Who Is Questioning Kamala Harris' Race?

Are We Really Surprised That It's Corporate Media?

Let us not mince words: discussions about race are ugly and uncomfortable. We should not be having them in our political discourse and I hope that some day we will see them banished by common agreement from our political discourse.

But that day is not today. Race is firmly front and center in the 2024 Presidential election, and the media is determined that it remain there. Despite the headlines and their furor, the ones most visibly questioning Kamala Harris’ race are—unsurprisingly—corporate media.

The media is in predictably high dudgeon over Donald Trump presumably attacking Kamala Harris’ racial identification.

Donald Trump falsely questioned Kamala Harris’ race during an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago that quickly turned hostile on Wednesday.

The Republican former president claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her 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?” Trump said while addressing the group’s annual convention.

Let us be clear on one point: The media was going to take any answer Donald Trump gave and turn it against him. The nature of the questioning itself made that extremely clear. Donald Trump was never going to give an answer that they liked.

But let us also be clear on the question and the actual answer. This matters, because Donald Trump was not asked if he thought Kamala Harris was “black”. The question that was posed was whether or not Donald Trump agreed with the characterization that Kamala Harris was only on the ticket because of her ethnicity.

SCOTT: I just defined it, sir. Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a black woman?

TRUMP:  Well, I can say I think it’s maybe a little bit different. So, I’ve known her for a long time. Indirectly. Not directly, very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting 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?

SCOTT: She has always identified as a Black woman —

TRUMP: 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 became a Black person.

We should not pretend that Donald Trump was entirely accurate in his depiction of Kamala Harris’ own behaviors and attitude regarding her ethnicity—she has acknowledged her multiple ancestries throughout her political career. As her father hails from Jamaica and her mother is from India, Kamala Harris is, like most people, of a mix of ethnicities. Calling her “mixed race” is about as remarkable as calling water “wet”.

However, neither should we pretend that Kamala Harris has not cynically played the race card, as she was pointedly called out for doing in 2020, when she was hit for casually dropping the stereotype that all Jamaican’s regularly smoke marijuana.

I suppose that like many other people, the dramatic call-out of Biden made me pause to have a deeper look at Ms Harris and to consider her position on some of the issues.

ANNOYING STEREOTYPE

Mind you, I had cursorily done that before, subsequent to the kerfuffle after she was asked on a New York radio show if she had ever used marijuana.

This is how she answered:

“Half my family is from Jamaica, are you kidding me?”

That’s how I knew that Kamala Harris is a Jafaikan, not a Jamaican.

We should also note that Kamala Harris’ father, Donald Harris, was similarly displeased as her pandering to stereotypes.

My dear departed grandmothers, as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.

More to the point, however, is that both her “black” heritage and her “Indian-American” heritage have been variously but not equally emphasized throughout her career.

The media made a point of highlighting that she was a “Black woman” when she became Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential choice in 2020, and she made a point to stand on that identification in her debate with Mike Pence.

More than 30 years later, the power and limitations of Ms. Harris’s instinct to couple insider politics with her lens as a Black woman and first-generation American are on display as Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s running mate. On the vice-presidential debate stage last week, Vice President Mike Pence criticized her record as prosecutor, arguing that it disproportionately affected people of color.

“I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice president on what it means to enforce the laws of our country,” Ms. Harris responded, a response that is also a callback to a worldview that she formed in college. That’s when she and her classmates weighed what to do in the world and decided a system that had historically oppressed Black Americans could be made to work in their favor.

In her commencement address to Howard University—a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in 2017—she paid homage to that heritage.

“There is no limit to what you can do when you detect and reject false choices,” Ms. Harris told the students. “You can march for Black lives on the street, and you can ensure law enforcement accountability by serving as a prosecutor or on a police commission.”

“The reality is on most matters, somebody is going to make the decision — so why not let it be you?” she added. “Because, if we’re going to make progress anywhere, we need you everywhere.”

However, the same media that has helped her promote her status as a Black woman also ignored that same status when she was elected to the United States Senate:

The accompanying article makes no other mention of Kamala Harris being a Black woman or even a woman of color.

Moreover, the media was itself quite confused over Kamala Harris ethnic allegiances during the 2020 campaign, as this little contretemps between Don Lemon and April Ryan highlights.

Note the participants in this little mini-debate: Don Lemon and April Ryan. Two black journalists, two people of color.

Note also that these two people of color were actually arguing on live TV what color Kamala Harris actually is. Don Lemon went so far as to point out that Latinos are “brown” and not “black”.

This is what passes for serious “debate” on corporate media.

In a separate 2020 segment, CNN focused exclusively on Kamala Harris’ Indian heritage.

Let us take special pains to note that there is nothing controversial or inflammatory about this segment. It is a very respectful homage to a very important woman in Kamala Harris’ life—her mother.

But let us also acknowledge that this homage says nothing at all about Kamala Harris’ Jamaican heritage from her father. The piece is all about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan.

This is not Kamala Harris highlighting that she is a “mixed race” person. This is not Kamala Harris “identifying” as Black. This is Kamala Harris identifying as Indian American.

Certainly people in India are aware of who the American Vice President is, and they naturally acknowledge her Indian heritage.

Kamala Harris' mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in Chennai and moved to the US at the age of 19. Kamala Harris visited Chennai with her mother when she was a child. In 2019, when Shyamala died, Kamala Harris carried her mother's ashes to the city and scatters them in the seas. The photo that Trump shared went viral a few days ago as social media users in India wondered whether Kamala Harris will be wearing a saree at the inauguration if she wins. In the photo, she is wearing a saree..

Commentary such as this from abroad can only come if Kamala Harris has to at least some degree highlighted her Indian heritage, and we can see from the media’s own handling of this topic that she has.

Let us be explicit on one point: Kamala Harris has every right to identify however she pleases. She is the one who gets to choose how what parts of her ancestry are most important to her, and how the various parts of her ancestry coaelesce into her individual identity. There is no legitimate question to be asked whether Kamala Harris is Black or Indian-American or anything else.

No one has the right to deny how they have expressed their identity in the past. No one has the right to ignore how they have portrayed themselves to others in the past. Kamala Harris has every right to identify as Indian-American, and she has every right to identify as Black. She does not have the right to pretend she has never emphasized her Indian heritage over her Jamaican heritage.

The media also does not have the right to pretend it has not played up one side of her heritage and then the other. The media is fully complicit in any questioning about Kamala Harris’ ethnicity. Any media posturing over the temerity of anyone engaged in such questioning is beyond any and all doubt rank hypocrisy.

But wait…there’s more!

It is corporate media itself that stated earlier this year that Kamala Harris was on the ticket as an appeal to black voters.

The issue with Harris is one of gravitas. She has not presented herself as presidential material. Biden gave her the job of fixing the migrant crisis at the southern border, which obviously she fumbled. Now, she and her apologists are spinning her actual mission as border czar as fixing the root causes of the flood of migrants and asylum seekers, and not controlling the border itself.

Voters aren’t likely to buy that switch. The perception of Harris is that she was placed on the ticket to solidify Black support but wasn’t trusted enough to sit at the power table.

Nor was corporate media enamored of Harris’ fitness to serve as President in the wake of Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report.

Ronald Reagan may have gotten it wrong back in 1986 when the popular conservative Republican President said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

That is because Vice President Kamala Harris, of word salad fame, has in the wake of elderly President Joe Biden’s diminished memory come up with ten words that are even more terrifying.

They are, “I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that.”

Previously, corporate media has had more than a little shade to throw on Harris’ political career thus far:

The big question now is if Democrats can paint Harris, who has a dismal favorability rating to match Biden's (39 percent), as a competent, inspiring and principled leader.

A closer look behind Harris's career – dogged by allegations of hypocrisy and dishonesty – suggests that such a rebrand may be an insurmountable task.

Even her earliest days in politics were tarnished by scandal.

Even the Wall Street Journal has seen fit to point out the question marks in Harris’ tenure as Vice President.

Cyrena Martin, executive director of a Milwaukee-based nonprofit that helps women affected by domestic and sexual violence, said Harris’s remarks on abortion access in Wisconsin were what she and other Black women needed to see to get excited about voting for Biden.

Martin said she didn’t think the administration did enough to address the issue in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs. “There was a lot of ‘Where’s Kamala?’” Martin said.

She also said Harris was “absolutely ready” to serve as president if needed, but her concern is whether others would see that. “It’s always been a question whether people would vote for a woman, especially a Black woman,” she said. “It’s looking like a hard win right now as it is.”

Note what is absent from this earlier media coverage of Kamala Harris—any presumption or indication that Kamala Harris was good and effective as Vice President, or that she would unequivocally be a good President. At every turn, the media has presented her record as at best questionable and sketchy, and at worse quite negative.

Even recently, corporate media has seen fit to remind everyone that Kamala Harris was a failed candidate in 2020.

Harris’s stumbles began shortly after she announced she was seeking the White House.

In April 2019, she expressed regret over a policy she championed that prosecutors used to bring charges against the parents of truant children. Prosecutors took parents across the state to court, and some were jailed, though never directly by Harris. The moment highlighted concerns by some Democrats that Harris was a product of an inequitable criminal justice system.

By June, as primary opponents like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had staked out their positions on a broad range of economic and social policies, Harris struggled to articulate what, exactly, her administration would look like, instead hewing to long-held (and mostly safe) mainstream Democratic positions.

Given the extent of corporate media’s negative reporting on Kamala Harris previously, and given corporate media’s own characterization of her place on the Biden-Harris presidential ticket in 2020 (and again in the opening phase of this election cycle) as being little more than racial pandering, if there is any opprrobrium to be had for characterizing Kamala Harris as a “DEI Candidate”, should it not go first and foremost to corporate media?

Given the extent to which corporate media has played up Kamala Harris’ various racial/ethnic allegiances, how is corporate media not fully complicit in inviting characterizations and mischaracterizations of Kamala Harris?

Here’s a polite suggestion to both corporate media and the Kamala Harris campaign: if you do not want race to be a topic in the political debates of 2024, quit making race a topic in the political debates of 2024. I don’t want to talk about anyone’s race, and I don’t want to care about anyone’s race. I am not at all pleased that Kamala Harris and corporate media demand I care about her race when I want very much to care about her track record instead.

There is no doubt that discussions about race are ugly and uncomfortable. There is no doubt that discussions about race have zero place in political discourse. There is no doubt that discussions about race should not be in the 2024 Presidential election cycle.

There is also no doubt that Donald Trump is not the one making Kamala Harris’ race an issue in this election. That indignity lies squarely on corporate media and Kamala Harris.