Yesterday former President Donald Trump made a series of racist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, challenging her biracial identity. I try to bite my tongue on the latest controversy of the day (and often fail), but this is just nuts.
It’s really wild (and kind of gross) to watch people struggle with race and not understand being biracial or mixed race in 2024. You can have more than one identity, and that’s not inconsistent. Claiming one of those identities does not negate the other.
White people claim multiple European roots and celebrate both—for St. Patrick’s Day it’s “I’m Irish!” and for Oktoberfest it’s “I’m German!”
Using my father’s last name does not mean I disowned my mother’s family. I can claim both.
Kamala Harris can claim both her South Asian and Black ancestry. In practice, that looks like being South Asian while cooking Indian food with Mindy Kaling and also embracing her Black roots as a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
She is both. She can claim both. It’s not fake or phony. It’s the daily reality for millions of Americans. There’s an entire mess of cultural expectations and identities mixed race people are forced to navigate. Code switching is a simple example of something many people of color employ as they move between different spaces.
Throwing out a quote or headline of someone claiming one identity as if inconsistent or of questionable character is not the burn you think it is. It shows an incredible ignorance of simple racial realities. It’s you proclaiming you’re a racist—or at the very least, since we get touchy when we label someone a racist, you’re waving a racist flag.
And this is really crazy, but if you don’t understand it, that’s OK. It’s a good time to learn. It’s OK to admit your ignorance—plenty of it going around, especially when it comes to America and race (whew!). Race is a complicated issue—especially if you haven’t lived it. And even people who live it don’t get it (sadly, Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who has biracial children, defended Trump, calling Harris a “chameleon”). Do some reading. Do some learning. Talk to some people who understand this issue better than you (but please don’t ask your one Black friend to explain it to you). But don’t just attack it.
We went through this more than a decade ago. Remember Barack Obama? Yeah, biracial. We did this already. We’ve seen all the racist attacks before. Being upset about it is not an overreaction (as Vance argues)—it’s people sick of this racist garbage. We’re not going back.