A few days ago, Donald Trump told a conference of Black journalists that Kamala Harris used to be Indian but then she suddenly “turned Black.” He was implying that she is now identifying as Black to win Black votes. This was as ignorant as it was untrue.
First of all, Harris has always identified as both Black and Asian. In her autobiography, The Truths We Hold, she tells a story about her mother raising her and her sister to appreciate Indian culture, cooking Indian food, giving them Indian jewelry, and taking them on trips abroad to visit extended family. But she writes that she was also keenly aware that the world would perceive her and her sister as Black women first and foremost: “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”[i] Indeed, she went on to attend Howard, a historically Black university, pledge Alpha Kappa Alpha, a Black sorority, and join the Congressional Black Caucus after entering the Senate.
And second, biracial people often switch up how they describe themselves, depending on the context or where they are on their racial identity journey. For example, sometimes I refer to myself as biracial and sometimes I refer to myself as Black. This comes with the biracial reality. The part of our heritage we augment varies and that is our prerogative.
The whole thing reminded me of when President Obama said that if he had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon Martin. Obama felt tremendous sorrow when Trayvon was murdered; he could empathize as a parent and not just as any parent, but as a Black parent. Yet when he uttered those words, people lost their minds. It became very evident that some white folks expected him to abandon his blackness and serve out his term as a colorless man, not a Black man. How dare he remind the world that he was Black? How dare he call that out? How dare he imply that he shared any common ground with Black people at all? He could never be physically white, but the expectation was that he become white in every other way.
Some want race to enter the conversation only on their terms.
I am also reminded of the One Drop Rule of 1920. This rule stated that if you had just “one drop” of Black blood, you were considered Black. You could not be Black and white, you had to be Black or white and you were Black if you had any African American features or if anyone knew you had a Black relative, no matter how distant. The rule came about in response to the presence of mixed-race Americans with racially ambiguous physical features plus the desire to uphold America’s racial hierarchy. How could white and non-white people be kept separate if you couldn’t tell the difference? Even as late as 1983, “Louisiana law indicated that anyone whose ancestry was more than one-thirty-second Black was categorized as Black.”[ii] In 1985, the court ruled that a woman with a Black great-great-great-great-grandmother (i.e. one sixty-fourth Black) could not identify herself as “white” on her passport.[iii]
Similarly, in Trump’s mind, Harris can’t be Black and Asian, she has to be Black or Asian and since she has talked about her Asian heritage then she must be disingenuous if she also talks about her Black heritage.
But Donald Trump does not get to be the arbiter of racial identity. He does not get to decide if Harris is Black enough to claim blackness or relate to Black people. He stepped over a line when he uttered those words which he is oft known to do. Yet even now, he has no idea that he did anything wrong.
[i] Nisha Chittal, “The Kamala Harris Identity Debate Shows How America Still Struggles to Talk About Multiracial People,” Vox, January 20, 2021,
[ii] Dr. Beverly Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in The Cafeteria? 303.
[iii] Steve Bradt, “One-Drop Rule Persists,” The Harvard Gazette, December 9, 2010, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/one-drop-rule-persists.
Comments