After Donald Trump told journalists on Wednesday that his presidential opponent Kamala Harris “turned Black” for political gain, Trump’s comments have impacted the way many multirace voters are thinking about the two candidates.
“She was only promoting Indian heritage,” the former president said during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week. “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.”
“Is she Indian or is she Black?” he asked.
She’s both.
Harris, whose mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican, would make history if she is elected president. She would be both the first female president and the first Asian American president.
Multiracial American voters say they have heard similar derogatory remarks about their identities their whole lives. Some identify with Harris’ politics more than others but, overall, they told NBC News that Trump’s comments will not go unnoticed.
Just to clarify, I would not ask a mixed race person with an American accent where they were from unless it was pretty obvious I literally wanted to know where in the U.S. they were from (as in Alabama vs. North Dakota). It was more about whether or not asking about family history was a sensitive subject.
I’m not mixed race. However I am a born and raised New Yorker, and I sound it. Mixed background or not, first generation folks like me sometimes struggle with identity. It took me a while to come to grips with how Indian I am vs. how American I am. What those two terms even mean. And how I want to present myself to the world.
I almost think of it like sexual orientation. There are times when it’s important or okay to ask, and there are times to let it come up naturally in time. And no matter what, however someone identifies you really just need to accept it.
I hope it was obvious that I would accept it, but I don’t feel like it’s the same question. One is about family history (I apparently didn’t explain very well that this is not just asking where someone is from, but where their ancestors are from) and the other is about personal sexuality.
I’m rereading up the thread now and I see what you meant ♥️
“Ancestors” seems like a clumsy term. Has some icky feelings for me - I think because of the white power types.
“What’s your ethnic background?” still sounds better to me. Awkward, but less so.
I guess to me, “ancestors” could be a lot more informative. If you look like you have a South Asian parent, that could mean that parent was born in Vermont, but their parent was born in Scotland, and their parent was born in England and their parent was born in Chennai. And those are the stories I love to hear about because they’re kind of like my own ancestry. For example, my great-grandfather was the son of a Polish emigre to England, moved to Germany, had a child with a German woman, he married a woman from England with parents who were from Russian and Poland and he emigrated to London, and they had my father, who emigrated to America and married a woman from New York.
And if I just ask their ethnicity, I don’t get the story, which could be far more interesting than the ethnicity.
Just with Kamala Harris- knowing her father is black is a lot less informative and interesting than knowing that her father is from Jamaica, which itself is less interesting than knowing her father himself is multiracial because his father had a European parent (and, of course, knowing that he’s a world-renowned economist is very informative too). And that’s why I would like to know about family history much more than just ethnicity. But those can get mixed together.