At a recent convention for Black journalists, Donald Trump questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity:
I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when 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?
Trump’s remarks elicited a backlash, even as many conservatives rallied to his side and also questioned whether Harris was Black. Meanwhile, the news media continue to describe her race and ethnicity in various ways. All of this begs the question: How do Americans actually perceive Kamala Harris’ racial identity?
In March 2024, about five months before the convention, we fielded a nationally representative survey of 2,492 Americans with the firm Dynata. We asked this open-ended question: “How would you describe Kamala Harris’ ethnic or racial background?”
How we did our research
We chose an open-ended format because we did not want respondents to choose from predetermined racial and ethnic categories. This approach allows for genuine, off-the-cuff reactions. We then hand-coded all 2,492 responses to get a comprehensive sense of the racial classifications that Americans actually use to describe Harris.
Overall, respondents described Harris 11 different ways:
A plurality, 33%, described her as Black only. Sixteen percent identified her as biracial Black and Asian, and 13% said that she was multiracial without specifying a particular racial or ethnic group. Some survey respondents said that she was Asian only (4%) or Latino, Native American, or something else (5%). A smaller percentage (2%) identified her as multiracial Black, meaning they said she was multiracial but only specified her Black identity. And 1% said that she was multiracial but only specified her Asian identity.
At that point in time, a decent number of respondents were uninformed or even misinformed about Harris’ ethnic identity. Overall, 21% said that they did not know what her racial/ethnic background was, and 5% mistakenly believed that Harris is not Black, Asian, or multiracial.
Respondents’ racial identity shapes how they see Harris
We also found that Asian and Black Americans were more likely to identify Kamala Harris as solely part of their racial in-group. For example, Black Americans (39%) were most likely to say that Kamala Harris was Black only, compared to 35% of whites, 31% of Latinos, and 21% of Asians. Similarly, Asian Americans were most likely to identify Harris only as Asian (16%), while smaller proportions of whites (4%), Blacks (2%), Latinos (3%), and multiracial individuals (2%) said the same.
Asian Americans were also the most likely to identify Harris as biracial Black and Asian (25%), followed by Blacks (17%), whites and multiracial respondents (16%), and Latinos (11%). Further, Asian Americans were the only group that is more likely to identify Harris as Black and Asian (25%) than Black only (21%).
Multiracial people were most likely to identify Harris as multiracial without specifying a particular race (21%). That’s higher than the percentage of multiracial people who identified her as Black only (16%). This may reflect how “multiracial” is becoming an emerging identity in and of itself.
Taken together, it appears that respondents’ own racial and ethnic backgrounds shape their perceptions of Harris’ race and ethnicity. Whites and Blacks mostly see Harris as Black only. But Asians and multiracial Americans see her differently, along with Latinos, whose most common response was “don’t know” (37%).
Republicans in our survey saw Harris as Black
With respect to partisan differences, Republicans were actually more likely than Democrats to say Black only (36% versus 32%) or don’t know (20% versus 14%), while Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say biracial Black and Asian (20% versus 13%) or nonspecific multiracial (15% versus 12%).
In sum, relatively few Americans seem to agree with Trump’s claim that Harris was just “turning” Black – at least as of March 2024. Instead, their perceptions of Harris’ race are complex and shaped by their own racial identities. This reflects the fact that racial classification in the United States is itself complex. In that sense, perceptions of Harris’ race match the ways that an increasing number of Americans actually think about their own racial identities.
Nathan Chan is an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University. His research and teaching focuses on race, ethnicity, and politics and political behavior.
Matthew Tokeshi is an assistant professor of political science at Williams College and the author of Campaigning While Black: Black Candidates, White Majorities, and the Quest for Political Office (Columbia University Press, 2023). His research focuses on the role of racial prejudice in U.S. campaigns.
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