During a panel discussion on CNN’s “Newsnight” on Thursday, Vanderbilt University professor Michael Eric Dyson and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) got into a heated debate about Vice President Kamala Harris.
Dyson accused Mace of being racist for mispronouncing Harris’ name, after Mace suggested the vice president doesn’t know what a woman is.
A partial transcript follows:
DYSON: That sounds like a justification for self-hatred and white supremacy. I say this because this woman is a great human being. But if you insult Kamala Harris by saying she can be called whatever you want, which I know you don’t mean to do, that’s the history and legacy of white people disparaging the humanity of black people.
Mace: So you’re calling me a racist.
Dyson: I didn’t say that.
MACE: That’s BS. That’s total BS.
Dyson: I just said you’re racist. For racism to be accomplished, you don’t have to intend it.
Mace: No, no. You’re saying I’m a racist.
DYSON: Your disrespect towards Kamala Harris is part of a tradition of disrespect.
Mace: You’re being defensive. That’s annoying.
BOYKIN: Congressman, why can’t you?
Dyson: I’m not calling you a racist.
Mace: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
BOYKIN: Why can’t you hear what he said?
Dyson: That’s rude.
Philip: Let me give you the keys.
Mace: That’s gross.
Philip: The professor
Mace: What’s offensive to a woman is that you’re disrespecting her. She doesn’t know what a woman is. And if I had been here 25 years ago…
Dyson: White women have no right to tell black women who paid the blood price to build this country that they are not real women.
Mace: 25 years ago.
Dyson: They took care of your baby.
Mace: Twenty-five years ago, I became the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the military academy in South Carolina. I fought my way through it.
DYSON: So call her name right. Pronounce her name right.
Philip: Let me ask that again.
Mace: And Kamala Harris.
DYSON: Kamala. Kamala.
Mace: I’ll just say what I want to say.
BOYKIN: It’s Kamala, Congressman, and they’re doing this on purpose.
Mace: No.
Dyson: That’s rude.
Philip: Wait a minute.
Dyson: If you can’t respect her, you can’t expect people to respect you.
Mace: If a man had walked across the stage in a skirt 25 years ago, she would have said that.
Dyson: You’re a white woman who despises black women.
Mace: She would have taken that credit away from women.
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