Megan Mulls It Over

+JMJ

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) caused some controversy earlier this month when she made remarks that were interpreted by many as comparing ICE to the KKK. This occurred during the congressional questioning of President Trump’s nominee for director of ICE, Ronald Vitiello. This video was the easiest one for me to find that includes uninterrupted-by-commentary footage of the exchange between Harris and Vitiello.

A few disclaimers: First, this post is only intended to address the portion of Sen. Harris’ questioning that specifically focuses on alleged parallels between ICE and the KKK. Secondly, this post is not meant to be an endorsement or unconditional defense of Vitiello. As you will see later, I think he might have been too eager to appease the identity politics gatekeepers of our society. At the same time, I also don’t want to be too hard on him for his responses to Sen. Harris. I think he was probably just doing the best he could to answer her questions respectfully and in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize his chances at the directorship. If I find out that he’s some sort of racist autocrat, I will gladly address that in a future post.

Finally, and most importantly, this post is not meant to be an unconditional defense of ICE. I have seen some thought-provoking points raised by ICE critics about specific ICE tactics that I am definitely interested in hearing more about. And I think it is really unfortunate that these points are often buried (by some of the critics themselves) under a mess of “Borders are mean!” platitudes and race-baiting.

In fairness to Sen. Harris, the KKK questions weren’t just a parroting of some of her base’s favorite talking points. If you watch her questioning from the beginning, it is clear that they were a retort to something Vitiello himself had said. At the beginning she references a 2015 tweet by Vitiello in which he refers to the Democratic Party as “NeoKlanist” (3:20-3:29). She acknowledges that Vitiello had already said that he was sorry that the tweet had offended people (3:39-3:46).

Not surprisingly, however, that apology wasn’t good enough for her. She asks Vitiello, “Would you not be sorry if no one was offended by your words?” (3:47-3:50). When he reiterates that he feels he was wrong for the prior remarks, she follows up with, “Why was it wrong?” (3:53-3:54). And in a moment that made me want to boo him, Vitiello starts his response with:

“Because those are offensive words.” (3:55-3:56)

You have probably already guessed that I am of the opinion that “offensive” does not necessarily mean “wrong.” When deciding whether or not to say something, it is not enough to ask, “Will this offend someone?” You must also ask, “Who is this most likely to offend?” and, more importantly, “Why will they be offended?”

Given that, I really wish that Vitiello had said something like, “What I really meant to say in my apology is that I am sorry that our nation has a history with racially-motivated violence, and that I am sorry for all victims of this violence. But I am not sorry for having and expressing an opinion about the Democratic Party.” (And if he really wanted to go for broke, he could have added, “And more specifically, I am not sorry for comparing the Democratic Party to the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, after all, owes much of its origins to the Democratic Party, and to this day the Democratic Party continues to peddle destruction to the black community.”)

The line of questioning that immediately follows sounds a little bit like “Come at me, whitey!” as Sen. Harris asks Vitiello about America’s history with the Klan and why he says that the Klan could be described as a “domestic terrorist group” (4:10-4:15). Check out his response to that one:

“ ‘Cuz they tried to use fear and force to change [the] political environment.” (4:19-4:23)

(This guy would have become my hero if he had followed that sentence with, “Kinda like Antifa.”) After getting him to say that the Klan’s violence was motivated by racial hatred (4:24-4:28), Sen. Harris starts in with the line of questioning that provoked the controversy. What is notable to me is that she doesn’t phrase her question as, “What evidence can you give that there’s no comparison between ICE and the KKK?” In fact, when Vitiello tries more than once to answer it in that way, she redirects him, asking, “Are you aware that there’s a perception?” meaning, of course, a perception that ICE is like the KKK (4:30-5:36).

And at that point I think Vitiello should have stopped with the explanations and responded with a simple, “I am now.”

FYI – I think it is important for all elected officials and political appointees to be aware of the perceptions of their constituents. But the fact that there is a perception of something doesn’t mean anything in and of itself. If you look hard enough, you can find a perception of just about anything. And the number of people who hold a perception isn’t necessarily an indicator of its accuracy. A popular perception can be wrong, and an unpopular one can be right.

At long last, Sen. Harris arrives at a somewhat rational line of questioning related to public perception of ICE. But she must have realized that she was starting to veer ever so slightly away from identity politics orthodoxy, because she didn’t stay there long at all. At about 6:04-6:12, she asks Vitiello whether he thinks “there might need to be some work done to correct the perception.” And by this time, Vitiello is so worn down and focused on trying to prove that he’s not racist that he answers in a way that Sen. Harris interprets as merely tooting ICE’s horn, rather than expressing a desire to address critics’ concerns (6:12-6:25).

I wish that Sen. Harris had asked this question earlier because I would have liked to hear Vitiello’s responses to questions about how ICE can improve the ways in which they interact with the public. But this could have backfired horribly. Because in addition to oppressing people of color, ICE also does things like shutting down human trafficking operations.

But it might have gone differently. I think asking about changing perceptions earlier might also have ended up benefiting Vitiello’s critics. If Vitiello had said something like “Community outreach is BS,” his critics would have been proven right that he’s totally heartless (and maybe even that ICE gotta go because it’s mean). But if they had pressed him about specific goals and programs and gotten some type of positive response (even just a generality), they would have had some kind of yardstick to evaluate him, ICE, and President Trump’s immigration policies with in the future. But Sen. Harris had already gotten what she wanted. At the end of the day she wasn’t trying to encourage ICE to develop better relationships with the communities it serves. She was just trying to make it look racist.

And I think she was also trying to talk out of both sides of her mouth. She didn’t want to come right out and question the very legitimacy of ICE because she knows that many Democrats are opposed to its abolition. So she didn’t start out with something like, “Why are you the best man to lead an organization that many say shouldn’t even exist?” But because she spent so much time on the ICE/KKK comparison, a lot of ICE abolitionists probably didn’t even notice or care that she never explicitly advocated for abolition. (I am assuming that the KKK comparisons are coming more from advocates of abolition rather than advocates of reform. Because nobody talks about “reforming” the Klan.)

At this point, I feel like it is necessary to clarify that I would not be so critical of Sen. Harris if she had given more specifics about negative public perceptions of ICE. If she had asked something like, “Are you aware that negative perceptions exist, due to things like no-knock warrants and patrolling neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles?” my little libertarian-leaning ears would have perked up, and she probably would have gotten a Megan Clap. But since she chose to play the race card rather than the liberty card, she missed out. Better luck next time.

I believe that it is fair to say that Sen. Harris was “playing the race card” with the subject comparison because it is ludicrous to suggest that apprehending people who violate immigration laws is racist in and of itself. All nations have a right to protect their borders, and they have a duty to their citizens to do so. And just because the “dominant” race in the defending nation is a different color than many of the people entering it illegally does not mean that border defense is racist.

I believe that the preservation of border security is ultimately related to the preservation of property rights and bodily autonomy. If it’s mean for a nation to vet immigrants, why isn’t it mean for you to vet the people who come into your house? And, by extension, why isn’t it mean to vet your sexual partners? After all, saying “No” to an advance could be interpreted as “inhospitable,” and the initiator could feel very “unwelcome.” 

In contrast to black Americans living during the Klan’s heyday (which, contrary to popular belief, is not today), illegal immigrants have no right to be here. This does not mean that they have no rights at all and that “anything goes” as far as the way we treat them. But it does mean that anyone who is here illegally is making himself or herself a legitimate target for detention and/or arrest. As mentioned previously, I am happy to have a conversation about the tactics that ICE uses to arrest people and how they are treated once arrested, but I really don’t like this attitude of “If you want to eliminate illegal border crossings, just make all border crossings legal!”

This is not the first time that Sen. Harris has had a bit of a brain fart when it comes to black history. During the Kavanaugh confirmation battle, she got major points with feminists when she glibly asked him, “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” After a bit of back-and-forth about the scope of the question, Kavanaugh managed to crank out, “I’m not aware – I’m not – thinking of any right now, Senator.”

That’s unfortunate, because I can think of at least three. And at least two out of the three have a disproportionate impact on black men. So if this were a game of Woke Chess with Sen. Harris, I’d have a good chance at checkmate.  

The furthest-reaching way in which the U.S. government asserts control over the male body is mandatory Selective Service registration. And I really wish that more Americans would realize that “Sign up to fight in a future war or you’ll never be able to get a job” is essentially the same as “Take this gun and shoot whoever we tell you to and if you die, oh well.” (For more of my thoughts on why I think Selective Service is a problem, see my October 16 post entitled “I Don’t Like Your Tone, Generals,” and stay tuned for future posts.) When Sen. Harris asked Kavanaugh the subject question, her fans thought she was “punking” him, President Trump, and every one of their supporters. But she was really punking every one of her male constituents, along with every other man who’s ever had to register for the draft.

Not to mention all the men who were injured or killed in wars that they did not choose to be a part of.

This is especially maddening in light of the fact that black men have historically been disproportionately affected by the draft.

But take comfort, conscripted black men who died in some foreign hinterland: at least the U.S. government didn’t “make decisions” about your body.

And if we look specifically at incarcerated men, we see that there are additional ways that the government controls men’s bodies. Take inmate firefighters for example. (Although I’m not sure if black men make up a disproportionate number of inmate firefighters, I am guessing that the majority of inmate firefighters are men. And you’re probably not a good liberal until you can be mad at the State of California for both using inmate firefighters AND not using more female inmates as firefighters.) Even though inmates who fight wildfires are not outright forced to do this work, I think it could be argued that the use of inmate firefighters is exploitative or at least has a lot of potential to be.

And let’s not forget about capital punishment. Nothing says, “We are the government, and we own your male body” quite like “Any last words?”

This is indisputably the most dramatic way in which the U.S. government asserts its “power to make decisions about the male body” (particularly the black male body). Women are executed in the U.S., too, but the bulk of our executed prisoners are men. This factsheet from CNN shows that out of the nearly 1,500 U.S. prisoners executed since 1976, only 16 have been women.

Yep, it’s all patriarchy perks and male privilege until they strap you to a gurney and stick that needle in your arm.

Sen. Harris might have forgotten this since her state hasn’t executed anyone in over a decade. But as far as I know, the death penalty is still very much “on the books” in California. So someday she might have the chance to make her case about male bodily autonomy to one of her own constituents in the death chamber. Until then, I think she should record a message to be played during every male execution in other states that says something like:

“If you are a straight white Christian male, I have nothing to say to you. If you are any other sort of male, I want you to know that it is the fault of straight white Christian males that you are where you are today. But this does not mean that I want to hear your sob story. Just because the government can execute you doesn’t mean it has power over your body. And just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t vote for me. #Kamala2020”

Between you and me, I think Sen. Harris has the dead vote on lock.

Verso l’alto,
Megan