Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks to reporters at the Four Seasons Hotel Houston on October 25, 2024, in Houston, Texas. | Source: Justin Sullivan / Getty
At this point, MAGA conservatives have spent far more time discussing the racial identity of Kamala Harris than Harris ever has — by a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, Harris has occasionally mentioned the pride she takes in being a Black woman. During an appearance on The Breakfast Club in 2019, for example, she said, “I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black, and I was born Black, I will die Black.” However, it has never been a central part of her campaign as president or as President Joe Biden’s VP, and she hasn’t much engaged in the public discourse around it. For right-wing America, on the other hand, Harris’ Blackness has been a consistent source of fake controversy (non-troversy, if you will).
Now, the same people who have repeatedly called her a “DEI hire” for no other reason than that she’s a Black woman — also the same people who have attacked her over her ties to HBCUs and the Black sorority she pledged — are having a field day trivializing Black identity by denying hers.
Donald Trump and his cohorts keep pretending they don’t really care about Harris’ race, and yet they keep bringing it up unprompted. Candace Owens, who, of all people, has no business questioning anyone’s Blackness, has made it her mission to prove to Black people that Harris isn’t Black. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has also jumped on the bandwagon of white people who can’t mind their own Caucasian business regarding Harris’ racial identity.
To be fair, it isn’t only conservatives who seem to have this problem. Recently, Breakfast Club host Charlamagne Tha God got into a heated debate with CNN host Anderson Cooper about how his network has spent more time discussing whether or not Harris is, in fact, Black than it has about Trump being a fascist. (Cooper called Charlamagne’s assertion “bullsh*t,” but, remember, it was a CNN host that Harris had to check, demanding, “Next question, please,” after the question about her heritage was brought up.)
Still, it is largely white conservative America that has been fixated on Harris’ race, either to discredit her qualifications based on her Blackness or to discredit her Blackness in a desperate attempt to keep Black people from voting for her.
For a shining example of this, look no further than Trump ally Laura Loomer, who has proven herself to be such a rabid racist that even rabid racist Marjorie Taylor Greene has challenged her to check her privilege.
From the Inquisitr:
Loomer questioned Harris’ lineage fanning Trump’s birthing rhetoric and even retrieved the vice president’s birth certificate to disparage her. “I decided to identify as a black woman. Therefore I am a black woman. That’s how you guys and @TheDemocrats said it works, right?”, she wrote on X. Furthermore, the far-right political activist asserted that she is “blacker than Harris” when she appeared on Rumble’s Loomer Unleashed program. “I’m not Black, obviously. I’m not going to pretend to be Black like Kamala Harris does, although I will say I’m blacker than Kamala Harris.”
According to Media Matters, she continued her tirade during the live session saying, “How much more is she going to pander to Black people?” Loomer asked. “‘I’m gonna legalize weed.’ Does she think that all Black people smoke marijuana? Does she think all Black men are drug addicts?” On August 1 Loomer posted a copy of Harris’ birth certificate on X with the caption aiming at her parents and grandparents. “Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say that she is Black or African,” she wrote. She then went on to back Trump’s theory that Harris is not a woman of color.
Where do I even start?
Not only is Loomer not “Blacker than Kamala Harris,” but she is a white supremacist who is whiter than the whitest white in the history of white-ology.
Loomer is so white that she has drawn a connection that only a white person could draw between Harris’ advocacy for Marijuana legalization and her appeal to Black men.
“Does she think that all Black people smoke marijuana?”
Well, no, Loomer — nobody thinks that. Everyone is aware that white people and other non-Black people also smoke weed, which is why there’s no reason to think Harris’ bid to legalize it has anything to do with Black voters — unless you are weird, delusional Klan-ish Karen of a racist-ass-racist.
Loomer is so insufferably white that she doesn’t understand how non-white birth certificates work.
“Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say that she is Black or African.”
Why TF would it? Harris’ mother is Indian and her father is Jamaican. She’s a biracial woman and neither of her parents are African. I mean, I get that Loomer’s birth certificate probably notes that she’s whiter than all of Whitelandia and the Whitetropolis hemisphere, but that doesn’t make the absence of the word “Black” on Harris’ birth certificate some kind of smoking gun for Republicans who pretend to abhor identity politics when, in reality, it’s their favorite card to play when an opponent is Black.
In fact, the only other time white people have been this obsessed with a presidential candidate’s birth certificate was during Barack Obama’s presidency and presidential campaigns. That’s not a coincidence — that’s whiteness and the racism that comes with it.
“I’m not going to pretend to be Black like Kamala Harris does.”
But she doesn’t.
That Harris’ father is Black is not a matter of opinion, it’s a fact. The truth is, there has never been a time when Harris shied away from the Black or Indian parts of her racial background. Obviously, a person would not attend Howard University and pledge Alpha Kappa Alpha if they were trying to hide their Blackness, but it’s not like she walks around with an afro, a dashiki and an ’80s-style boombox bumping Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” either. She has neither denied her Blackness nor made it a focal point of her identity. All Harris does is exist in the world of politics as a Black woman and woman of color, and reach a height in that world that makes white conservatives transparently nervous — and, apparently, that’s all it takes.
SEE ALSO:
Black Women And Kamala Harris: A Conversation With Strategist Aimee Allison
Trump’s Latest Racist Dog Whistle Called Kamala Harris Lazy…As He Relaxed At His Florida Golf Resort
