Michael Eric Dyson and I had to correct Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at least 10 times last night for purposely mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s name. “I will say Kamala’s name any way that I want to,” Mace said.
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 16, 2024
This is what the Republican Party has become. 🤦🏾♂️ pic.twitter.com/RVmS8cbBFe
I can pronounce the Lowcountry US Representative's name any way I want to, but the question is, will I? "Nancy Mace" rolls off an English-speaking tongue beautifully. If I chose to mispronounce it--how would I without it seeming deliberate? What if I called her "Antsy Face" because her motor mouth has outrun her wind-up toy brain?
See, that is deliberate. Just as calling Donald "Dump" is deliberate--as an English-speaker, there is no doubt what is intended. He is being personally derided as being either a trash pile or a piece of excrement--it is honest, and everyone knows what is intended. It is by no means racialized.
Mispronouncing a three-syllable name that has been in the news a lot lately is not clever, but it says something about the person doing it.
The game Mace is playing here with her Mayflower mouth depends on everyone else being too big and generous to call her out on it. We should ignore her. She's ignorant. She's petty. She might be trying. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She wins if she gets to pretend this name is too "other" for her lily-white face to possibly enunciate. And whatever else about this interloper might be too "other" for us to accept?
The part that was broken is she did get called on it. And she lost the game. She admitted her mispronunciation was purposeful.
