The United States former president and presidential candidate, Donald Trump, recently called out the current United States Vice President and presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, on her claims of Blackness. What resulted was a heated debate that should concern anyone who wants to maintain a sense of sanity on race and Blackness.
There are some people who think that Donald Trump is only as correct as a broken clock. But even if these people are true in their claim that Trump is a broken clock, then it appears his clock has synced with the proper time—because he is spot on with his analysis of Kamala Harris!
Kamala Harris is a shapeshifter who aims to weaponize race for her political gain. In truth, she is an Indian-Irish woman. Indeed, when Harris ran as vice president alongside Joe Biden, the Asian American voter turnout increased significantly, from 49 percent in 2016 to 60 percent in 2020. Similarly, the voter turnout for Asian Pacific Islanders in the U.S. also increased from 41 percent in 2016 to 55 percent in 2020.
Asian Americans recognized her racial identity, though it works in their favor to suppress their outward approval that would otherwise call attention to the privileges that Harris bestows upon them and which may also jeopardize her chances of usurping the power of the Black vote for Indian-Irish causes. Kamala Harris has proudly passed legislation to help Asian and Asian American citizens of the U.S. and will continue to do so without reservations through her thankless attempt to usurp the power of the Black vote in American politics.
But you will less often hear Harris talk about her Asian Americanness, though her mother is fully Indian and her father is mostly or partly Indian. When it is politically expedient, Harris also calls herself Black, that is when it suits her and her party to curry favor with Black voters. Though there are no comparable moves where African American citizens are supported economically by her administration and oversight, not in California where she was Attorney General and certainly not in her oversized role as Vice President in the pale white house.
If Kamala Harris is Black, then I have a bridge to sell you. And that bridge is right next to Hunter Biden’s laptop, which is in the same location as Hillary Clinton’s bleached email servers. Blackness is not something you wear for a few months every four years when you are desperately trying to collect votes. Blackness is not determined based on what country you are born in. Blackness surely is not determined by what college you attended, what sorority you pledged, or what you feel like today or tomorrow. By using all of these examples, the Harris camp belittles the very essence of Blackness—its direct tie to Africanness.
When in fact, the only direct tie that people can find on Kamala Harris’s father’s side is to Europeanness, to Irishness. It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media that Kamala Harris is a descendant of white Irishmen—yes, white Irishmen—who enslaved many Africans on their plantations in that very Jamaica her father comes from. Now this fact comes with a twist of irony. The very woman who calls herself Black to get votes from African Americans is actually a woman who comes from a family that believes in and carried out the enslavement of African Americans.
Fool me once, U.S. Democratic Party, with Barack Obama’s dreams of a father he never knew. Fool me once, with an impassioned story of paternity in a country where more than forty percent of paternity tests come back negative—meaning, not the father (ask Maury Povich). Fool me once, shame on my suspension of disbelief and my extension of good faith to the person who took me for a fool. But…you fool me, can’t get fooled a‘gin!
This time, I am prepared for the race hustle. This time, I cannot accept a claim of Blackness where obviously there is none—no matter how impassioned the claim. I have no more acceptance to give: only scrutiny, discernment, and careful precaution. Let us hope, for all our sakes, that the American people will exercise the same vigilance.
“Black is a social construct” is what they will assert.
Unfortunately Trump is a wishy washy opportunistic thing who had African asylum seekers and separated migrant children from their parents. He called Africa “shit hole”. If this was not the case I’d campaign for him.
Basweka Mawanda he only stated the truth. Please pardon his fairness and campaign for him
I want neither him nor her. That’s my position.
The end is funny. Thank you.
That near perfect colored picture is definitely not from 1965 though I fully understand the concerns of the writer. I believe Harris toes the line of “blackness” when it suits her in order to curry black votes but is fully committed to political advancement of the Asian community. At the end of the day, both Trump and Harris don’t give a damn about black people so I give no damn about them and their political ambitions.
Great write up. In Trumpnoid
So if I should have a child with a FRAFRA and bear a child and a divorce occurs in child’s infancy and the mother nurtures, raises child up in Ghana or Accra New Town and grows up speaking Frafra and attending Frafra ocassions, he or she ceases to be a GA if she or he claims to be GA!!!?
What warped logic is this too? Was Rawlings an Ewe or even a GHANAIAN?
Rawlings. You people and Rawlings. The guy got under your skins bad. I mean you had to dig deep to pull out Rawlings from your ass. I know. It is a love hate relationship you had with the guy. Anyways, Rawlings’ mother was African/Black. Which part of Kamala is African/Black. Her father’s mother? Or her fathers’ Irish father. Please provide the answer. Please!
Dade Afre Akufu I have seen her father’s picture, and Rev Al Sharpton is whiter than him.
Nana Otu Akoto There are many Indians much, much darker than me. Is that your point? A picture? Is that the evidence? Yet you denounce Kamala’s Birth Certificate that clearly denounces that she is African/Black? You refuse to accept that the lady is Caucasian/Indian as her Birth Record indicates, yet you provide refuting evidence to this effect with the cursory looks of a picture. You people!
If you want people like her go to the Caribbean or native American territory.
The more I read it the more it is nonsense! Of course haven’t been raised by an Indian mother she would grow up in Indian community but that can not extricate him from her blackness.
I remember when my son asked his mother in infancy while they lived in Finland, whether by washing his body OVER the years, he would turn as white as a Scandinavian!!! Of course he was right asking because there was no BLACK person nor even Asian where he grew up! What is he then?
“Amar Jali?” What, is he an Arab? How does an apparent Arab get to be an authority on Black identity in America?
Harris’ father is a Black Jamaican, mother immigrated from India. Harris attended an HBCU and is an AKA member, which tends to define one’s personal social circles for the rest of one’s life (for those here unfamiliar with African American life). Her father is an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford.
How dishonest IS “Amar Jali?” Harris’ paternal grandmother claims to be descended from an Irish plantation owner in Jamaica (generations back), though that Irish lineage is obviously not predominant. From this, dishonest ignorant provocateur Amar Jali declares Harris to be “Irish Indian.”
We here in American face an existential struggle, and there are unfortunately only two viable choices: a centrist Democrat who has at times used identity to obscure establishment neoliberal policies, and an outright fascist who directly appeals to white supremacism and scapegoats African Americans and other nonwhites. Now, here comes ignorant-ass Amar Jali, trolling for Trump. Has “Amar Jali” contributed anything of value to his own country? Doubtful. Let him stay there and foul it up more than it is already.
(“apparent Arab” here is satirical, for the humorless literals among us)
Irish men in Jamaica are Original irish. Europe dumped its black population in the carribean.
Self-Identity is a great colonial strategy. Imagine you move to some new place. Wipe out the indigenous people there by disease, war and pestilence. Then you proceed to call yourself “indigenous”. And then when sane people challenge you, you charge them with playing identity politics. Although your Self-Identification Strategems are the very definition of Identity Politics. Yet the few left-over indigenous people cannot see that these strategems are meant to cement colonialism, as the least, and to complete the genocide in sum. But alas!
Well!
Narmer Amenuti Yes, it is shocking what the left-over indigenous people can do to complete the genocide against them. Amara Jali has painted a real disturbing picture of the dissonance some African Americans have with their own identity. It’s shocking. I have been fascinated about the Obama rodeo, and before that by the AKA squads of the eastwhile Mulatto bourgeois of the Americas. But how the indigenous accept their own slaughter, beats me right from get go. I find the whole Kamala appeal on some African Americans completely stupefying. You are correct, nothing to say but “Well!”
Dear Amara Jali. The fact that we have to explain this to indigenous peoples. The fact that you have to spend your fine brain powers on a subject like this, to convince the Stupid, that a Caucasian/Indian woman is not a Black/African Woman, goes to show that Indigenous Peoples everywhere are endangered not only through the doing of European Colonialism and Imperialism, but through a sort of Self-Inflicted Schadenfreude. The indigenous will sooner be wiped out by this trickery of neocolonialism and neoliberalism than outright war, disease and pestilence has ever done. I wish this wasn’t the case, but sadly it is. The Stupid Levels are irrecoverable.
Even the METHA (the Mis-Educated Than His Ancestors) has forgotten that to be referred to by the specific Name is to exist in the space. It is a recognition of an inclusion. If everyone is the same name, then no one exists, and everyone else, but the one doing the Killing, can exist, and it would make no difference. Worse, this neoliberalism of Self-Identity does not only promote the dangerous idea of Sameness, it promotes the most dangerous idea of Meaninglessness. If I can be anything at any time, then I am NOT any thing at all times. This meaningless which Self-Identity promotes, since what is Kamala as an African American without the link to the indigenous, only leads to the making of the Meanignlessness of Africanness. And then when Africanness is Meaningless, then can our lands be misappropriated, our cultures owned with exclusive proprietary rights, and the people replaced? Few METHA consider the serious insidiousness of a seemingly innocuous idea, this neoliberal fad of Self-Identity.
While I have your attention. The use of grey commonalities as evidence of the non-existence of clear organic category is certainly a Spaceshifting Idea as Amara has described Kamal herself.
Correct. The theory proceeds like this: Dressers, Chairs and Tables have 4 legs. Some dressers have stronger 4 legs than Tables. And vice versa, and some tables have stronger, fatter, longer legs than chairs and vice versa. What is the point? To tell us that Dressers, Tables and Chairs actually do not exist. That they are all the same as they all have 4 legs. Can’t you see? – they insist. This obsession with calling some things Dressers, others Tables and yet others Chairs is a just Conservative BS. Let us, and this is the claim, call some chairs Dressers, and some dressers Tables. This way we can love Dressers, Tables and Chairs more equally. You see?
You Narmer Amenuti are not as smart as I previously thought you were! Who are you to impune the blackness of anyone who survived the horror of slavery including the rapes! When you insult the Black legitimacy a fairer skinned black descendants of enslaved people it only goes to show your ignorance of these realities that my people survived through by any and every means possible. We are people who began by being sold by African Chiefs to Europeans who stole our labor, and sold our babies that resulted from rape and breeding farms. My people have been subjected to a lot and will not countenance being looked down upon by Continental Africans in America who benefit from our civil rights wins that make everything they do here possible. If you had been through even a sliver of what we have encountered in this country and survived, nay thrived in spite of, you would show an iota of respect where it is due. We are a unique African people of many hues and tones which are representative of our many survival struggles in an America we built on every level. If you read more black history you will know more of what you speak and possibly refrain therefore from denigrating people born of struggle. We don’t need another fight from Africans who want to benefit and connect from our struggles and then claim their superiority of quote on quote blackness because they are closer to the motherland that we share. We are as much African as You are and yet at the same time we are the Americans who make your journey in America possible. Disrespecting people who have European or Asian relatives, for Africans have spread around the entire planet since time immemorial and melted into many cultures across the four winds. Yet, in still, we share the same Mother, Africa whether or not we meet your standard of blackness!
Stop confusing ancestry with culture!