Imagine the scene. Donald Trump is giving a speech to a room of *checks notes* Black journalists in Chicago, when he comes out with the following about fellow presidential rival Kamala Harris: “She was always of Indian heritage, 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?”

The audience bursts into laughter. It’s not quite ‘drink bleach to cure Covid’ levels of out-there, but it’s irritatingly stupid. You might expect Trump to be un-PC or dense about race relations but this line of attack is all too familiar for mixed-race people like me. We’re all too used to people picking apart our identity or trying to get us to choose a side – and Kamala Harris has probably had a lifetime of it.  

Her parents both moved to the US during the civil rights movement. In her 2019 autobiography, she wrote about her and her sister having “classical Indian names [that] harked back to our heritage” and they were raised “with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture”. Against that backdrop, her Indian mother deliberately raised Harris and her sister “as Black” because she believed that’s how the world would see them at first. Harris then went to Howard, the best-known Black college in the country. But remember, Harris was born in 1964 – four years before Martin Luther King was assassinated – so it’s not that surprising that her mum might want to instil a degree of Black pride early on. Quite clearly, Harris celebrates both sides of her identity.

There are plenty of mixed-race people in the US. In fact, when Harris ran for vice president in 2020, 33.8 million Americans identified as being more than one race – 32% of whom aren’t white-mixed. Over in the Caribbean, huge swathes of the population are Afro-Asian, and it’s not a big deal. So why does the former president of the United States need Harris to confirm which part of her racial make-up she identifies as?

I think mixed heritage makes a lot of monoracial people feel uncomfortable. Especially in a hyper-racialised society like America, ticking multiple boxes and being part of numerous communities means that you’re harder to fit into the social order of things. If a white man – who’s running on an anti-immigrant ticket – can’t understand where Harris fits into the social ladder, it makes it harder to take her down. Trump has also accused her of ‘turning Black’, as though she’s being inauthentic or untrustworthy. JD Vance, his running mate, has also said Harris has a “fundamental chameleon-like nature”. That suggests a suspicion of racially ambiguous people who can’t easily be placed. If you ever wondered why lots of us don’t like being asked where we’re really from, it comes down to this. It’s not a benevolent line of questioning or an attempt at connection. 

And then there are the accusations of her switching accents to ‘sound Black’, which moves us into code-switching territory. We all do it. My accent pendulum swings between received pronunciation at home or with posher friends, East End/Essex down the pub and slightly more urban with other mates. It’s a part of fitting in, and in my opinion, all those different behaviours and accents contribute to who we are as a whole. I’m not sure I see being chameleon-like as a negative thing – it shows you’re not a robot.

Since Trump’s weird outburst, the internet has exploded with folks desperate to prove both sides. I’ve seen countless op-eds about Harris’s Blackness, and why it’s normal to talk of Obama, Meghan Markle and others through that mono-lens. Other people have shared photos of Harris wearing traditional Indian clothes or cooking Indian food to prove that she’s not ‘really’ Black.

Here in the UK, we talk about race slightly differently. We don’t operate under a one-drop rule (the slavery system that saw people categorised as ‘Black’ if they had any Black blood). We’re far more open about mixed heritage, thanks to our ties to the Commonwealth, Windrush and post-partition immigration. But even here, we’re expected to lean towards one identity. There are still forms that make you tick just the one box for your ethnicity – or the vague-sounding ‘mixed/other’.

I’d argue that being mixed race and working in overwhelmingly white offices naturally pushes you towards other non-white colleagues. I’m second-generation mixed: my dad’s family is Ghanaian; my mum’s is white British. Because of my frizzy hair and slightly darker skin, lots of people assume I’m north African, Spanish or Israeli. And plenty of people have said weird things, like asking if my dad can understand English or asking for racial percentages to make sense of my appearance. I’ve had people (both Black and white) talk of me as just being Black – which can be uncomfortable – but during a Black Lives Matter discussion, I was asked to join a ‘white-passing’ group to talk about our role in racism as paler mixed-race people (I refused). I’ve been told by hairdressers that I should have ‘warned’ them about my hair before booking an appointment – and then called over a Black stylist to help out.

I always remember someone telling me that the person I ended up with would dictate which side of my mix I would identify with the most. That meant overthinking every relationship from then on; was I becoming ‘whiter’ with every white boyfriend? Would I eventually identify as Black if I stuck with my Zimbabwean partner (whose parents thought me too white)? In the end, I’ve married a Jewish guy – like Kamala Harris – and found that both of us share a kind of racial outsider perspective. One reason I’ve not changed my surname is because it’s the biggest signifier of my racial identity. 

Being mixed is a complicated identity and one that inevitably draws comment and intrigue from other people. That’s fine, but Trump’s is such a boring take on an old subject. Go after her record in office, tear down her ‘Brat girl summer’ memes – but it’s out of order to suggest that Harris has suddenly decided to ‘turn Black’ for the sake of votes. It’s also jarring to see how many people are engaging in the same kind of ‘Well, what is she then?’ conversation online. Surely there are more pertinent things to debate right now? Kamala Harris is both Black and Asian, not one or the other – and she’s right to champion both sides.  

Images: Getty