U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), under fire for refusing to correctly pronounce Vice President Kamala Harris's first name, claiming she was being labeled "racist," and complaining about how CNN panelists Thursday night were attacking her because she is a woman, defended what are being called her "racist" and "sexist" remarks by saying she was "taking on the Radical Left."
"I will never bend a knee to the Radical Left coming after me," Rep. Mace also said Friday afternoon, continuing to defend her remarks more than 12 hours later as clips and criticism of her CNN appearance went viral. Mace made at least 15 posts on the social media platform X attempting to defend her comments.
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The South Carolina Congresswoman, known for directing her staff to book her on cable news shows between one and three times a day and up to six times a week on local television stations, Thursday on CNN repeatedly insisted on mispronouncing the name of the Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee. When called out on it by several CNN panelists, Mace replied, “I will say Kamala’s name any way that I want to.”
When Professor of African American Studies Michael Eric Dyson called her out for intentionally mispronouncing "Kamala," Mace replied, “I just did and I’ll do it again.”
"This Congresswoman is a wonderful human being," Dr. Dyson said, "but when you disrespect Kamala Harris by saying you will call her whatever you want, I know you don't intend it to be that way, that's the history and legacy of white disregard for the humanity of Black people."
"So now you're calling me racist," Rep. Mace responded. "That is BS. That is complete BS."
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"You don't have to intend racism to accomplish it," Dyson continued, before the panel discussion spiraled out of hand, with Mace refusing to listen to other participants.
Mace went on to claim the Vice President disrespects women, and "doesn't know what a woman is," before Dyson shot back: “White women don’t have the ability to tell Black women who paid the price of blood to make this country what it is to tell them they’re not real women.”
But Mace also refused to criticize Donald Trump when CNN host Abby Phillip asked if the ex-president should stop saying Vice President Harris is “not actually Black.”
“Well, I mean, I, I, I didn’t hear him say it, I didn’t hear what he said about her race, I’m not gonna weigh in on her race,” Mace insisted. “The fact that you talk to women this way is ridiculous.”
Critics are blasting Congresswoman Mace.
"Being unable to pronounce names isn't taking on the radical left. And coffee won't help your apparently low levels of education," The Nation's justice correspondent Elie Mystal wrote, responding to Mace's "Much needed caffeine" post.
"Having your name mispronounced isn’t anything new to minorities," observed MSNBC legal correspondent Katie Phang. "For a lot of us, we’ve spent our entire lives having to correct folks. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt that it’s unintentional or a mistake. BUT when Republicans like Nancy Mace repeatedly & intentionally mispronounce @KamalaHarris’ name, it’s a nasty macro-aggression and it deserves to be called out. Especially when Mace has the gall to bleat that she’ll 'say her name any way she wants to.'"
"The refusal to call a Black women Mrs, Miss, or Ma’am in 1964 was racist. The refusal of a Congresswoman to call the VP by her name in 2024 is not only racist, but sexist," wrote civil rights attorney and Harvard Kennedy Professor Cornell William Brooks, the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). "It is sexist for a woman to either choose or be forced to imitate the racism of Misogynist in Chief Trump."
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