Why Kamala Harris’ biracial identity upsets Donald Trump so muchPosted in Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Justice, United States on 2024-08-03 20:11Z by Steven |
Why Kamala Harris’ biracial identity upsets Donald Trump so much
MSNBC
2024-08-01
Sarah E. Gaither, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Samuel R. Sommers, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
Acknowledging the existence of multiracial identities completely scrambles Trump’s stereotypes.
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.
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…
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