Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of materials from its 11 contributing columnists. For more information about this endeavor, click here.
‘They’re eating the dogs. … They’re eating the cats’ — racist stereotypes that hurt immigrant communities
Four of the Minnesota Star Tribune’s contributing columnists weigh in on Tuesday’s debate.
September 11, 2024 at 3:19PM
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I’ve never eaten dogs, cats or anyone’s pets. I am an immigrant who came to this country when I was 5. During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump claimed of immigrants in a town in Ohio: “They’re eating the dogs. … They’re eating the cats. … They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” These harmful, false statements are not just lies — they are racist stereotypes that hurt immigrant communities. I also think these lies hurt all of us because they are meant to divide us as a nation.
I know this firsthand, having endured a third-grade teacher’s taunts about eating a stray cat during recess, while my white friends were confused by the accusation and other teachers laughed. After that day, half of the third-graders refused to be my friend.
This debate revealed Trump’s inability to present real solutions, as he unleashed falsehood after falsehood. Trump’s diatribes felt like the frantic flailing of a mountaineer plummeting from a dizzying height, filled with desperation and fear.
Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as presidential from the start, offering a respectful handshake to Trump. Harris stayed composed, focusing on substantive issues, which put Trump on the defensive for the entire 90 minutes. Seeing a woman of color on this presidential debate stage is groundbreaking, signaling the dismantling of barriers that have long kept women of color from elected office. I told my children to remember this monumental moment as Harris makes history before our eyes. They told me Harris was dope and lit. I like to think Harris is a symbol of hope and progress for their generation.
My 15-year-old said she wanted to attend Trump’s rally as Harris suggested so she can tell him in person, “You’re fired!”
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The presidential election in November will ultimately be decided by those voters undecided today. I don’t think Tuesday night’s debate did much to move that portion of the electorate still on the fence.
Many Americans are concerned that Harris is just too liberal to be president. She has supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, providing taxpayer paid sex reassignment surgeries for illegal immigrants and felons, and a federal ban on fracking. And all she said to address this at Tuesday night’s debate is, “My values have not changed.” Voters will take her at her word and continue to presume — with good reason — that a Harris-Walz administration will be a radical one.
Meanwhile, Trump’s erratic temperament troubles a lot of undecided voters, and he did nothing to assuage those concerns on the Philadelphia debate stage. His lack of discipline and thin skin showed — it’s a really bad look for a commander in chief. And Trump’s continued claim he won the 2020 election is both bizarre and pathetic. Poll after poll show voters, including this one, desperately want Trump’s economic policies back in the White House — but not his ego. Yet the former president insists on an unpalatable offer of both. It’s political malpractice.
As for the many Americans who think much of the mainstream media has a favorite in this race, the debate hosts on ABC News gave them nationally televised evidence proving just that point. Republicans should never agree to a presidential debate on that network again.
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I’m a public speaking teacher by trade. I teach persuasion to Iron Range students who, I hope, one day run for office against each other. Part of persuasion is knowing your audience and what motivates them to move. Not flip. People rarely change their beliefs or voting habits, but anyone — even the most stubborn — can be moved along the spectrum by an effective argument.
That’s what debates are for, but only one of the candidates in Tuesday night’s presidential debate seemed to understand that.
From the moment she got on stage, Vice President Harris literally crossed over the center line of the stage to shake hands with Trump while introducing herself. It was a symbolic move that foreshadowed her strategy.
Trump got almost five minutes more to speak than Harris, and yet it was all to Harris’s advantage. Her arguments were efficient and tactical, where Trump’s were dogmatic and disorganized. He was talking to people on his side, but moved everyone else away from him. Harris aimed her appeals at moderates, independents and disaffected Republicans. She won many arguments only because she was trying to do so.
Millions of people won’t vote for Harris this November for reasons important to them. But in this debate Harris prepared them for the possibility of her victory, while perhaps moving a small but crucial group of undecided voters. The election is far from over, but Trump will need new people to move toward his positions if he is going to persuade them to put him back in the White House. That requires a good argument, not a long one.
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Harris concluded Tuesday night’s debate by telling the American people that, in her long career as a prosecutor, she never asked a victim or a witness if they were a Republican or a Democrat. Instead, she asked them one question: Are you OK?
As a 39-year-old woman and mother whose youngest son turned one just weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, I had to sit with that question for a moment. Are we OK?
Yes, Trump has been out of office for the past four years. But with his — and millions of his voters’ — insistence that he didn’t actually lose the 2020 election, going as far as storming the U.S. Capitol carrying weapons on Jan. 6, we have all been effectively held hostage by Trumpism since 2016. It’s that sense of being constantly on-guard, with invisible and violent land mines everywhere you turn.
Trumpism hit a low point Tuesday night when Trump claimed that Haitian migrants were eating peoples’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, an internet rumor denied by that town’s officials. But the truth didn’t matter: The claim smacked of blood libel, racism and ugly, nativist past movements that are attempting to rise again in places like Russia and Hungary, whose authoritarian, Christian nationalist leaders were cited by Trump on Tuesday as role models and friends.
No, Vice President Harris, we are not OK. But maybe, with your hopeful insistence on a more joyful and loving future for America, we could be.
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Contributing Columnists
Angela Denker
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