Kamala Harris’ Skin Is Black But She Doesn’t Fight for the Disenfranchised

By Niko House, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

Since Kamala Harris announced her bid to run for President of the United States, many people have been forced to ask themselves, “Who is Kamala Harris?” Is she the first black vice president in US history? Is she the first Indian US senator? Is she San Francisco’s first Southeast Asian district attorney? Some would say she’s all of these things. 

However, we should be asking: Why is the conversation surrounding Kamala Harris’ identity so murky and contentious? More importantly, why is the focus of Vice President Harris’ 2024 presidential bid centered on how she identifies? 

As a black man raised in the states who comes from a mixed, ethnically ambiguous family, I feel I have the experience to answer those questions, while, hopefully, helping people understand why Harris’ candidacy poses an existential threat.

Many people are hyper-focused on Kamala Harris' racial identity, and the reason is relatively simple — Harris and the Democratic Party have presented a clear strategy of using race to help improve her chance of winning specific voter demographics. However, the reason why her race has become such a contentious issue, specifically in the black community, is a little more complicated. 

Why would Harris, or any politician, emphasize their race as a reason someone should vote for them? To get that demographic to assume that their lived experience will guide the policies and inspire them to fight on behalf of that group. And that is precisely why the issue of Harris’ race has become contentious. 

Nothing in Harris’ history as a politician or otherwise leads any objective observer to believe that her lived experience would influence her to fight on behalf of blacks and other disenfranchised voters. And it is their support she hopes to gain by putting on what can only be described as political blackface in an attempt at creating shallow, superficial relatability. 

Let’s exclude the specifics about her Indian mother and Jamaican father from the discussion. Truthfully, in the context of the political implications of the rhetoric surrounding Kamala, their backgrounds aren’t all that important. Let’s focus instead on Harris's actions. As a presidential candidate, does Harris’ platform suggest she would be an asset to black or other minority communities if she wins office? Unfortunately, I can’t answer that for you because, as of right now, Harris does not have a single policy position listed on her campaign site. 

As of right now, we cannot know if Harris plans to pass any policy that benefits the black community, whose identity and experience she has lent to her campaign’s narrative. So, the only reference we have now is the past. Given the context of this piece and this election, it’s fair to inquire whether Kamala has run for office with a campaign laser-focused on the asset that is her “black experience” in the past or if this is a recently adopted strategy. It may surprise some people that, aside from her initial presidential bid in 2020, the number of times Harris referred to herself as black while running for political office is around zero.

It’s also strange that there is no website or interview where Harris references her black heritage during her campaign for attorney general. In fact, from my research, it appears the Internet has been totally scrubbed of any evidence that she was even running for office except for the official website for the office of California’s Attorney General. However, even on that site, the account of Harris’ life story is misleading or outright false, saying she was raised in the Bay Area of California. By Harris’ own account, that’s false. She may have been born in the Bay Area, but some of her most formative years were lived in Montreal, Canada. The exact age at which she left the U.S. varies, but Harris’ most recent account says she left as early as 12 and didn’t return to the US until she attended Howard, and she did not return to California until she began law school. 

Her story comes off as misleading because the site doesn’t mention her father, who was a well-respected academic at Stanford University and is of Jamaican descent. Getting a person’s biographical information wrong isn’t all that strange. What is peculiar, however, is how seemingly impossible it is to find any info from Kamala’s DA and AG campaigns. 

Since we can’t use her past campaign rhetoric, the only reference point we have left is her actions while holding political office. At a time when she was not under a political microscope, was Harris’ time in office spent fighting on behalf of black and disenfranchised communities she is now courting as a black candidate? The unfortunate answer to that question is a resounding “no.” 

As DA, Harris’ office effectively paid off a witness and their family members with $60,000 worth of living expenses to insinuate that Jamal Trulove, a young black man, was guilty of murder. He faced life in prison, even though this witness had already stated before that she had no clear vision of the actual murderer. Harris’ mishandling of the case, including withholding evidence, led to the taxpayers of San Francisco forking out over $13,000,000 in damages to Trulove.

In fact, in a criminal justice system that tends to have disproportionately harmful outcomes for black and brown communities, partially due to corruption from police departments and the DA, Harris, regularly took advantage of those who did not have the means to defend themselves adequately, to improve her conviction rates. 

A prime example of how Harris’ pursuit of justice hurt the most vulnerable is in a truancy law she successfully pushed that punished parents with up to a year in jail and a hefty fine. This hurt poor minority communities, who would typically have their older children stay home to take care of sick siblings because parents could not afford to miss work. Although no one in San Francisco was jailed because of it, other California counties did use the law to put parents in jail. Kamala expressed regret for pushing the law – after she announced her bid for presidency around 2020. 

Kamala Harris also inexplicably led the charge to take the rights and royalties of the late singer Nina Simone from the family. Simone, known for her hit song “Four Women,” which includes the iconic line, “My skin is black,” left behind an estate worth millions – an estate that Kamala Harris took away while serving as California’s attorney general. In an interview regarding the estate, Simone’s granddaughter said, “Ask her [Harris] why my grandmother's estate is in SHAMBLES now. Ask her why we, as her family, no longer own the rights to anything. Ask her why she bullied my mother in court and my mom almost killed herself from the depression.” To add insult to injury, Kamala Harris played a Nina Simone song at her vice presidential inauguration as she was ironically celebrated as being the first black person and the first woman ever to serve the office. Rest assured, Simone’s family did not see a cent from Kamala’s campaign for using the song.

Although these are just a few examples of many, it should be clear why the issue of Kamala Harris’ race is so contentious. If one leans on an identity, it’s natural to assume the experiences of living that identity will drive the Harris campaign’s advocacy. However, not only has Harris not demonstrated that her self-proclaimed ethnic blackness will make her sympathetic to the struggle of black Americans and minorities, but based on her history, it seems that her policies and apathy for the struggles of the community she clings to could do incalculable damage that reverberates through future generations. This simple truth is why the discourse of her identity is essential to ponder. 

In past campaigns, Harris frequently mentions her Indian heritage but not her Afro-Jamaican/Caribbean heritage, which should be understood as different from African-American. But in her current campaign, she almost completely ignores her Indian heritage despite it being a significant talking point in past campaigns and the heritage she’s most familiar with. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that it genuinely doesn’t matter what race/ethnicity Kamala claims. She will be everything to everyone if it gains her power and prosperity.

And once she gains that power, she will step on everything and everyone to keep it.