Early in Donald Trump’s meltdown at this week’s National Association of Black Journalists convention, the former president offered unsolicited commentary on the racial identity of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. “She was Indian all the way,” Trump said of his presumptive opponent, “and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person. Somebody should look into that.”
There is a multitude of problems with Trump’s comments, from his presumption that he has the expertise and jurisdiction to judge someone else’s identity to his argument that Harris lacks the racial bona fides to merit the Black audience members’ allegiance. But the former president’s ramble offers another important conclusion: Trump simply doesn’t understand race. When Trump asks for somebody to “look into that,” the truth is that for years researchers have looked into that. What they’ve found is that overly simplified perspectives on race like Trump’s are not only misplaced, but they are counterproductive and dangerous.
Even the basics of how race is measured in America have evolved over time.
Scholars of race have long argued, and demonstrated, that race is a socially constructed category that still has very real outcomes. We, as members of society, constantly construct, deconstruct and reconstruct what race means.
Even the basics of how race is measured in America have evolved over time. The 1850 U.S. census was the first to acknowledge people of multiracial descent, with the category “Mulatto” used as a way to exclude them from having full political rights. Not until the 2000 census were multiracial Americans able to formally mark more than one racial identity. In fact, the multiracial population is the fastest growing racial group in the United States, with a 276% increase between 2010 and 2020.
As ABC News’ Rachel Scott pointed out to Trump, Harris “has always identified as a Black woman. She went to a historically Black college.” (Harris graduated from Howard University, where she was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically African American sorority.) But in Trump’s worldview, you’re either Indian or you’re Black. You cannot be both. This is ironic considering his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, is the father of three biracial (Indian and white) children. Trump doubled down on this sentiment after the NABJ interview: At his rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that same day, his campaign displayed a graphic quoting Harris as having referred to herself as the “first Indian-American senator.” Which, of course, she was. And which, of course, does nothing to disprove her Blackness, because she is both.
Trump fails to grasp what census takers recognized more than two decades ago and what Walt Whitman wrote two centuries ago: We contain multitudes. Harris is Indian. Harris is Black. This isn’t a contradiction.
Trump’s recent comments mark but one in a series of episodes showing he shares a misunderstanding all too common even in today’s increasingly diverse and multiracial society: the (hyper) essentializing of race and other social categories. Researchers describe essentialism as seeing particular qualities as being intrinsic or inherent to a particular group of people. These beliefs (e.g., all women are bad at math) start to form in early childhood and can further solidify as one ages depending on one’s further socialization.
People can claim more than one identity without being disingenuous
Trump’s false confidence in the essentialized either/or nature of identity leads him to believe that once he knows what you are, he’ll also know how you’ll think and act. It opens the door to thinking that Jewish voters who opt for his opponent are “bad Jews,” his frequent claims about the monolithic notion of “Black jobs,” and referring to anyone who criticizes Israel — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — as “a Palestinian,” even if Schumer was born in Brooklyn. Acknowledging the existence of multiracial identities completely scrambles this perspective and upsets the stereotypes that Trump holds close to his heart.
People can claim more than one identity without being disingenuous. Our identities are not limited to those labels others apply to us. Individuals who share aspects of their identities — whether race, gender, religion or otherwise — cannot be expected to all think, act or vote in the same way. It is likely too late for Trump to accept and fully grasp that millions of Americans are multiracial. But we hope that his racist comments will prompt other Americans to think more flexibly about identity.