In the wake of the plagiarism controversy surrounding Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, many professors have begun to suggest undertones in her highly talked about convention speech. According to The College Fix, college professors have described Melania Trump’s speech as heteronormative, white supremacist, and “toxically racialized.”
Alex Corey, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Colorado’s English department, suggested that Ms. Trump’s speech promotes heteronormativity, which is when heterosexuality is promoted as the normal sexual orientation.
“Maybe we could also talk about the broader acts of copycatting within the official political sphere, like the fact that at every national convention and throughout campaigns and periods of holding office, partners in marriage (most often women due to the political environment) must take the stage to speak as symbols of the candidate’s/officeholder’s ‘values’ and subtly remind everyone that the most legitimate kind of adulthood — the most ‘capable’ of representing the public — is the one that also heads a two-partner family. So maybe heteronormativity is the more pernicious plagiarism on display here?”
Jason Payton, an assistant professor of English at Sam Houston State University, suggests that there were racial undertones in Ms. Trump’s speech because of her failure to credit Michelle Obama for her speech.
“Ms. Trump’s speech enacts the ambivalence toward black culture that Eric Lott has argued has conditioned white America’s experience of its whiteness for centuries. Ms. Trump affirms the American values of ambition and industriousness, but in failing to credit Ms. Obama for her inspiration, Ms. Trump also constructs a racial fantasy wherein the advocacy for American values can be divorced from the history of critique and resistance by people of color.”
Crystal Feimster, a faculty member in the department of African studies at Yale University, says that Melania Trump’s use of Michelle Obama’s words reflects white supremacy.
“White folks have been stealing/ventriloquizing black people’s words to their benefit for centuries, so why should Trump be any different? It is white supremacy at its best. I especially love that she cribbed the hard work part and the expression commonly used by black youth that your word is bond …. The fact that we can laugh about it, act astonished that she borrowed Michelle Obama’s words or dismiss it as trivial without connecting the dots is part of the problem we face as a nation — our inability to recognize the way racism and white supremacy function beyond overt racial slurs and violence.”
Lastly, UC-Santa Cruz’s Kirsten Silva Gruesz describes “the defense of Melania as already so toxically racialized. Good vs. bad immigrant, for instance.”
Of course, many people believe that the plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech simply reflected carelessness by her speech writer and her failure to make sure she wasn’t plagiarizing Obama’s speech word for word. These professors, on the other hand, are showing their far-left biases.
