It's not the first time a person of color or a woman has run for president, but Vice President Kamala Harris is already facing a new wave of sexist and racist personal attacks.
Her opponent, former president Donald Trump, has a long history of personally insulting people of color, women and immigrants. Here are just some of the attacks he's leveled at opponents:
- On Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis: "She ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member." (The claim has no evidence.)
- On Harris: "They're saying she isn't qualified because she wasn't born in this country." (Harris was born in California.)
- On former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: "I think the only card she has is the woman's card."
Trump has called undocumented immigrants "animals." He has emphasized the non-European names of GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley and former president Barack Obama. He denigrates women of color as "angry" or "nasty."
The list could go on, but it's not just Trump attacking Harris.
Multiple Republican Congressmen have already called Harris a "DEI hire" or "DEI vice president," implying the former U.S. Senator and California Attorney General was not sufficiently qualified and only picked to fulfill a diversity, equity and inclusion quotient.
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Impact on the election
Ange-Marie Hancock, director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, has studied Harris' career and how it's been shaped by her identity as a multiracial woman.
She says Trump's language could impact swing voters — whether consciously or unconsciously.
"If you were to survey independent voters or swing voters, I bet you would get a strong majority who would say...'We really don't like the way in which he talks about women or talks about his opponents,'" she says.
For swing voters leaning to the Democratic ticket, Hancock says it's unlikely that racist and sexist language would negatively impact their views of Harris. But for voters who are open to Trump:
"There would be actually a more negative impact there, both because people are filling in the gaps, and saying...'you know, maybe he's right in some way, shape or form'...But then the other piece of that is also that we have implicit biases."
Impact beyond the election
Trump's rhetoric has had implications far beyond the campaign trail, Hancock says.
Hancock sees the current political climate as the result of a decades-long trend toward the "normalization" of racist and sexist attacks.
"I think, you know, in 2016 or in 2020, it was still on the upward swing...I think that trajectory has continued. I don't necessarily think it's going to change trajectory in 2024," she says.
And the hateful language and imagery used to describe Harris only gets worse in more conservative circles, she says.
"Some things can get particularly dark and really draw upon some of the most pernicious stereotypes of African American and Asian American women, sometimes very sexualized images."
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