Harris can use her joy against Republican mockery

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Duchess Harris / For The Conversation

With Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, Republicans are rebuilding a campaign strategy that for months focused on running against President Joe Biden. One emerging theme asserts that Harris laughs too much at inappropriate moments; part of a broader argument that Harris is “weird.”

“I call her ‘laughing Kamala,’” former President Donald Trump said at a rally in Michigan on July 24. “Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. … She is nuts.”

As a professor of American studies with a focus on race and politics, I know that Black women in the U.S. have a history of struggle against violence and oppression. And too often when we experience joy, and show it, ridicule follows. We are said to be too loud, too emotional; well, too “Black women.”

History shows that this is a familiar dog whistle. Black women have been called out as sexually provocative Jezebels, emasculating Sapphires or servile, nurturing Mammys in popular culture. Those labels clearly don’t fit Harris, so Trump has created a new epithet: “crazy laughing.”

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-harris-can-use-her-joy-against-republican-mockery/

[SWBTATTReg]

1. I love her laugh, I think she's a joy. And tRUMP? Has he even ever laughed? I don't think so, unless it's in private

where he's watching some flick or something where someone is getting beat up, or something like that.

[Beakybird]

2. Americans have a choice between Kamala's joyful laugh or Trump's angry whine.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Make America Kind Again

Link to tweet

[Skittles]

4. Trump doesn't laugh AT ALL

THAT is the sign of a fucking PYSCHO

[DemonGoddess]

5. I happen to

LOVE that our ticket has happy warriors!

[Aristus]

6. We could use a little joy in this country.

We could use a lot, actually. It’s been a tumultuous twenty-five years since the Republicans decided to torpedo the USA’s vaunted optimism and hope for a better tomorrow, and replace it with anger, bitterness, factionalism, and a cult of perpetual grievance.

They crowned their joylessness and fecklessness by ending our country’s unbroken history of the peaceful transfer of power.

We Americans, once boundlessly energetic and resilient, are exhausted by it all. We need joy back in our lives, and in our public dealings.

If it is true that every form of evil contains the seeds of its own destruction, than the seeds sown by the Republicans were those of endless conflict, spite, hate, and dreary divisiveness.

Let’s have some joy, at long last…