Republican Rep. Nancy Mace set off a row during a panel discussion on CNN Thursday evening when she repeatedly mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris' name and then doubled down, saying: "I will say Kamala's name anyway that I want to."
Mace and members of the panel were talking about Harris' scheduled rally on Friday in North Carolina to tout her economic agenda and her not holding a formal news conference with the media since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
The South Carolina Republican contrasted Donald Trump's news conference Thursday at his New Jersey golf course with Harris.
"More than three weeks in, Kamala Harris hasn't given a single interview. She hasn't come on your program. She's not answering questions," Mace said, mangling the pronunciation of the vice president's first name.
"It's Kamala, first of all. It's not Kamala. It's Kamala. And she's not yet the candidate. She's only been in office, only been a candidate for three and a half weeks," Democratic strategist Keith Boykin shot back.
The correct pronunciation of Harris' name is "COM-mah-la."
"So now you're calling me racist?"
Later in the show, as they talked about Harris' policies, Mace correctly said her name and then immediately mispronounced it.
"You had it right! You almost got it," Boykin said.
"I will say Kamala's name any way that I want to," Mace said.
"No. But you mispronounced her name and you also misjudged it," said Vanderbilt University professor Michael Eric Dyson.
The panel returned to the issue again later, with Dyson saying: "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."
"So now you're calling me racist?" Mace shot back.
"I just said you were racist. You don't have to intend racism to accomplish it," Dyson responded.
"You are intending that I am racist," Mace said.
"Your disrespect of Kamala Harris is part and parcel of a tradition of disrespect," he responded.
Mace then called Dyson "defensive" and said it was "disgusting" to imply she was racist.
