Nancy Mace mispronouncing Kamala Harris' name sparks backlash

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace has sparked backlash after repeatedly mispronouncing Vice President Kamala Harris' name during an appearance on CNN.

"I will say Kamala's name any way that I want to," the congresswoman said after she was called out by other panelists on CNN's NewsNight Thursday.

Social media users were quick to blast Mace, with some accusing her of being racist towards Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president and the Democratic nominee for president.

"Nancy Mace is a garbage human being," Alex Cole wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Mace "refuses to pronounce her name correctly and gets torched for it. Then she throws in that VP Harris doesn't know what a woman is," Fred Wellman, the host of the On Democracy podcast on MeidasTouch, wrote.

"Fun fact, the black woman they accuse of not answering that question was Justice Ketanji Brown. You know a different black woman. Yes. Nancy Mace is a racist."

Journalist Aaron Rupar wrote that Mace's comments "are the sorts of things you say when you are completely amoral person who stands for nothing more than getting attention on TV."

Some defended Mace, with the conservative Libs of TikTok account writing that CNN "had a meltdown accusing Nancy Mace of being a racist white supremacist because she didn't pronounce Kamala's name right."

Mace hit back at the criticism on X, writing: "The Left would rather talk about pronouns and pronunciation than policy."

Her office and the Harris campaign has been contacted for comment via email.

On NewsNight, the panel quickly became heated after Mace repeated mispronunciations of Harris' first name.

"I just did and I'll do it again," Mace said when Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Vanderbilt University, pointed it out.

"If I purposely mispronounced your name, that would not be appropriate," Keith Boykin, a political commentator and the co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, then told Mace.

Dyson told Mace: "You're normalizing that kind of viciousness, ma'am. You're disrespecting the woman."

Later in the segment, Dyson said: "This congresswoman is a wonderful human being. 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."

Mace quickly shot back: "Oh, so now you're calling me racist. That is BS. That is complete BS."

Dyson denied calling Mace a racist, saying: "You don't have to intend racism to accomplish it... your disrespect of Kamala Harris is part and parcel of a tradition of disrespect."

Mace later denied knowing about controversial remarks that former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, recently made where he questioned Harris' racial identity. "I didn't hear what he said about her race. I am not going to weigh in on her race as a woman," Mace said.

Trump had wrongly claimed that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage. "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?" he said

Update 8/16/24, 3:15 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add further information.