Her name is Kamala

Donald Trump has officially left the White House, but that doesn't mean his supporters are going to change their tunes. They've gotten used to living openly with their intolerance and/or full-on hatred for groups that differ from themselves. Some of them still aren't facing the reality that their candidate lost the election, and as we all know, the reactions haven't been pretty.

As President Joe Biden works toward unity, there is going to be a group that continues on with the behavior they've gotten used to. This new presidential term is likely going to carry a lot of Trump-like insults toward our country's leaders and otherwise aggressive and factually-incorrect attempts at "debate."

For example, the same people who insulted Michelle Obama's physical appearance on a regular basis before Trump's presidency have been emboldened by the climate of the last four years, and we're bound to see a similar racist rhetoric pop up with newly sworn-in Vice President Kamala Harris. Less than 24 hours after the inauguration, I have already come across a Facebook post from someone in my hometown referring to the new VP as "Chlamydia Harris" while simultaneously tokenizing her for being "nonwhite."

He claimed to not understand how his post was racist, but here's the thing about dog-whistle racism: the attempt at plausible deniability doesn't work when you mention a white man you also don't like without similarly insulting him. In fact, aside from betting that the 25th Amendment would be invoked against Biden early into his term to replace him with Harris (insulted with an STD in place of her more ethnic-sounding name), he didn't go out of his way to attack Biden. No name change. No insults, even. Just his weird idea of a Democratic conspiracy with a dash of racism.

Following my encounter with that post, I actually discussed it elsewhere first. On TikTok, some conservatives jumped to his defense.

"It's just a funny name."

"Making fun of names is universal."

"Maybe it was just autocorrect."

Let's break that down, though.

First up: He chose an STD, which is literally a disease. He is not at all subtly calling Harris a disease. Even without any other context, it's clearly meant to be a harsh insult, not a funny name. It might be funny if you're a pre-pubescent boy. Otherwise, it's only meant to be funny in a highschool bully kind of way. Do I even have to mention the historical context of people of color being treated like a disease? Because that is extensive.

Next, making fun of politicians' names has gotten a lot more common in recent years. A large part of that stems from Trump's nicknames for anyone he sees as an enemy (i.e. Sleepy Joe Biden, Crooked Hillary [Clinton], etc.). While indecent of a president and rude in general, those nicknames aren't racially motivated. Making fun of names can be considered universal and not racist if it's done in that way, sure. However, purposely changing a person's name that isn't traditionally white-sounding doesn't fall under that category. It's already a microaggression to refuse to learn how her name is supposed to be pronounced or to purposely mispronounce her name. Using her more ethnic-sounding name to attack her and call her a disease is just blatantly racist. If someone really wants to insult her with a name change or add-on, an adjective ahead of "Kamala" or messing with her incredibly common last name, "Harris," at least wouldn't have been racist.

Lastly, Kamala is nowhere near the spelling of chlamydia. There is absolutely no feasible way for someone even slightly aware of how to spell the vice president's name to get to that kind of autocorrect. I even checked on my iPhone if her name would autocorrect to something wrong if I typed it correctly. It doesn't. It is, in fact, accepted as the properly-spelled name that it is.

Now, I am not in the business of maintaining contact with racists. So following this incident, I unfriended this person, but not before calling him out on his racism. Silence, when you're safe to speak up, is complicity, after all.

The whole situation got me thinking back to Barack Obama's presidency. I remember so many people calling Michelle Obama a gorilla or saying she was really a man. There was Trump's disbelief that Barack Obama was a natural United States citizen. The microaggressions were exceedingly common, and blatant aggression was barely behind them in frequency.

I'm dreading the things I'm going to see people say as I filter out the racists from my Facebook friends list over the next few weeks because while Trump didn't "make America great," he did make a loud group of Americans openly racist and hateful again.

On the bright side, at least Trump himself can't join in on Twitter this time.