How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kamala?

If I should pray this lady pitiless

That Mercy to her heart be no more foeman,

You’d call me clownish, vile, and say that no man

Was so past hope and filled with vanities.

• Ezra Pound translating Guido Cavalcanti.

Goddess save the Kwueeen!

• James E. Miller white-mansplaining ebonic slang.

Since nobody asked for it, and it’s well beyond my race-gender-class station to even opine on it, and Donald Trump drop-kicked another news-cycle nest questioning it, I figure that will make my instruction will be all the more heeded. I present to you, considerate citizen, the how-to guide for talking about presidential nominee Kamala Devi Harris!

Now I know what you’re thinking: Why do I need a directional manual for how to converse about a major presidential candidate? I’m an American, gosh tarnnit. I can say, scream, and spill spleen about whatever White House hunter I damn well please! It’s right there in the First Amendment, right next to the part about how I can legally redress my grievance to Amazon for losing my kids Disney princess t-shirts in the mail.

Well as southerners like to say out loud, bless your heart, and think in loud, you stupid s.o.b. Haven’t you heard? The United States is a racistly intersectional hellscape where men routinely stomp muliebral aspiration into so much hot-pink putty, sometimes with brutal force, other times with off-color gibes. For the historic and ongoing crime of embedded patriarchy, men must repent by sentinelling their sharp tongues. That goes for hairy mouthbreathers of all stripes, er, epidermis shades.

Don’t you distaff readers think you’re off the proverbial hook, either! There, too, is an enforceable code of communication for your sex, or gender, or chromosomal brace, or whatever is the preferred sterilized term collation that’s considered politically correct in August 2024. The fairer sex gets fair treatment. Disagree? Well, dash off an email to your elected representative in Congress posthaste, urging repealment of the 19th Amendment. I know of at least one vice-presidential candidate who would support you.

Just as every journalistic enterprise is updating its style guides to account for how to pronounce the prospective president’s first name (It rhymes with the conjunctional punctuation mark; it’s not homophonic with the spitting, humped ungulate so prominent in the world’s deserts, though there are some shared countenance features.), it behooves our scrappy site to put out a sayings schematic informing — nay, directing — you how to address our historic female black-Indian presidential nominee. We live in what Agnes Callard called a “‘messaging culture,’ in which every speech act is classified as friend or foe.” It’s all the more important we stay on the right side of the dialectical delineation. Ed West wrote that the best way to alter opinions is to police language so consider us the new lingo sheriffs in town.

We will be adhering to all the strictures on politic vernacular issued by our betters at the United Nations’s Office of Responsible and Tolerant Language for a Brighter, More Equitable Future. All violations thereof are punishable by indefinite detention on a floating barge concealed in the depths of the Mariana Trench, which houses the most knuckle-draggingly bigoted thoughtcriminals.

You should be thanking us, conscientious reader! We have assumed it’s our job to educate you, and educate you we shall! Kamala Harris is such an inspiring and brilliant leader that she deserves only the most groveling of deferences, especially as she’s the future president…I mean, potentially the future president. Heh heh, almost let it slip there…

First, a semi-exhaustive list of absolute no-no labels you must never, ever use when referring to the current Vice President: “D.E.I. candidate”; “childless cat lady”; “mistress”; “cackling psycho”; “progressive dingbat”; “failed border czar;” “rioter enabler.” (The list is ongoing because it can never be completed, as it must be able to encompass any future slurs.)

Those repugnant descriptions may very well have some basis in reality, but we all know reality is infused with misogynistic and racial hate. Hence, propriety demands we reject reality in favor of kindness and understanding. And anyone still using those wretched conferrals must be extirpated from bien-pensant society. Tolerance only works if it’s repressive! (Hat tip to Marcuse.)

It’s an inexpiable sin to apply insulting appellations to a candidate as accomplished and admired as V.P. Harris. But there are venial sins that can also be committed by those who we can assume have good intentions, but are simply ignorant of proper verbal etiquette. So we must additionally act as patois preceptor for the well-meaning unenlightened.

Second, a list of unacceptable descriptions of Harris: woman, black, brown, Jamaican, Indian, attractive, funny, joyful, wry, effervescent.

Those adjectives might seem accurate, even complimentary. But ask yourself: Did Kamala Harris personally give you permission to comment on her appearance, her demeanor, her glittering dispensation? No? Then lips off of it. On sex, has Harris ever confirmed her preferred pronouns? She has, listing “she” and “her,” but that was in 2022. Gender is ever modulating spectrum. Harris may have a new preference now. Let’s confirm before trusting the dishonest past. The same standard applies to race. Reputable news outlets like MSNBC confirm that Harris’s father is Jamaican and her mother is Indian, and that she was primarily “raised…as black,” which was a conscious decision by her mother. But race, like body fittings, is a nebulous and widely adaptable concept that never ceases shifting. Some days Kamala may feel more Bollywood than Inglewood, or more Malcolm X than Mahatma Gandhi. Let’s confer and confirm with Kamala before assuming how she feels on any given day.

Now, I know you may be catching the faintest whiff of hypocrisy in the above counsel. I warn against guessing candidate Harris’s favored pronouns or skin complexion, while casually inputting “she,” “her,” “female,” “black,” and “Indian” as descriptors. To your objection and accusation of contradiction, I answer thusly with a swiped quote: “The wise contradict themselves.” And how do I know I’m wise? It’s simple. I’m lecturing you on how to describe Kamala Harris without coming off as a Klan capirote-wearing chauvinist, aren’t I? Quod erat demonstrandum.

If you’re still confused about how to speak about Harris, and you’re at sea among of what Joseph Epstein describes as “No Trespassing signs” that have been placed in front of all categories of “ethnic, racial, and sexual identity,” then we’ll make it easy on you: call Kamala Harris the candidate you’re supporting for president. That’s really what the p.c. hall monitors want you to do anyway.