Original article (in Croatian) was published on 12/8/2024; Author: Ivan Nekić
This topic is in focus thanks to the former president of the USA, Donald Trump, who said in the campaign that the vice president of the USA never declared herself black, which is incorrect.
Two photos (archived here) of US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a young woman were posted on the Threads account of a private user on August 2nd. Along with the photos, the post features the following status:
To the far left in the first photo is the potential candidate for the presidency of the USA, Kamala Harris, who claims to be a pure black woman, although she has been of Indian origin all her life and thus has such a skin tone.
Then Trump is accused of gathering votes on Christianity…
Please note, this post is not intended to incite racism.
Harris has a long history of coming out as black and American Indian
However, the claim that Kamala Harris claims to be a “pure black woman” is incorrect. For many years, Harris has publicly identified herself as a black woman and an American of Indian roots (South Asian American).
Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother and a black Jamaican father, both immigrants to the USA. The US census includes people of Jamaican descent among the racial groups considered black, Reuters points out.
Also, in her biography published on the official website of the White House, it is stated that she is “the first woman, the first black woman and the first American of Indian roots” to be elected to the position of vice president of the USA.
According to The New York Times, Harris never hid her origin during various campaigns. In her 2019 autobiography, “The Truths We Hold”, Harris wrote that her family instilled “pride in Indian roots” in her and her sister Maya, but that her mother “was very understanding of raising two black girls”.
“She knew her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls and was determined to make sure we grew up to be confident, proud black women”, Harris wrote in the book.
In a 2012 interview conducted by the digital news organization The Wrap, Harris, then California’s attorney general, referred to herself as both African-American and Indian-American. The video begins with her statement, “When we think about women holding elected office and what is the significance of it, you know, it’s not because we are trying to makes these milestones in terms of the ‘first of’, and, you know, in fact when I was first elected district attorney of San Francisco, I was the first woman elected, first African American woman elected, and Asian American elected in the state as a district attorney”, writes Reuters in its fact check.
When she ran for California attorney general in 2010, news outlets called Harris the “female Obama”, and the campaign’s official website noted that she was “the first African-American and first Indian-American in California to hold that office”.
The same year, Harris told a media outlet that she grew up in a black neighbourhood, where she attended black churches, but also worshipped at her mother’s Hindu temple and visited her family in India.
“When running for office, you have to simplify or condense or put into pre-existing boxes who you are, so that people have a sense of you based on what they recognize easily and quickly”, Harris said at the time. “I grew up in a family where I had a strong sense of my culture and who I was, and I never felt insecure about it”, she said.
Donald Trump has pushed the origin of Kamala Harris into focus
And how did the subject of the origin of the vice president of the USA and the Democratic candidate for president of the USA come into focus? Thanks to former US President Donald Trump, who said in the campaign that Kamala Harris never declared herself black, which is also incorrect.
Let’s recall that at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago on July 31, Trump said the following: “She was always of Native American origin and she only promoted Native American heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she accidentally became black and now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know if she’s Indian or black?”
“But you know what, I respect anybody, I respect anybody, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she became a black person”, Trump told the assembled reporters.
In conclusion, US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has a long history of coming out publicly as an American Indian and as a black woman. She spoke about this in media appearances, in the book she published, as well as in the campaigns in which she ran for state prosecutor.
