At the intersection of postmodernism, racial essentialism, decentralization, and truth decay, identity is problematized. In the case of VP Nominee Harris, the logs show the dynamic tensions.
“...at 4:42 p.m., a user named Eee302 changed Harris’s first name from “Kamala” to “Cuntala.” Another editor noticed and reversed the change within two minutes, banning Eee302 “because it appears that you are not here to build an encyclopedia.” But in that two-minute span, Google’s busy web crawlers had visited the page—meaning, for a brief time, “Cuntala Harris” was a top search result for anyone searching for the woman just named to the Democratic ticket.
A Wikipedia administrator then turned on a “semi-protected” feature that limited who could edit Harris’s page, which headed off further major vandalism—and moved debate to the article’s “talk” page, where editors can hash out their differences. There the activity shifted to a single core question: Is Kamala Harris an African American?”