Thread by @jaysbookman

Why the hell is it so important to some conservative white men to insist that Kamala Harris is NOT African-American, and what gives them the right to reach such a judgment in the first place? It's both bizarre and revealing. 1/6

Listen to Mark Levin, a supposed "intellectual of the right," pretend that it's beneath him to be interested in Harris' proper ethnic identity while insisting, at length and in detail, that she cannot be called "African-American." Again, why is that so damn important to them? 2/6

Does it soothe some angry, scared little part of their soul to deny that a "real" African-American could rise to such prominence? By defining Harris out of black America, do they reassure themselves that "our blacks" still remain on the bottom, with themselves still on top? 3/6

Harris' father is Jamaican, and Levin seems to believe that black Jamaicans arrived on the island on a cruise ship not a slave ship. In reality, slavery in the Jamaican sugar-cane industry was probably more brutal than its American counterpart. 4/6

White people arguing that Harris, like Colin Powell, Al Roker, Patrick Ewing and others of Caribbean descent, can't be REAL African American is like arguing that you can't be Jewish American if your ancestors came from Poland or Germany, not Israel. 5/6

It's just a nutty obsession, true, but nutty obsessions are often the way that soul-deep malignancies and insecurities are manifested. We're seeing a lot of that these days, in case you hadn't noticed. 6/6