Critics say racism was on full display at Republican National Convention
As Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, bask in the glory of their coronation as the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees, Democrats and critics are decrying the all-white ticket as a doubling down on the party’s white male grievance politics and the blatant racism they say was on full display this week at the Republican National Convention.
“I’m not at all surprised about the tenor and the tone of the RNC relative to Black people or brown people,” said Sophia Nelson, a political analyst and former Republican who identifies as a “Never Trumper.”
Though several Black Republicans and Trump supporters were invited to speak at the RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so were conservative figures like Tucker Carlson, a proponent of the racist conspiracy known as the “Great Replacement Theory,” and wrestling entertainment star Hulk Hogan, who infamously used the N-word in a 2007 video and declared, “We’re all a little racist.”
“Donald Trump promised unity at his convention,” Biden-Harris campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Instead, he delivered bigotry, division, and straight-up racism that turned dog whistles into bullhorns.”
Race and perceived racist tropes regularly emerged during this week’s Republican National Convention. Here are four examples:
Video of racist college ‘monkey’ taunt
During Thursday night’s program, the RNC aired a video presentation with a portion of a racist viral clip from May on the campus of the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, in which a mob of white students jeered a Black female student at a counterprotest over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. One of the students infamously taunted her with monkey sounds and gestures.
“It’s just reflective of what Republicans think of Black populations … they talk about us like it’s the ’60s,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist. “When they talk about ‘Make America Great Again,’ and they talk about going back to something and reclaiming something, that’s what they’re talking about.”
Payne, a former Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign operative, added, “They want a society where that is normalized and where permission is created for that type of pretty naked bigotry.”
“The video elevated by Trump and his RNC is beneath the office of the president,” noted Chitika, the Biden spokesperson, “and it’s proof that their empty pandering to voters of color is nothing more than lip service to paper over decades of racism.”
Another Democratic strategist, Ameshia Cross, said that the video was reflective of a “white supremacy” ideology that Republicans want to “pass to the younger generation.”
“There were a lot of narratives around racism being something of the old, being something that was going to die out,” Cross told theGrio.
“What the Republican Party is amplifying is that college students, young white men in particular, they can still sell this message to,” she continued, “and have them carry the water for their grandparents in terms of policy, in terms of their animus toward people of color, in terms of their isolationism, but particularly their attacks on Black women.”
Mispronouncing the name of Kamala Harris
Several RNC speakers mispronounced the name of Vice President Kamala Harris, including U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Bob Unanue, the CEO of Goya Foods, especially butchered the first name of America’s first Black and first female vice president with “K-Mala.”
“This is absolutely intentional,” said Cross. “Kamala Harris has said her name multiple times. People know how to say her name. She’s vice president of the United States.”
She continued, “Republicans don’t have a hard time saying the names of German Olympians, French Olympians … but they have a hard time pronouncing this woman’s name.”
Republicans repeatedly try to “diminish” Harris, including labeling her a DEI hire, Cross argued.
“They’re ignorant. They don’t know how to pronounce Ketanji or Kamala or Barack Hussein, Obama,” said former Republican Nelson. “There is an intentional dismissiveness that these aren’t American names … They other her when they mispronounce her name.”
Payne, the former Clinton campaign official, said Harris serves as “the ultimate avatar” for Republicans in many ways.
“They can’t fathom that this Black and Indian woman would have reached the heights that she’s reached in her career by accomplishment and by earning it,” he said.
Whether Harris is at the top of the Democratic ticket, as some suspect will result if President Joe Biden suspends his reelection campaign, or remains as the vice presidential nominee, Payne predicted that she will continue to be the “center of attention of Republican attacks for a sustained period of time.”
“I think it is going to take on a very biased, bigoted lens,” he added.
White grievance and ‘Great Replacement Theory’
Significant parts of the RNC, including Trump’s acceptance speech on Thursday night, focused on “illegal immigrants” and the nation’s “open” border.
“You know who’s being hurt the most by millions of people pouring into our country? The Black population and the Hispanic population, because they’re taking the jobs,” Trump said during his 90-minute televised address.
Expanding from his signature immigration attacks on Mexicans, he later added, “The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country. They are coming in from every corner of the earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, the Middle East.”
Rather than make meaningful efforts to reach Black voters, said Nelson — who served as a GOP counsel on Capitol Hill and legal counsel for former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman — Trump and Republicans made clear that the party’s strategy is to “cause chaos amongst Black and brown voters and divide rural whites, poor whites against immigrants [and] Blacks against immigrants.”
Several Republican leaders decried the issue of “illegal” immigration, including Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who said, “Biden and Harris want illegals to vote now that they’ve opened up the border.”
Cross countered, “We do not have an administration that was allowing for undocumented individuals to vote.” The longtime policy expert said, “What we saw was a villainization of these individuals on top of what I would consider a very staunch call-out to not only the abuses that we’ve seen at our southern border, but also, quite frankly, lies our southern border is not open.”
Nelson told theGrio that her former party has become a “white grievance party.”
“It has been in the process of becoming that,” she said, “since Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential bid,” a reference to the former Republican presidential candidate who ran a campaign steeped in white anxiety and anti-immigration rhetoric.
“Trump says the immigrants are taking the Black jobs. The immigrants have destroyed working white America. So you’re making immigrants the boogeyman,” Nelson maintained. “What that means in a Trump-Vance administration is that not only are you looking at mass deportations — and we have no idea how that plays out — it kind of sounds a little bit like internment camps.”
During the RNC, delegates could be seen waving Trump-Vance campaign signs that read “Mass Deportations Now!” Mass deportation is a major component of the Project 2025 policy agenda planned for a second Trump administration.
Amber Rose rap video
The RNC also aired a highly-produced rap video featuring Florida rapper Forgiato Blow and Amber Rose parodying Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” replacing the hook with “Donald Trump, baby.”
Rose, who delivered remarks on Monday night, sported an iced-out Donald Trump chain as she and Blow rapped the song’s lyrics, like, “America needs saving, voting Trump, Trump, baby.”
“It’s very clear to me that this is what Republicans think about Black people behind closed doors. This is what they think that we respond to,” shared Payne, who said Republicans would rather showcase a rap video than have policy discussions about the Black middle class and Black entrepreneurship.
He called it representative of similar “clumsy, ham-handed appeals” from Republicans and their efforts in “allegedly going after Black voters.”
Nelson found it to be an “ignorant” and “cynical” way to do so.
“If you think that’s all it takes to court Black voters versus an agenda for Black America that moves us forward in the same way the Biden-Harris administration has total receipts on … you really show your ignorance about Black people in this country and our history and where we are now,” she said.