Amala Ekpunobi
Is This How You Talk To Black People?
Now, when we're talking about Kamala Harris, I think we have to bring up a rally that she did recently in Atlanta. Kamala Harris decided to travel to Atlanta. And of course, Atlanta is populated by a lot of African Americans, a lot of black people. And Kamala knew, I guess, she had to lean into this sort of black version of herself. And she is no stranger to rolling out the AAVE, the African American vernacular English. She did so in a little skit. She did for the BET Awards with Taraji B. Henson, where she told Taraji, you know I be out here in these streets. Yeah, girl, I'm out here in these streets. I don't know what streets she's talking about, but that's how she chose to speak for the BET Awards. Now, for her crowd in Atlanta, she's bringing up Quavo. She's having Megan the Stallion perform. She's talking like this. Let's roll a clip here. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk. Or as my friend, Quavo would say, he does not walk it like he talks to. And like, look at the black people in the back who get the reference to Quavo's music, walk it like I talk it, and you guys know that song probably if you listen to rap music. And of course, she brought Quavo out to give his own endorsement and talk about voting for her. You know, as my friend Quavo would say, he does not walk it like he talks it. She's trying to code switch, but the thing is, when you code switch to a code that you don't speak and you have never spoken, it doesn't exactly make sense. And it's like you are playing a character for the crowd. When have I ever not kept it 100? Which is exactly what she's doing here. She knew she was coming to Atlanta. And now she's going to roll out this black scent that she's going to use for a black crowd in order to encourage them to vote for her. She's going to start talking about how she gets her hair straight. And no, it's not a, it's not a silk press, you know, it's a hot brush. That's what I use on my hair and bring out Quavo and Meg the Stallion and roll out whatever slang I can. And it's slang that she's not used to using. And it's slang that she's not going to use in virtually any other city that she visits. So long as the crowd is not majority black, okay? She's going to switch to a different way of speaking to different people because that's what she does. That's what politicians do. I will say it's not what Donald Trump does. It would be astounding to watch Trump try to quote switch for a black audience. But no, Kamala Harris will do it because that's what she does. There's another clip of her doing it. Let's watch it. Yes, we know. So let's get right. And you all helped us win in 2020. And we're going to do it again in 2024. We go and do it again in 2024. Please, please be so fucking for real right now. She does not talk like that. She has never spoken like that in her life. And you know, they had to just like brief her on, uh, probably actually, they didn't brief her. If they had consulted one black person, I think in, uh, what she should say in talking to a crowd from Atlanta, one normal black person probably would have told her not to do this. I think she was relying on her own stereotypes that she has of black people and decided to utilize them on this crowd thinking that it was going to hype them up. And I guess for some, it does. For some people as a black people, I guess as soon as you roll out a little bit of slang, you feel like there's some sort of sisterhood involved there and oh, she knows me, she understands me, but please, can we not see through the fakeness here? And if Kamala Harris couldn't really pretend to take on this sort of, I don't even know what we call it. I don't even want to call it blackness because that's not what I define blackness to be. But if she couldn't dupe the crowd into thinking that she's one of them, she'll bring out somebody like Meg the stallion to do it. Let's watch, uh, the TikTok that was posted on Kamala Harris's TikTok. What the bodies is your girl? Make me say aka how a girl calls for a party in love with the future president of the United States. Hey, everybody. What do you have to say to the American people? We are not going back. Okay, now I get it. Meg the stallion, big figure, big celebrity, you know, big within the black community. Do you think it's exactly presidential to be rolling out Meg the stallion? And I say this as somebody who listens to Meg the stallion's music. I love rap music. I love Meg. I love Nikki despite their, their beef. And we could talk about who won that at a later date. Okay. I love Kendrick and Jay Cole and all these figures. And that's so cool. You know, that, uh, I guess they're interested in politics and want to make an impact. But is it exactly presidential to have Meg the stallion at your alley in Atlanta twerking in front of the whole crowd? No, it's not. But they did it anyways because Kamala Harris wants to do this thing where she plays around and placates to black people and panders towards them and thinks that Meg the stallion is going to do that for her. So Meg the stallion actually did perform. Let's roll that clip. Okay. So there you go. And she's got a blue suit on to represent the Democratic party. What is it that you think of black people? Who is it that you think black people are that this is what you do when you come to Atlanta? And it's, it could just be a South Park episode, honestly, South Park should do an episode where they have Kamala Harris travel around to different cities and see how she treats people differently based on the race that she's talking to. Because I'm saying if she is around a majority white crowd, she's not talking like that. She's not rolling out Meg the stallion. She wants to be able to pander to black people. And I guess pandering to black people is inviting Meg the stallion to twerk in front of them and using AAV and I guess for some it will work. But it does beg the question, what is it that you think of the black intellect that this is the way that you get them to vote for you that you think just throwing some slang in your speech and inviting Meg the stallion out to twerk is going to make them support you. Not all black people support this culture. And certainly when they're going to support a president or a future president, someone that they want to be the future president at a rally, I don't know that they want Meg the stallion twerking in front of them in order to really cement their vote. Talk about the issues. Talk about what's important. Don't throw some slang at me and some ass at me to get me to engage with you on a political level. And apparently not all people feel the same way about this. Not all black people feel the same way about this. Here's a tweet that says, "Seeing black people call Kamala's Atlanta rally ghetto is crazy. So many of you claim to be proudly black, but still care very deeply about white acceptance." Oh, that's so weird. There's a lot of assumptions being made in this tweet here. First of all, that if you don't love ghetto culture, that somehow doesn't make you proudly black. Now I have a lot of qualms with wanting to be proudly black in the first place or having pride in your race at all given that it's not something that you had any part in. But ghetto is not synonymous with blackness. There's a lot of different ghetto people. There's a lot of people who engage with ghetto culture who are and are not black. And to think that the two things are synonymous, blackness and ghetto culture is a severe mistake, a severe misstep. And it actually keeps black people back. It keeps us down because when we are associated with ghetto culture, which widely all across the world is not respected, you are asking that black people not be respected. And when Kamala Harris comes to Atlanta and suddenly starts speaking in improper English and bringing out Meg the Stallion to twerk, it sort of insinuates that this is what black people are. We need to be spoken to in this way in order to know that we gon' go to the polls and vote for Kamala because we, we black, okay? When you speak to black people like that, that is what you're insinuating that we're dumb as rocks and that we're ghetto and that this is what we need in order to have a political message sent to us. Now, this person says that the black people who call that rally ghetto are just vying for white acceptance. Why do you, why do you associate being grammatically correct and not wanting to throw ass at a political rally with being white and vying for white acceptance? Is it because you view white people as being more proper than black people? Inherently, yes. And you know what that is? It's racist. It's prejudice. It's a bad ideology because we know that our race has little to do with who we are as people. And so long as black people continue to associate themselves with ghetto culture and say that ghetto culture cannot be removed from blackness, that's how far down the totem pole you are going to remain because it's not indicative of blackness. It is not a sign of blackness that you engage with ghetto culture. It is something wholly separate. And I say that as somebody who loves to listen to rap music, who liked a lot of the songs on Meghan the Stallion's new album, who will listen to that when I go to the gym and work out, I'm listening to hip hop in my free time, that doesn't mean that that is like a deep set part of my culture and who I am and twerking this and A-A-V-E that. It just means it's something that I enjoy that is in no way related to my race. And the fact that we can't create that separation is astounding. Now it's one thing for somebody on Twitter to say if you're black and you call this ghetto, you're crazy, it's another thing for Kamala Harris to think that this is the way to win an election in Atlanta. And the sad part is in a lot of ways she might be right. Like this might actually send a message to black people and make them feel like she is somehow connected to them because she invited Meghan the Stallion and because she spoke in this way to those people who think that. Please, please, please, please wake up to the pandering, wake up to the demoralizing way in which they view black people. They think black people are stupid, unintelligent. And Kamala Harris who's being like toted around as this like the next black female president or whatever, if this is her view of blackness, that's pretty concerning considering she's going to be drawn out as this, you know, first black female president, which is just a whole nother issue that we don't need to get into today. Think better of your yourselves and ourselves and think better of the community that we now have apparently find ourselves in just on the virtue of our of being born a certain race. It's so ridiculous, I think, to be lumped into this culture and be told that this is blackness and be told that this is what resonates with black people. And I'll go ahead and say right now, not all of us. It does not resonate with all of us. And these like little weak, simple pandering tricks that you're using as a politician, leave a super bad taste in my mouth. They don't make me want to vote for you. They don't make me want to support you. In fact, they make me feel the exact opposite that you do not deserve support because you have no idea the demographic of people you're talking to. And you are just leading with your own prejudice views of black people and thinking that that's going to make them vote for you. And for those that that it works on, I don't know, all I can say is you're being pandered to by somebody who doesn't care. And honestly, thinks you're stupid. And ghetto thinks you're stupid and ghetto. For real. Okay. And I can co switch. Okay. I'm allowed to do that. Kamala Harris, she's allowed to do it. She can do whatever she wants. But it's not hitting. And it doesn't make sense to be honest. And how anybody can hear that and not cringe is beyond me. Okay, we'll leave it at that. It's not serving, mama. It's not not my favorite response to all this was actually from former superstar Dallas Cowboys wide receiver does Bryant. He quote tweeted that tweet that you just mentioned and said it's I think it's a slap in the face to black people who fight for our voice in America. The crowd looked uncomfortable, have some integrity, twerking out a rally is wrong. We'll never be taken seriously. You basically said that the black people who prefer class and professionalism care about acceptance from white people. The frequency vibration is very low. By the way, I'm a proud black man, brother. Yep. And just love that. And it is it is belittling to black people to take that attitude toward them. And it's belittling to yourselves as a black person to receive that like unquestioningly. I don't know. It's giving. Do you remember that video that we reacted to recently on like no voting, no fucking where they had this like super ghetto song and twerking and stuff talking about if you don't vote, you're not going to get laid essentially. And it's like, this is what we're doing. This is what we think of black people that is going to appeal to them and mobilize to vote. It's also giving put you all back and change. And if you don't vote for me, you ain't black. It just goes to show, ask yourself, what do these people really think about me? Do they really respect me? Or is this just a very condescending form of pandering? Yeah, and it happens on both sides too. I think the left is way more way more engaged in this sort of behavior of pandering towards black people. But we've also seen like clips on Fox News when Trump released his sneaker of Fox News saying that like, this is really going to speak to black voters. They love sneakers, you know, that they're really going to want to vote for him now or when he got arrested. Oh, the black people are really going to vote for him now because he's a convicted felon when he got shot at. Oh, black people are really going to love Trump now. This makes him even more black. And I can understand. Oh, ha, funny, ha, ha, but also funny, weird. Okay, we don't need to constantly be engaging with these stereotypes as it's true or untrue as they may be. And while there are some black people that will be mobilized for these reasons, these are not necessarily the people that we want to be using as like major representatives of the black community, especially when we have black people who want to engage on an intellectual level with these issues and have real conversations about politics and about how a Kamala Harris is going to impact the United States of America.
Kamala Harris pulled a blaccent at her Atlanta rally with musical guests Megan The Stallion and Quavo. Does this pandering work on the black community? Let’s talk about it.