“Disarm the War on Woke”: Kimberlé Crenshaw on Fighting Racist, Sexist Attacks on Kamala Harris

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

This week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continued his racist attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. Here’s Trump on Fox News Monday night, interviewed by Laura Ingraham.

DONALD TRUMP: Number one, they had an incompetent man as president, OK? Now they have somebody who’s worse. She’s sort of incompetent. She’s not very smart, but she’s very radical. Very radical. She will try and defund the police.

LAURA INGRAHAM: How would they consider a Harris presidency, just in — geopolitically?

DONALD TRUMP: I think they’ll walk all over her. I think —

LAURA INGRAHAM: How so?

DONALD TRUMP: — they’ll look at her. I think they’ll walk all over her. She’ll be so easy for them. She’ll be like a play toy. They look at her, and they say, “We can’t believe we got so lucky.” They’re going to walk all over her. And I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.

AMY GOODMAN: During a campaign event in Atlanta Tuesday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris challenged Trump to meet her on the debate stage so she could address his criticisms directly.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump has called Kamala Harris “dumb,” “dumb as a rock,” a “bum,” and has called her “evil.”

To discuss Harris’s historic campaign and more, we’re joined by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, which is hosting their annual Critical Race Theory Summer School in Nashville this week, where she is joining us from now. Speakers include Ben Crump, talking about the police killing of Sonya Massey. Their opening plenary was called “Tip of the Spear: Tennessee on the Frontlines of the War on Woke.”

Professor Crenshaw, thanks so much for being with us. Can you respond to what Kamala Harris said last night, her first big campaign rally? Thousands were there. And talk about what the Republicans are saying. Out of so many congressmembers’ mouths, ”DEI hire,” “mediocre,” “This is all about DEI,” they say.

KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Well, first of all, one has to respond with just applause. I think it was such a perfectly delivered challenge to Donald Trump.

But, look, here’s the reality. As much as Kamala Harris’s likely nomination is galvanizing people around the country, she’s also serving as an avatar for all the fears of people who fear the browning of America, those who fear the browning of America more than they fear the rise of fascism in the United States. So, the challenge is quite clearly that those who support Kamala Harris and those who support our democracy have to take back the ground that they have conceded to the war against woke. This attack on her as the DEI candidacy is a direct consequence of the fact that the attack on the entire infrastructure of racial justice the entire last half of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st century has largely been conceded by progressives, by liberals and by moderates, those who don’t want to talk about the attack on racial justice, those who think that we can just ignore the racism on the right and ignore the racism that is being played out in Project 2025.

So, this is a moment where there’s interest convergence between those of us who understand the relationship between racial justice and democracy and those who are deeply concerned about the descent of our country and what will happen under another Trump administration. We cannot defend democracy, we cannot defend Kamala Harris, without taking on directly the intersection of racism and sexism that we are seeing playing out across this campaign. And so, the summer school that we’ve been having and that we’re having is designed to provide precisely those tools, the literacy that’s necessary and the courage, frankly, to meet this battle where it actually is.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Kimberlé Crenshaw, also we’re witnessing the hypersexualization of Kamala Harris, including the circulation of derogatory slogans and rumors about her personal life, media figure Megyn Kelly even saying that Kamala Harris slept her way to the top. Can you talk about the significance of this targeting of Harris with these kinds of claims?

KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Well, look, one of the insights of intersectionality is that racism and sexism are not simply additive. It’s almost like an algebra equation. She’s going to suffer both the misogyny that we saw play out with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the racism that we saw playing out with Barack Obama, but also without a deep understanding about how misogynoir comes together to shape how African American women in particular are viewed, how they’ve been stereotyped over the course of history.

So, this is a moment where all those who support democracy and all those who support this candidacy have to quickly come together and learn how to read this attack on her, know how to respond to this attack on her and, quite frankly, connect it to the attacks on other Black women. We talked about Sonya Massey yesterday when Ben Crump was here, and he talked about how the autopsy reports actually support the video, that she was in a crouched position. She was shot from top to — from above her. This kind of degradation, dehumanization is deeply part of our history, and there’s a particular way that it plays out against women who are of African descent.

So, we are going to have to up our game. We’re going to have to not pivot away from these attacks. We’re going to have to meet them where they are. And we’re going to have to make it clear that Kamala Harris’s campaign offers much more to the white working class. And everybody wonders: Will she appeal to them? They’re not wondering why the white working class is not turned off by Donald Trump’s billionaire-focused agenda. We’ve got to talk about these things. And we’ve got to disarm the war on woke. It’s like a gun that’s been loaded, and it’s on the table, and it’s available to be targeted at things that people clearly care about, which is our democracy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And do you have any concern on substantive issues, for instance, that the Harris campaign’s website, even after her endorsement by President Joe Biden and former President Obama, does not have a platform or policies on it that explain what her particular policies will be if elected in office?

KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Well, you know, it is early in the campaign. So, one of the things that we know for certain is that this is a campaign that is about rescuing our democracy from the cliff that we are on. And, look, we got lucky that we were able to save the democracy when we did. But, look, we’re not talking about the real threat. The real threat to our democracy that marched through that Capitol was the threat that was symbolized by that Confederate flag. There are those who fear sharing this country with all of us who are in it. If you look at the basic argument about the stolen election, who stole it? It was voters in Philadelphia, in Detroit, in Milwaukee, in Phoenix. They are saying what the quiet part is out loud. So, we know, at minimum, that the Harris campaign is about addressing the threat to our democracy.

Now, of course, we’re going to have to push the Democrats. We’re going to have to push Kamala Harris to actually make good on the right to democracy, the freedom to learn, all the reproductive freedom. We know that the election is just the first part. The second part is maintaining the mobilization that put her there. That’s the mistake that we made earlier on, and we can’t make that mistake again. So, as we come together to save our democracy, we also have to come together to be a governing majority in that democracy. That’s what we’re here to celebrate. That’s what we’re here to commemorate. Freedom Summer 1964 is the precursor to Freedom Summer 2024. This is the tip of the spear. This is why we are here.

AMY GOODMAN: Kimberlé Crenshaw, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, hosting the annual Critical Race Theory Summer School in Nashville. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.