“She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
Donald Trump claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was playing up her African ancestry to win political points during his half-hour interview at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on July 31. The former president’s comments reflect a deep misunderstanding of America’s long history of racial classification. As the daughter of an Indian mother and Afro-Jamaican father, Kamala Harris is of “mixed race” – but her Black ancestry makes her Black in the United States.
The “one-drop rule”
The “one drop rule” holds that any person with a Black ancestor – anyone with “one drop” of Black blood – is considered Black in the United States.
A product of slavery, racial classification of the children descended from African slaves and European indentured servants or slaveholders began in the 1660s. Stringent anti-miscegenation laws that discouraged or prohibited interracial marriage did not curb sexual relationships between the races. These unions resulted in biracial and multiracial children who were neither Black nor white. Questions about their place in society quickly ensued, as did their legal status as free or enslaved.
To clarify these matters, the informal one-drop rule was enacted in the South. This principle dictated that children born of enslaved mothers were classified as Black. And, consequently, they were the property of their owners. Biracial children were an economic asset to the white enslavers. Indeed, rape became a tool of financial advancement for enslavers who sought to increase their property following the 1808 ban on importing enslaved humans from other countries.
Whites believed they were the superior race and could not be enslaved. Thus, white enslavers used the one-drop rule to justify slavery – even if the enslaved were extremely light-skinned and had European features.
The one-drop rule did not end with emancipation
This principle became fully incorporated into Jim Crow laws as a way to ensure racial segregation. After 1865, the U.S. sought legal restrictions to define who was white and who was Black. As southern states began to remake their constitutions, they codified the one-drop rule into law. This left the biracial Booker T. Washington to surmise:
It is a fact, that if a person is known to have one percent of African blood in his veins, he ceases to be a white man. The ninety-nine percent of Caucasian blood does not weigh by the side of the one percent African blood…The person is Negro every time.
Under Jim Crow laws, racial segregation, and the one-drop rule, any American who had even the smallest amount of African ancestry was defined as Black. Even people who appeared white could be identified by others as Black because of their family members, or because of certain phenotypical giveaways such as a distinguishable curl pattern in one’s hair.
Race in the U.S. Census
These racial classifications became codified in government documents like the U.S. Constitution and constitutionally mandated activities like the U.S. Census. Racial categories were included in the first U.S. Census in 1790 – and updates to these categories continue to this day.
In the 20th century, the “Black/African American/Negro” category applied to all individuals deemed phenotypically Black, including people of Jamaican descent – like Harris’ father. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. census deemed the categories mutually exclusive. Prior to 1960, a census worker typically assigned each individual a specific race.
Harris’ birthplace, Oakland, California, was no different from the rest of the United States in 1964. The U.S. Census deemed an individual with any Black ancestry – whether one drop or one parent – as “Black.” This continued into the 1980s, when Susie Guillory Phipps lost her battle at the Supreme Court to have her birth certificate changed to “white” following a repeal of a Louisiana law that had codified the one-drop rule.
Census categories have continued to shift and change throughout the history of this country. Thanks to the activism of multiracial individuals and their allies, in 2000 the U.S. Census practices changed to allow an individual to select more than one census race box.
How Harris experienced the one-drop rule
Shortly after Trump’s comments at the NABJ, journalist Natasha S. Alford posted an excerpt from Harris’ memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.” This excerpt forcefully demonstrates that Shyamala Gopalan understood that her daughters are Black. While she raised her daughters Kamala and Maya Harris to appreciate their rich Indian heritage, Gopalan also was aware that America would view the girls as Black. In her memoir, Harris writes, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters.”
It’s clear from this comment that Harris has long seen herself as Black, acknowledging America’s long history of racial classification. Her decision to attend Howard University and join Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. further reinforces the fact that Harris has always seen herself as a Black woman in America.
Nadia E. Brown is a professor of government and the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Georgetown University. She is the author of Sisters in the Statehouse.
Ange-Marie Hancock is the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University and the curator of The Kamala Harris Project. Her books include The Politics of Disgust and the Public Identity of the “Welfare Queen,” Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics, and Intersectionality: An Intellectual History.
