Kamala Harris is not new to politics, nor the public scrutiny that comes with it. Harris is also certainly not new to attacks dripping in misogyny, racism and xenophobia . She has weathered it all throughout her career as Californias attorney general, the states senator and the vice president of the United States the whole time reminding the public of how to pronounce her Indian first name.
So, why are so many Republicans and right-wing talking heads still mispronouncing Kamala, even and especially after she recently took the presidents place in running against Donald Trump as the presumptive Democratic nominee?
They are doing it on purpose, Nicole Holliday , a sociolinguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told HuffPost. Some people are doing it on purpose. Some people are not exactly doing it on purpose, but theyre doing it because its what everyone around them does in particular, Trump has a cult of personality around him, and so what he says goes, and thats how hes pronouncing it.
Harris has long clarified to the public that her name is to be pronounced comma-la, like the punctuation mark. During her 2016 run for Senate, Harris released a PSA about her name . Eight years and many corrections later, the politicians name still takes up space her campaigns first ad released Thursday shows crowds chanting Kamala using the candidates pronunciation.
(The name Kamala, which in Sanskrit translates to lotus, is not traditionally pronounced comma-la in India. In Dravidian languages like Tamil, which is spoken in the South Indian state Harris maternal side is from, the more accurate pronunciation would be KUM-uh-lah. And because many Dravidian language speakers tend to roll over words while talking, that pronunciation may sound closer to KUM-lah.)
About half of the speakers who mentioned the vice president by first name at the Republican National Convention earlier this month had mispronounced it, saying either Kuh-MA-luh, Camel-uh or Camilla. The CEO of Goya Foods even mocked her name as Que-mala, which means how bad in Spanish.
After President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for reelection and endorsed Harris to take his place , the public mispronunciations by the right only increased not only by politicians, but also by conservative media. Trump, notably, still mispronounces her first name, an almost certainly intentional decision given that the two are far from strangers to each other.
Trumps attacks to delegitimize people of color arent new he led the birther charge, right and what it shows you more than anything, is that Trump and his movement know that the vice president is a tested, proven leader, a Harris spokesperson told HuffPost.
Holliday described the situation as a shibboleth , a linguistic term originating from the Bible that in English is defined as almost a slogan or catchword identifying someone with a community or ideology. The way a person decides to pronounce Harris first name can be an immediate identifier of their political alignment, she said.
I live in California. If I say pop when I go out and I run into another Midwesterner, immediately we have solidarity, said Holliday, who is originally from Ohio. So it goes the other way too. If youre a Republican, or lets say an independent but leaning Republican, and you say, Kuh-MA-luh, then everybody knows either youre not really for her, or youre not consuming the media where people bother to say her name, right?
If you're a Republican ... and you say, 'Kuh-MA-luh,' then everybody knows ... either you're not really for her, or you're not consuming the media where people bother to say her name.
- Nicole Holliday, sociolinguistics expert at University of California, Berkeley
Referring to Harris only ever by her first name is already a trend rooted in misogyny, as EMILYs List research reportedly finds that the long, evidence-based habit of calling female politicians by their first name leads to negative political consequences for them . Women in politics are not considered as serious as their male counterparts, most of whom get the benefit of being referred to by their surname.
But adding on much of the rights likely intentional mispronunciation of Harris first name works to disrespect and disempower , painting a Californian woman descended from Indian and Jamaican immigrants as foreign, other, unamerican.
In speaking of the vice presidents last name, Holliday said that people in English-speaking communities tend to use their fathers last name. That, she said, became a disadvantage for former President Barack Obama, who faced racist attacks including from Trump, the architect of the birther conspiracy over his lineage and his patriotism because of his full name.
The foreignness is her mother, which is less scary than what it was with Obama, in particular because shes a woman. So nobody can challenge her from the fathers side, even though hes also an immigrant, hes an Anglophone immigrant from a country that speaks English and English Creole, whereas her mother is the scary brown one, Holliday said.
Like, we understand Black people, even though the country hates Black people. But brown people are mysterious, right? she continued. And thats what ties into her name. Its just her first name, because thats a weird, mysterious one. Her last name is as American as apple pie as far as people know, even though its Jamaican.
As Harris presidential campaign ramps up ahead of the November election, it is a guarantee that the vice president will face increased attacks from the right over her many identities , including her name. Its Comma-la, as it has always been. And if Republicans wanted to pronounce it correctly so they can focus on the policies , they would.
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This story has been updated with a clarification about the pronunciation of Kamala in India and a clarification from Holliday that Jamaica is a country that speaks English and Jamaican Creole, not English Creole. Jamaican Creole is an English-lexifier creole.
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