Michael A. McCoy\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nNews that Sen. Kamala Harris was Joe Biden\u2019s choice for the 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee drove speculation and argumentation about her identity. The big question appeared to be, \u201cIs Kamala Harris truly African American?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThere were numerous articles and opinion pieces about whether Harris can legitimately claim to be African American; the authenticity of her Black identity if she has an Indian mother; what it means for her to be biracial; and other articles opining and speculating about her racial, ethnic and even national identity.<\/span><\/p>\nHarris, the daughter of immigrant parents from Jamaica and India, identifies as Black\/African American while also embracing her Indian heritage. Yet the questions in social media and news outlets swirling around her identities demonstrate a continued misunderstanding of race and mixed-race people.<\/span><\/p>\nWhere do loyalties lie?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nWhile the debates about Harris\u2019 racial identities may seem new given the recent media attention focused on her, they are similar to the commentary other high-profile mixed-race people have received.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen I did research for my chapter on Tiger Woods in my book \u201cRacial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture,\u201d I found much criticism of Woods\u2019 calling himself \u201cCablinasian\u201d (a word Woods made up as a teen to account for his Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian heritages) and for not solely identifying as Black. Several articles expressed confusion about his multiraciality \u2013 the uncertainty over the most accurate racial category to fit him into.<\/span><\/p>\nThe discussions of Woods mirror the critiques of Harris.<\/span><\/p>\nThe competing interpretations of Harris\u2019 identity, like with Woods, seem to be a function of her multiple, intersecting identities (including race, class and gender) as well as the public\u2019s deep discomfort with people who don\u2019t fit into fixed boxes.<\/span><\/p>\nFor example, some people want to disavow Harris\u2019 Blackness because of her multiple ethnic and racial affiliations. Others claim her as Jamaican or Indian, which serves as evidence of her success as a member of an ethnic group or which celebrates a shared cultural connection with her.<\/span><\/p>\nSome see her Jamaican and Indian ethnicities as diminishing her claim to a Black American experience, unlike those who are known as \u201cADOS,\u201d or American Descendants of Slavery. Because Harris\u2019 ancestors do not include those who were enslaved in the U.S., ADOS\u2019s concern is that neither she nor her family can know the deep historical pain of U.S. anti-Black racism.<\/span><\/p>\nEmbedded in this concern are echoes of the questions Black Americans face who have passed, who chose whiteness to escape slavery or the Jim Crow South or those who choose multiraciality to flee the social stigma of Blackness. Questioning Harris\u2019 bona fides to being a Black American is questioning where her loyalties lie.<\/span><\/p>\n\u2018100% Black and 100% Japanese\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nThere are political reasons why some may want to discredit Harris\u2019 claims to Blackness, believing that saying she\u2019s not truly Black means she shouldn\u2019t be relatable to Black voters.<\/span><\/p>\nBut the desire to see Harris as only Black or worry that she is not truly African American derives from the racist U.S. past of the one-drop rule of racial impurity, which sociologist F. James Wood has described as the idea that \u201ca single drop of \u2018black blood\u2019 makes a person a black.\u201d That was an ideology from the majority of U.S. history \u2013 from its founding through to the Jim Crow era \u2013 when race was firmly believed to be a matter of blood.<\/span><\/p>\nScientists for well over half a century have disproven any link between race and genetics. Scholars have been writing and researching, for decades, about how race is a social construction rather than a biological absolute.<\/span><\/p>\nBut in public discussion in the U.S., race is treated as an entity that can be measured and labeled. That is why people are questioning the validity of Harris\u2019 African American identity. They believe that her racial affiliation can somehow be quantified and weighed on a scale of authenticity.<\/span><\/p>\nUnderlying these questions of authenticity are questions of legitimacy. Multiracial people are constantly confronted by those who question their whole selves and their choice to authentically identify with multiple races. For these critics, to qualify for membership in a race or ethnicity means one must be 100% of that group. Anything less means you cannot be a real member of any given culture, ethnicity or race.<\/span><\/p>\nYet the reality and experiences of multiracial people\u2019s lives, like that of Harris, suggest that basic math cannot capture the realities of what it means to embody multiple races and ethnicities. As one subject of multiracial artist Kip Fulbeck\u2019s photo installation of mixed-race Asian Americans in The Hapa Project states, \u201cI am 100% Black and 100% Japanese.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter.]<\/span><\/p>\nEvolution of racial categories<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nRacial identity is not only about external features (eye shape, hair texture, skin color) and ancestral lines. It is about the cultural and social habits and rituals that people participate in as they claim their affiliations with ethnic and racial groups.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Indian food that Harris consumes speaks volumes about the ethnic influences she embraces, as does the Black sorority she pledged and the historically Black college she attended.<\/span><\/p>\nAnyone confused about Kamala Harris\u2019 multiraciality may recall that the U.S. is a nation that was not built by a single ethnic or racial group.<\/span><\/p>\nIndeed, U.S. land was taken from various Indigenous nations and built by the enslaved labor of people from multiple African nations and tribes for the benefit of others who hailed from a variety of European nations. And other immigrants from Latin America and the Pacific Rim settled in North America and made the U.S. their home.<\/span><\/p>\nHarris, as the U.S.\u2018s first multiracial, multiethnic female vice presidential candidate, reflects the evolution of racial categories, which coincides with an ever-evolving understanding of race and racism in the 21st century.<\/span><\/p>\nJennifer Ho<\/strong><\/span>
\nProfessor. Asian American Studies, <\/span>
\nUniversity of Colorado Boulder<\/span><\/p>\n
\n* Published in print edition on 4 September 2020<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.\u00a0Michael A. McCoy\/Getty Images News that Sen. Kamala Harris was Joe Biden\u2019s choice for the 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee drove speculation and argumentation about her identity. The big question appeared to be, \u201cIs Kamala Harris truly African American?\u201d There were numerous articles and opinion pieces about whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":28472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8348],"tags":[22489,26539,26540,25894,9148,10314,18069,18070,26541,74,21793],"class_list":["post-28471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-conversation","tag-2020-us-elections","tag-african-americans","tag-asian-americans","tag-black-americans","tag-identity","tag-indian-americans","tag-joe-biden","tag-kamala-harris","tag-multiracial","tag-racism","tag-tiger-woods"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Kamala.jpg?fit=1200%2C646&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-7pd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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