Van Jones: ‘It Is Bitter in the Mouth, the Racial and Gender Dimension of This’

EXCERPT:

JONES: "I think it's gonna be a long time for us to figure out what it was and wasn‘t. I hope that it goes the way that you said. But, like, I do think it's bitter in the mouth, the racial and gender dimension of this. And the only way that you can kind of begin to see it, if you don't see it right away, is, can you imagine a woman of color acting like Donald Trump acted, even for one day? The kinds of stuff that he said, the kinds of things that he did, the way that he would insult people, if you're a person of color, you don‘t feel like you have that freedom. You feel like you really are somewhat constrained. You are always running something in the back of your mind, like, 'How am I going to be perceived? And also, if I say this, will they think that all black people are this way or all women are this way?' So there is a license that he had to just be a fool, just to be an obnoxious ass to everyone. And for people to go, well, he can still be president, there is nobody who doesn‘t have that phenotype that feels that free. And so, I do think that — what I am hearing from people is, 'What do we have to do to be acceptable?' I mean, for women of color, people see things very, very differently. Kamala Harris, she is not Oprah or Beyoncé, she is not like some untouchable black woman in the popular, but she is a respectable woman and she is somebody who served in all three branches, she served in the courts, she served in the legislature, she served in the executive branch, local, state, federal. She should have been qualified enough to be able to not have this sort of outcome.”