By Char Adams
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.
Bria Beddoe, 31, who is African American and Trinidadian, said she had mixed feelings about Harris and was hesitant to give her full support to the candidate. She said she doesn’t support Harris’ past criminal justice policies as a district attorney and she doesn’t think President Joe Biden is doing enough to support Gaza. But she said Trump’s rhetoric helped to change her perspective.
“I was not super on board for Kamala Harris being the presidential candidate, but then when I saw the way that they were slandering her and the things that they chose to slander her about, it definitely made me more sympathetic to her … and made me want to support her,” she said.
Beddoe, who lives in Washington, D.C., said she’s experienced similar ridicule and disbelief over her Black, Indian, Chinese and Portuguese roots. As a result, Beddoe said, she sympathizes with Harris and the ways she’s been racialized throughout her political career.
“I grew up not being believed by people until they saw a member of my family,” she said.
“It’s been a very triggering time to see all these people try to say, ‘Well, you’re not this because you look like this, and you identify as this.”
How Harris has been racialized throughout her career
Harris’ heritage and the way she talks about it has been a topic of conversation throughout her political career, especially after she joined Biden’s ticket as his vice presidential pick in 2020.
She’s been criticized by some for not emphasizing her roots enough, and most recently she’s been labeled by Trump and others on the right as a “DEI candidate” who only made it by playing “the race card.” Some have entirely left her South Asian background out of the conversation, others minimize her Blackness.
“It’s almost like people are talking about her as two separate women,” Dhanashree Thorat, an assistant professor at Mississippi State University who studies race, feminism, and systemic oppression, told NBC News when Harris was campaigning with Biden in 2020. “You have Kamala who’s a Black woman and Kamala who’s a South Asian. And she’s not two separate people.”
Those who knew her say she was steeped in her heritage on both sides.
Emily Grullón, 33, of Los Angeles, said Trump’s comment only highlight the microaggressions mixed-race people often experience in the United States. She said she hopes this controversy will prompt a national conversation about these experiences.
“Was I surprised at his comments? Not so much,” said Grullón, who is an Afro-Indigenous Latina with Dominican roots. “I don’t support his comments, but I’m glad we can now have this discussion.”
Grullón, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at Southern California University of Health Sciences, said she’s had people question her Blackness and express shock at her ability to speak Spanish.
“It’s like we don’t fit in anywhere,” Grullón said. “I hope there’s more awareness now that the mixed experience is pretty nuanced.”
She said her heritage plays a major role in the way she votes. Grullón said she has her reservations about Harris. She said she doesn’t agree with Harris’ stance on the Israel-Hamas war and doesn’t believe Harris to be the “saving grace” the country needs.
But “I believe she’s a better candidate than Biden,” Grullón said, adding that she holds more “progressive” views than Harris.
“I vote with my values,” she said, adding that she’s supporting Harris reluctantly. “Those values are who’s going to speak on the needs of the communities that I come from, and those who are most affected within our communities. And it’s certainly not Donald Trump.”
When NBC News asked for a response to the backlash over Trump’s comments about Harris’ race, Steven Cheung, communications director for Trump’s campaign, replied, “Backlash from the truth?”
Harris addressed Trump’s comments hours later in Houston, at an event for the historically Black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho.
“It was the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect,” Harris said. “And let me just say the American people deserve better. The American people deserve better.”
Trump doubled down on questioning Harris’ racial identity later in the day, writing in a social media post, “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!”
Trump has relied on his familiar tactic of attacking Harris’ race and gender since Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris.
But some have said Trump’s race- and gender-centered attacks may alienate women and voters of color.
Joe Hill, who is Bolivian and white, said Trump’s attacks have only pushed him further into Harris’ corner.
“They make me want to be more supportive and more active, whether it’s donating $15 to her campaign or commenting on a post, making my voice heard,” Hill, 41, of Florida, said, adding that he’d already planned to vote for Harris in November.
Hill said his mother is an immigrant with Jamaican and Indian parentage, like Harris, and he didn’t speak English when he moved to the U.S. as a child. As a result, he grew up embracing and learning about both his Bolivian heritage and American identity.
“What Trump said about her is stuff I’ve heard!” Hill said. “Having two very different cultures, and loving both equally, and someone questioning that is so awful.”