As of late, a rather obnoxious back and forth has centered around whether or not to believe in the sincerity of various pundits, politicians and others who claim innocence in their mispronunciations of the name, Kamala (ka-MAHL-uh). Do you believe them when they claim innocence, or ignorance for that matter? Disclaimer: This may not even matter in a few more days with the presidential election happening in just over two weeks, but for now, let’s keep the discussion going.
As you’re aware, Kamala Harris is the current Vice President and Democratic nominee for President. Like most vice presidents do, she laid low—until a peculiar set of circumstances pulled her out of the background and into the spotlight—almost like the TV series “Veep”. And she admittedly played the part pretty well. So well, in fact, that the average citizen who wasn’t hyper-focused on politics couldn’t be faulted for having limited knowledge about her and perhaps, how to pronounce her name correctly.
Does pronouncing Kamala wrong make you a racist? Not likely, but if you continue to purposefully mispronounce the name then you might be. Pronouncing the name ka-MAHL-uh isn’t exactly like rocket science and yet, lots of people—including those who develop rockets—find difficulty saying it correctly. In full transparency and as someone who’s lived a lifetime’s worth of mispronunciations of his own name, I too struggled with her name at first. It wasn’t intentional but rather, a symptom of reading the name and guessing its pronunciation in my head long before ever hearing it spoken. Needless to say, I only recently made the correction in my head, and in fact, it wasn’t until she became the presumptive Democratic candidate that I became resolute about saying it properly. So therein lies the real question: Can the intentional mispronunciation of a person’s name be deemed as racist? It’s possible but highly unlikely. What can be said, however, is the behavior definitely hinges along the lines of bigotry.
