How Trump’s attacks on Kamala Harris’s Black heritage are reviving racist ‘birther’ conspiracy theories

Donald Trump’s false claims that Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black” and only recently “became a Black person” have inflamed racist conspiracy theories surrounding his Democratic rival.

The former president’s allies haveseized on his unhinged remarks by reviving racist “birther” claims that Trump has repeatedly used to undermine his opponents’ ethnic backgrounds, when he suggested that Harris wasn’t “born in this country” during the 2020 election and years earlier doubted whether Barack Obama was a US citizen by demanding to see his birth certificate.

His latest statements have turchocharged online racism that has surrounded the 2024 election, with supporters posting copies of her “birth certificate” and accusing Harris of “changing” her race for political reasons.

Harris’s father was born in Jamaica and is Afro-Jamaican, and her mother is Indian. The vice president has discussed at length her upbringing in a biracial family and as a Black Americanwith family roots in both Jamaica and in southern India.

“I didn’t know she was Black,” Trump told a panel of Black journalists on Wednesday.

“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?” he said. “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”

Right-wing media personalities have spent years attacking Harris’s ethnicity and claiming she only uses her identities for political reasons. But in the days before Trump’s latest remarks, and after Harris launched her presidential campaign, media figures and social media influencers revived bogus statements to cast doubt on her ethnic background.

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