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.
I really hate that racists have ruined a perfectly good question. I often want to actually ask people where in the US they’re from, but I can’t ask the straightforward “where are you from?” if the person isn’t white because I know it can easily be interpreted as the racist version.
Instead I now ask “are you from [city we’re in]?” to try to make it clear I’m assuming they’re from the US.
“You’ve got a bit of an accent where in the country are you from?”
“Are you originally from around here?”
And various other phrasings can take the racist edge off of it. It also helps avoid people answering that their family is Vietnamese when you really want to know that they’re from Dayton.
Good suggestions, and yeah if someone has an accent I’m trying to identify I’ll usually ask about the accent and region I think it’s from.
I still feel a slight ick from “originally.” And usually I’m talking with people from my general region and I’m really just asking what local town they grew up in, so it’s sometimes more “did you grow up in [current location, or area they’re talking about]?”