When President Joe Biden on Sunday announced that he would step aside as the Democratic presidential nominee and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris as his successor, the historic move opened several floodgates. Among Democrats, one could almost hear an audible sigh of relief; they were finally freed from trying to defend the octogenarian president’s age and mental acuity. Meanwhile, some Republican officials and activists in Texas pounced on the news of a Black woman running for president as an opportunity to engage in thinly veiled racism.
In a Sunday social media post, Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who declined an interview request, wrote that the elevation of Harris represented an effort to secure a “fourth term” for former president Barack Obama. (Patrick also alleged, without evidence, that unnamed Democrats orchestrated the first presidential debate as a way to force the party to replace Biden.) “Obama has been running the White House and will continue to run it with Michelle or Kamala,” he wrote. “They picked Biden in 2020 so Obama could serve a third term, and now Obama seeks a fourth term.” Republican congressman Wesley Hunt, of Houston, went a step further, posting an image of Obama’s face photoshopped onto Harris’s head. Michael Quinn Sullivan, a leading right-wing activist and publisher of the media outlet Texas Scorecard, wrote that Harris expected the presidential nomination to be “handed” to her, adding that she was a “typical entitlement hire.”
This wasn’t the first time prominent Texas right-wingers have claimed the Obamas are secretly vying to regain or retain control of the White House or that Harris is unqualified to serve there. In July, Senator Ted Cruz predicted that Biden would withdraw as the nominee and that Democrats would nominate Harris—or the former First Lady—to replace him. (Michelle Obama has never been a politician and has stated for years that she will not pursue a White House bid.) After Biden endorsed Harris, the internet erupted with racist and sexist attacks, along with a torrent of conspiracy theories relating to a supposed “coup.”
Why is this line of argument so salient among some on the right? When Obama was first elected president, even as some Americans expressed confidence that he would usher in a post-racial America, some Texas GOP activists and politicians openly questioned his claim to the office. They declared, despite Obama procuring his birth certificate, that Obama was born abroad and therefore disqualified. This came alongside national conspiracy theories that Obama was a secret Muslim planning to undermine America from within (a theory crafted to appeal to both Islamophobes and racists). Former president Donald Trump and right-wing social media conspiracists have long promoted similar baseless claims about Harris, speculating that she is not a natural-born American citizen. (Harris was born in California to a Jamaican-born father and a mother born in India.) The racist birtherism conjectures directed at Obama and Harris are useful for some on the right because they call into question the politicians’ statuses as Americans and whether they have a rightful place in U.S. politics. The invocation of Obama’s name when talking about Harris serves as a dog whistle to those who resent Black Americans assuming any positions of power or achieving political success.
In response to the rise of so-called critical race theory, which examines structural discrimination, such as the redlining of Black neighborhoods by mortgage lenders and insurance companies, some prominent Republicans have argued that racial discrimination no longer exists in America. It follows, they say, that bias need not be addressed through policies such as affirmative action in college admissions and hiring. Some Republican officials and activists have declined to discuss race or racism in any meaningful way. At the same time, some in the party are deploying an electoral strategy that appeals to a significant number of Trump voters by playing on the fear and disdain those voters express toward Black leaders. (This is not an exaggeration; right-wing publications like the New York Post and the Daily Mail, as well as groups aligned with national Republicans, have long sought to stir fears of a President Meghan Markle or President Oprah Winfrey.) While President Obama was a cause célèbre for the left, he and his wife served as useful bogeymen and sources of jump scares for the right.
Dan Patrick, in a July 23 radio interview, said of Harris: “Can you imagine her even constructing a sentence or two together that make any sense? The Democrats put them in this situation, and Donald Trump’s going to win in November, and we will be rid of all this DEI, woke culture BS nonsense.” DEI—short for diversity, equity, and inclusion—programs have become a favorite target of conservative activists in recent years. They argue that racial discrimination no longer exists and, accordingly, there is no need for DEI programs, which they claim serve only to privilege women and Americans of color over white applicants to universities or for job openings. Among some on the right, though, the acronym has become shorthand to impugn the qualifications of people of color who ascend to positions of power and influence. Speaking to conservative talk radio host Chris Salcedo, Patrick also said that Harris—a former U.S. senator and California attorney general—“would be the queen of DEI if she were elected. She is DEI.”
Patrick has long engaged in such race-based appeals. In 2021, he blamed rising hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus on unvaccinated Black people. And though he denounced a meeting late last year between the then-president of the right-wing PAC Defend Texas Liberty and Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist, he directed most of his ire at House Speaker Dade Phelan, who had called on him to give the money he’d received from the PAC to charity. (The PAC, funded largely by Tim Dunn, a Midland oil billionaire and Christian nationalist, had recently given Patrick $3 million in campaign contributions, which he declined to return despite mounting public pressure.)
On Tuesday, U.S. House GOP leaders reportedly told members of Congress to stop making comments about Harris’s race. It remains to be seen whether Texas Republicans who aren’t bound by the same congressional constraints will follow suit.
