Donald Trump’s Pants on Fire claim at NABJ about how Kamala Harris ‘became’ Black

In a contentious appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists annual conference in Chicago, former President Donald Trump argued with moderators over their questions and opened the conversation accusing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, of recently becoming Black.

When asked whether he agreed with some Republicans characterizing Harris as a "DEI hire," Trump launched into an unwieldy attack, claiming Harris had always promoted being Indian and that he "didn’t know" whether she was Black.

"She was always of Indian heritage, and she 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?" Trump said July 31. "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."

Trump tried to double down on Truth Social after the event, sharing a video of Harris with Indian actress Mindy Kaling, in which Harris says she is Indian. The video isn’t evidence that she didn’t also identify with her Black heritage.

This is a false mischaracterization of Harris’ background and heritage, and how she has spoken about, and identified with, her race and ethnicity.  

Trump’s attack isn’t new, and harks to the "birtherism" conspiracies he and others baselessly pushed about former President Barack Obama for years.

Harris, born of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, has identified as a Black woman who grew up in a multicultural household.

These kinds of claims reflect a poor understanding of history and the fluid nature and various interpretations of racial identity in the United States, race and politics experts say.

"The approach to Harris in this instance, the attempt to ‘other’ her, is a common practice in American politics," said Keneshia Grant, a political science professor at Howard University. "These tactics will continue because they work. People have to prepare themselves to check their own biases and fears and use logic and facts to guide their decision-making when these kinds of attacks occur."

The Harris campaign sent PolitiFact its statement on Trump’s NABJ appearance. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is Black, called the comments "repulsive" and "insulting."

The Trump campaign did not respond with evidence to support his assertions.

Harris is the daughter of an immigrant mother from India, Shyamala Gopalan, and an immigrant father from Jamaica, Donald Harris. She grew up in a Black middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley, California, where her parents would often join civil rights protests.

Donald Harris immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica after he got into the University of California, Berkeley, Kamala Harris wrote in her 2019 autobiography, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey." Shyamala Harris was born in Chennai, India, and moved to California after graduating from the University of Delhi to pursue a doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology at Berkeley. The couple separated when Harris was 5 and divorced a few years later, Harris wrote in her book.

Kamala Harris lived in California until she was in middle school, when she moved to Montreal after her mother was offered a teaching position at McGill University.

Harris attended college at Howard University, an historically Black university, in Washington, D.C., and earned her law degree at the University of California, Hastings in 1989.

Harris has embraced her Black identity and multicultural background in several ways.

When she was at Howard University, Harris pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority. As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting her colleagues’ legislation to strengthen voting rights and policing reforms.

The New York Times in 2020 spoke with some of Harris’ high school classmates from Montreal. They told reporters Harris identified as Black back then, too, while navigating complicated racial and social divisions at the school.

"In high school, you were either in the white or the Black group," Wanda Kagan, her best friend from Westmount High School, who had a white mother and a Black father, told the Times. "We didn’t fit exactly into either, so we made ourselves fit into both."

Although Harris was able to navigate her intersectionality, Kagan told the newspaper that "she identified as being African-American" and found belonging in the Black community there, adding that she and Harris would attend Black community dance parties and gripe about having to be home by 11 p.m.

Featured Fact-check

Mac Heller

stated on April 7, 2019 in an interview on CNN

"The 2008 election was the first election in which voters of color comprised over 25 percent of the electorate, and that number is going up."

In 2007, when questions arose about former President Barack Obama’s Blackness as he ran for president, Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, said many Americans have a limited perception of Black people. "We are diverse and multifaceted," Harris said. "People are bombarded with stereotypical images and so they are limited in their ability to imagine our capacity."

In 2010, when Harris was months away from being elected as California’s attorney general, one story described her as being raised in a Black neighborhood, where she attended Black churches, but also worshiped in her mother’s Hindu temple and had made visits to her family in India.

"Running for office, you have to simplify or condense or put into preexisting boxes who you are, so people will have a sense of you based on what they easily and quickly identify," Harris said. "I grew up in a family where I had a strong sense of my culture and who I am, and I never felt insecure about that at all. Slowly, perhaps, with each of us taking on more prominent positions, people will start to understand the diversity of the people."

Harris told The Washington Post in 2019 that she identifies as "an American," and that she’s been comfortable with her identity from an early age, something she credits to her Hindu immigrant single mother, who adopted Black culture and immersed her daughters in it. Harris said she grew up embracing her Indian culture while proudly living as a Black girl. She said the same in her book.

She told the Post that she hasn’t spent much time dwelling on how to categorize herself, but being forced to define herself was more of a struggle when she first ran for office.

When Harris and President Joe Biden campaigned together as running mates in summer 2020, they highlighted the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy: the first Black woman and the first South Asian American to be nominated for national office by a major party in the United States.

Trump said Harris was Indian and then "made a turn" and "became a Black person."

This is blatant mischaracterization of Harris’ heritage and how she has spoken about, and has identified with, her racial background and ethnicity.

Harris, born of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, has long identified as a Black woman who grew up in a multicultural household. She attended a historically Black university, pledged an historically Black sorority, and has given interviews and written about her experience embracing her Indian culture while living as a Black woman.

Pants on Fire!

Related: Kamala Harris is again facing attacks on her racial identity. Here’s more about her background.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.