If you didn’t see last night’s Democratic Presidential Debate, you missed a doozy! There was the usual yelling and talking over the time limit, etc, but probably the biggest story of the night was when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-C) ripped into former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden for working with segregationists on school busing. While she made clear to Biden that she didn’t think he was a “racist,” she wanted him to know that:
‘There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me.’
Senator Harris definitely dominated in that exchange, and the news after, but while this was going on, it was discovered after Donald Jr. retweeted (and then removed) a post by Trump-lover Ali Alexander, that an apparent Twitter bot plot was at play and these online havoc-wreakers were stirring up a far-right conspiracy theory about her.
Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican.
I’m so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. It’s disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2?
These are my people not her people.
Freaking disgusting.
— Ali Alexander (@ali) June 28, 2019
Alexander’s tweet was then copied by bots and started spreading like wildfire all over Twitter and the interwebz. Social media researcher, Caroline Orr quickly discovered the activity and posted to her own feed:
‘A lot of suspect accounts are pushing the ‘Kamala Harris is not Black’ narrative tonight. It’s everywhere and it has all the signs of being a coordinated/artificial operation.’
A lot of suspect accounts are pushing the “Kamala Harris is not Black” narrative tonight. It’s everywhere and it has all the signs of being a coordinated/artificial operation. #DemDebate2 pic.twitter.com/DTeB2qWJnm
— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) June 28, 2019
According to BuzzFeed News, Shauna Daly, a former Obama campaign staffer who led the fight against birtherism claims and similar artificial operations against him on his campaign in 2008, had this to say:
‘Seeing the tweets declaring that Kamala isn’t black enough because her parents are from Jamaica and India, I had an immediate flashback to the 2008 campaign.’
It certainly does bring back memories of Obama’s treatment during his campaign and presidency, but we doubt it will stop Senator Harris from continuing to get ahead of these racist attacks that even Trump’s own son encourages.
Featured image via screenshot