholm’s challenges with sexism and racism mirror those that many candidates continue to face and how the effects of her run for the presidency continue to be felt today. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Li Zhou
When you look at the history of women running for president, what milestones stand out to you?
Tammy Brown
The most famous woman to seriously run for president, historically, before Hillary Clinton — the first name that comes to mind is Shirley Chisholm in 1972.
But, there are [less] famous women, like Victoria Woodhull who ran for president in 1872, who get lost in the historical record. I think they get lost in the historical record for several reasons: [In Woodhull’s case], 1872 is so far ahead of even women getting the right to vote and that campaign for suffrage.
Li Zhou
How do you see Shirley Chisholm’s candidacy leading to this moment?
Tammy Brown
I was hoping I would hear more acknowledgment of Shirley Chisholm’s contributions when President Barack Obama ran for the Democratic Party nomination because I believe she paved the way for him. I was also hoping I would hear more discussion of Chisholm when Hillary Clinton ran for president because she also paved the way for her.
Chisholm is best known out of the women who’ve tried to gain the candidacy for president, I think, because of two main reasons. One, her fierce intellect and her oratorical skills. She could give a speech. She could bring the house down. And I think because she was so smart, and also persuasive, she got attention.
Another reason, I think, is literally the historical moment. So, being in the right place at the right time.
At the start of her political career, the African American civil rights movement and various institutions within it, they are gaining momentum, as well as the National Organization for Women, which supported Chisholm. The organization is predominately white women, so there was criticism when she accepted the endorsement of the Black Panther Party. Her rationale was that she wanted to receive support from anyone who would support her.
Because of that historical moment, she was able to reach a cross-section of constituents like no other woman had before.
One thing that’s not well-known about Shirley Chisholm is that she’s actually of Caribbean descent. So, her parents are from Barbados, and she’s very proud of her Caribbean ancestry.
When people think of Shirley Chisholm, often they think of her as Black American, but her Caribbean heritage really reveals the diversity within Blackness — cultural, ethnic diversity that is too often lost. And she capitalized on that diversity to gain support.
So she had support from Caribbean immigrants in New York when she ran for office and when she ran for president in 1972. She had support from immigrants across various backgrounds including Italian immigrants and Polish immigrants. She had support from white American women because of her feminist politics. She had support from working-class African Americans because of her commitment to working-class people. She had support from mothers and women across racial lines because of her commitment to education.
She bridged so many different constituencies and she was an excellent model of the power of grassroots campaigns because she would meet people in their homes and meet them where they were. She knew her candidacy would pave the way for future candidates of color and women.
Li Zhou
What are the policies that Chisholm was best known for?
Tammy Brown
She was committed to improvements in child care access for working mothers and greater educational opportunities for all Americans, especially women.
In a 2002 interview, Chisholm said she was most proud of her work to increase the minimum wage for domestic workers and her work to make scholarships available for female college athletes.
When she first entered Congress, the powers that be tried to force her to serve on a forestry committee, but Chisholm refused because her constituents lived in an urban area and had very different concerns.
She often joked that perhaps she was assigned to that committee because someone had read the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but her serious and determined demand to be moved to a committee that better suited her constituents should not be understated.
She courageously confronted deeply entrenched racism and sexism in Congress and paved the way for representatives of color and women to this day.
Li Zhou
How did you see Shirley Chisholm confront the sexism and racism she faced?
Tammy Brown
There was one story she told involving another older white male Congressman. Every time he saw her in the hallway, he would confront her and say, “I basically can’t believe that you’re making the same amount of money I make.” And what he was implying is, “Why in the world should a woman, and a black woman at that, make the same amount of money?”
He did this so many times that she finally said, “Any time you see me” — I think she used the word “vanish” — “Any time you see me, don’t say anything to me, just walk away, I don’t want to hear you repeat this again, I don’t want to see you.” It was a way of her very directly saying, “I’m here and I’m here to stay,” and, “I do make the same money as you,” and, “Deal with it.”
She famously said in her lifetime that sexism was worse than racism [in politics], and she talked about the sexism she experienced from Black men, including Black men in the Congressional Black Caucus.
She felt that the Congressional Black Caucus ultimately did not support her bid for the presidency in 1972 because of sexism. They said things like “Well, at the end of the day, we have to support the candidate that’s actually electable and we know you can’t get elected.”
So, that hurt her feelings because underneath that statement, she understood that to mean, “Well, we don’t think a woman is ready to serve.” Keep in mind this was a complicated issue: There were some Black men politicians who supported her and others who didn’t.
Li Zhou
Are there parallels you see in the sexist and racist treatment that Shirley Chisholm faced and the attacks that are being used against Kamala Harris now?
Tammy Brown
There are some similarities and some differences.
In the 1970s, 1972, of course there were racist whites who outright said they didn’t want a Black person elected, there were sexist people who said they didn’t want a woman elected.
But because it was the first time they had seen a woman make such a serious bid to become president — there had been previous women who ran, but Shirley Chisholm was the one, the first woman to gain a significant number of delegates at the Democratic National Convention — and I think, in some ways, white women, Black women, white men, Black men, Asian, Latino people, they just admired her gumption, they admired her audacity.
But let’s add to that, in 1972, those who might feel threatened by her just knew she didn’t have a chance to win. So they saw her as this symbolic, audacious outlier who would not win, so she wasn’t a threat.
Today, I think the difference is two-fold. We’re living in a post-Obama age and a current-Trump age that has brought racism and sexism to the surface like never before since the 1980s. Since the election of Donald Trump and his tendency to appeal to his base in a way with quite hateful, with destructive language about immigrants, about Black people, about women, it’s really stoked a type of racism and sexism that was more covert, that’s becoming overt again.
I think we are seeing, in an ironic way, a lot more overt racism and sexism against Kamala Harris compared to Shirley Chisholm, even though you might think it would have been the opposite because Chisholm ran in 1972 right after the civil rights movement.
But because Chisholm was not seen as a candidate who could win, people did not perceive her as a true threat. Now, because of the political work that Chisholm did — and other Black women in politics and women of color in politics, from Patsy Mink to Carol Moseley Braun, because of all that groundwork that’s been laid — now that a Black woman is truly on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate for a major party, I think you’re seeing this ugly, overt racism and sexism because people fear, “Oh, they can win.”
Li Zhou
How do you think Biden and Harris should respond to sexist and racist attacks?
Tammy Brown
I think that’s a tricky issue. On the one hand, a good characteristic of leadership is to always have your eyes open and to acknowledge the truth and the ugliness of what’s going on around you because it shows you are aware and have the strength to persevere.
On the other hand, it would be a total waste of her time for Kamala Harris to respond to every racist, sexist attack or comment directed at her. I think of this famous quote by the brilliant novelist, Toni Morrison. She has this quote in which she says, “Racism wastes your time.”
So if you’re an African American intellectual and you spend all of your time trying to prove your intelligence and your worthiness and your dignity, you could write an opus, and a white, racist person could read that book and still think you’re inferior, so what a waste of time, right?
This idea that racism wastes our time when we could be doing important work, that is the approach I’m leaning toward. If there’s something egregious and so huge and central of an attack on her character, if someone is mischaracterizing her political record and you can tell that mischaracterization is rooted in sexism and racism, I think she should set people straight. But more importantly, I think she needs to be forward-thinking and moving and focused on solutions for this country right now.
Li Zhou
Why do you think the US has not had a Black woman as president or vice president until this point?
Tammy Brown
My short answer is America has not yet had a Black woman president or vice president because of the racism and sexism that still persist in this country.
Systemic racism and sexism have contributed to the low number of Black women who served in politics on all levels. However, in the past few years, especially since Trump’s election, we’ve witnessed a record number of women of color run for political office.
Li Zhou
What is your reaction to former Vice President Joe Biden’s selection of the first Black woman to serve as VP?
Tammy Brown
It’s 2020, it’s about time. On the one hand, I’m happy he made the commitment, but on the other hand, I’m not doing somersaults because it’s 2020.
I keep hearing the phrase “representation matters.” I agree. But for me, it’s deeper than representation. When we’re talking about politics, when we’re talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion at universities, when we’re talking about the entertainment industry, it’s more than just representation.
The problem that I have with that idea is that the way that people talk about representation sounds so superficial, as if it’s a concept that’s literally and figuratively skin-deep, the idea that if we have a Black woman, it looks good. Beyond saying representation matters, I say presence matters, meaning what is this candidate’s character, what is this candidate’s personality in terms of her ability to negotiate for the good of the poor and working-class Americans — especially during a pandemic that’s exacerbating long-standing racial health disparities.
Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.


vox--2020-08-14--It’s not just Twitch: The military has a history of using video games to reach young people

The US military is trying to get people interested in enlisting with the help of Twitch , a highly popular video game streaming platform — so civilian gamers are now using government-moderated chat rooms as an opportunity to troll the military .
“ They would ask about Eddie Gallagher , the Navy SEAL that was turned in by his fellow Navy SEALs for alleged war crimes , and that Trump later pardoned — just kind of asking really unpleasant questions about the military , ” said Matthew Gault , a contributing editor at Vice ’ s Motherboard who has reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on an episode of the Reset podcast .
In response , the military banned users from its chat rooms , a move that ’ s been called out as an act of government censorship .
“ That ’ s yet to be adjudicated in a court of law , ” Gault said .
Others are taking note of these Twitch streams , too — and taking action .
In July , US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , a known gamer , proposed an amendment to a House appropriations bill that would have permanently prevented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ budget on Twitch .
Through Twitch , “ Children as young as 13 and oftentimes as young as 12 are targeted for recruitment forms that can be filled online , ” Ocasio-Cortez said during a speech on the House floor .
Despite failing in the House , the amendment garnered more votes than expected , Gault said .
But here ’ s the thing : This isn ’ t new for the military .
The Army developed its own game , America ’ s Army , to improve the military ’ s image @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that and more in the final episode of Reset , published today .
Take a listen : Will you become our 20,000th supporter ?
When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions , we weren ’ t sure how it would go .
Today , we ’ re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in .
The reason is both lovely and surprising : Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy .
That ’ s never been more important than today , during a public health crisis , racial justice protests , a recession , and a presidential election .
But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive , and advertising alone won ’ t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will help keep Vox free for all .
Contribute today from as @ @ @ @ @

The US military is trying to get people interested in enlisting with the help of Twitch, a highly popular video game streaming platform — so civilian gamers are now using government-moderated chat rooms as an opportunity to troll the military.
“They would ask about Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL that was turned in by his fellow Navy SEALs for alleged war crimes, and that Trump later pardoned — just kind of asking really unpleasant questions about the military,” said Matthew Gault, a contributing editor at Vice’s Motherboard who has reported on the trolling and spoken about it on an episode of the Reset podcast.
In response, the military banned users from its chat rooms, a move that’s been called out as an act of government censorship. “That’s yet to be adjudicated in a court of law,” Gault said.
Others are taking note of these Twitch streams, too — and taking action. In July, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a known gamer, proposed an amendment to a House appropriations bill that would have permanently prevented the military from spending part of its budget on Twitch.
Through Twitch, “Children as young as 13 and oftentimes as young as 12 are targeted for recruitment forms that can be filled online,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a speech on the House floor. Despite failing in the House, the amendment garnered more votes than expected, Gault said.
But here’s the thing: This isn’t new for the military. The Army developed its own game, America’s Army, to improve the military’s image in the early 2000s. We cover that and more in the final episode of Reset, published today. Take a listen:
Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.