As Trump questions Harris' identity, a look at the history of race in American politics

Earlier this week, while speaking at a gathering of Black journalists, former President Donald Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity. Laura Barrón-López speaks with Peniel Joseph, founding director of UT Austin’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, about the history of Black identity, race and racism in American politics.

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Laura Barrón-López: Earlier this week, speaking to a gathering of Black Journalists, former President Donald Trump questioned vice president Kamala Harris’s racial identity.

Donald Trump , Former U.S. President: And now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know is she Indian or is she black?

Reporter: She is always identified as a black woman and she went to a historically black college.

Trump: But you know what? I respect either one. I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went — she became a black person.

Laura Barrón-López: It’s not the first time Mr. Trump and other Republicans have accused a politician of color of not knowing their own race or ethnicity. Trump’s comments on Wednesday echoed his lies about Harris in 2020 and Barack Obama during his presidency, that they were not natural born American citizens.

Peniel Joseph is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s also author of “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century.”

I want to first note that back in 2020, Donald Trump’s campaign spokesperson said that Kamala Harris is a black woman, and pointed to donations that Trump had made to her earlier campaigns is evidence that he is not racist. But again, these are not the first instances of Trump questioning Harris’s identity and her race. What is behind this?

Peniel Joseph , The University of Texas at Austin: I think this is a long standing tradition of questioning the citizenship, the dignity, the authenticity, of black political figures. When we think about Kamala Harris, in this context, what Trump is doing is really talking to his own base. He’s talking to white voters who are aggrieved by this idea, which is false, that they are being replaced by people of color, sometimes they feel they’re being replaced by Jews.

So there is this racist, antisemitic strain that he is tapping into by saying she doesn’t know whether she wants to be South Asian, she doesn’t know whether she wants to be black. He’s signaling to his followers, that this is the coming wave that I’m here to protect you again.

Laura Barrón-López: As you noted, Donald Trump isn’t the only white politician to question the identity of people of color, or try to define who is or isn’t really black. But how far does this go back? Where did it start? What’s the history of it?

Peniel Joseph: Well, the history of questioning people’s racial identity goes back to Antebellum America where, in certain context, African Americans who are mixed race tried to get their rights legally acknowledged by courts. And in this country, we really have a one drop rule where whether your mother or father was white, you were legally defined as black as a species of property, who could not be willed any estates who couldn’t be an air of a white person who couldn’t run for public office who couldn’t sit in juries.

Now, when we fast forward to the 20th and the 21st century, as we know, there’s a whole bunch of African Americans of mixed race heritage, but they’re still identified as black in this country.

Kamala Harris went to Howard University, Historically Black College. She’s at aka Alpha Kappa Alpha, which is part of the Divine Nine, historically, African American sorority and fraternities. She’s lived her life as a black woman.

In this context, the move to undermine the authentic experience of black people plays out in different contexts, both culturally, politically, economically. In this context, it’s the denial that a black woman could be President of the United States, because in certain ways that racial and gender barrier are one of the last symbolic barriers that we have to break.

Laura Barrón-López: I wanted to ask you about a Pew survey that dates back to 2022, where it found that race is very much a part of the identity for black Americans and how they connect to others. It found that 76 percent of black Americans say being black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves.

So what happens to black Americans when someone who is in a leading position like Donald Trump just openly questions who is or isn’t black?

Peniel Joseph: Well, I think it makes black Americans think about the solidarity and the unity of their shared history, right. And so in certain ways, Trump and these allegations against Kamala Harris, just like the allegations against Barack Obama, that he wasn’t an American citizen, are a distraction.

And the late great Nobel Prize winning writer Toni Morrison always reminds us that racism is a distraction, it distracts us from the work that we need to do. So I think right now, all the reaction that we’re seeing is that the black community is really solidly behind the Vice President, but also other groups are as well. So, I think it’s having the opposite effect. But again, I don’t think it’s intended to be directed to black people.

Laura Barrón-López: When I covered the 2019 Democratic primary, even Democratic primary voters said to me that they weren’t sure if the country was ready for a woman president or was ready for a woman of color to be president. Do you think that it’s different now?

Peniel Joseph: Well, yes, I mean, I think the country is always battling between two stories, it’s telling itself. One story is a reconstructionist story that celebrates multiracial multigender democracy. The other is a redemption story that really is about fear, anxiety, a racial caste system that subordinates black people, women, people of color, Jews, people who are otherwise in our society.

And I think with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, that really opened up this third Reconstruction period in the United States, where we’ve been pushing for an embrace of multiracial democracy, yet those redemption is forces are still there, as we’ve seen, with the Vice President’s run to be the first black woman and South Asian woman president. It brings us closer to that idea of an aspirational America where we embrace multiracial democracy, and we find strength in the difference in the diversity within our country.

Laura Barrón-López: Professor Peniel Joseph of the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you for your time.

Peniel Joseph: Thank you.