This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said at an annual gathering of Black journalists on Wednesday that his Democratic rival Kamala Harris had downplayed her Black heritage in the past. The narrative, which quickly spread on social media, is false.
Similar posts were fact-checked by Reuters in 2020, when she became the first Black and Asian American woman to serve in the second highest office in the country. This and other misinformation about Harris has resurfaced since she launched her White House campaign in July.
At the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago on July 31, Trump said, (timestamp 06:02): “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting the Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black, until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
He continued, “But you know what, I respect either one, I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person.”
Contrary to Trump’s statements, however, Harris has long publicly identified as both Black and South Asian American.
Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Black Jamaican father, both immigrants to the United States. The U.S. Census includes people of Jamaican heritage among racial groups considered to be Black.
Her White House biography says she is “the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American” to be elected Vice President.
In a 2016 feature for The New York Times Magazine, Harris talked about her mother’s “choice of community” for her and her younger sister, Maya, after her parents divorced and referred to herself as a Black person: “She had two Black babies, and she raised them to be two Black women.”
In a 2012 interview hosted by digital news organization The Wrap, Harris, then California Attorney General, referred to herself as both African American and Asian American. The clip starts off with her saying, “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…”
At a 2006 panel of emerging Black leaders at a conference about issues impacting African Americans, Harris, then San Francisco District Attorney, referred to herself as African American (starting at timestamp 24:01): “What I suggest we do as African American is own this issue in law enforcement and then define it in the way that works for us because it is a myth, to say that African Americans don’t want law enforcement.”
Harris graduated from Howard University, one of the country’s most esteemed HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), in 1986.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump sent a link to a July 31 post published on his Truth Social account repeating the former president’s comment about Harris’s heritage. The post features a clip from a 2019 video that shows Harris cooking Indian food with actress Mindy Kaling, who is of Indian heritage.
In the video, Harris responds, “Yes, yes,” when Kaling says she is Indian. When Kaling says the two women are South Indian, Harris responds by saying, “You look like the entire one-half of my family.”
A representative for Harris shared a video where Harris responded to Trump’s appearance at the NABJ by saying, “It was the same old show. The divisiveness and the disrespect.”
Harris has faced a plethora of sexist and racist attacks online, including questions over her racial identity, since announcing her 2024 bid for the Oval Office. Republican Party leaders have urged lawmakers to focus on her policy positions and steer clear of personal attacks.
VERDICT
False. Kamala Harris is of Indian and Jamaican heritage and has long self-identified as both Black and South Asian American.
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