As the presidential election gets closer and polls show former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in a tight race, conservative pundits are testing out a new line of attack on Harris.
At a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre why Harris has “what sounds like a Southern accent.”
Jean-Pierre quickly shot down Doocy’s question and moved on, but conservative pundits are still treating Doocy’s premise — that Harris, who was born in Northern California, is using a fake accent — as a national incident.
“HARRIS SLAMMED FOR ‘FAKE ACCENT’ IN DETROIT SPEECH,” Fox Business blasted in a chyron.
“Kamala Harris rallies across the country repeating same speech in different accents,” read one Fox News headline.
“Kamala was raised by an Indian mother in Canada, but now she sounds like Fani Willis,” Fox News’ Jesse Watters said on Tuesday night, referring to the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, who is a Black woman.
What Harris is doing on the campaign trail is called code-switching: the practice of changing your tone and syntax depending on your audience. It’s not a new phenomenon and is not just for politicians. Black people and other marginalized groups often code-switch in order to connect culturally with their own communities.
But conservatives are instead accusing Harris, who identifies as both Black and Indian, of faking an accent as another way to question her identity. They’re trying to portray her as a fraudster who is only pretending to be Black.
It’s the same strategy that Trump deployed in a widely panned interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last month. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” he said. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who has…
Read the full article here
