Almost 60 years ago, on October 20, 1964, Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California.
That day, the moment she took her first breath, the future Vice President of the United States turned black.
Harris was black when she was growing up in kindergarten in Berkeley, California, and was bused to a white neighborhood as part of the city’s desegregation program.
Harris was black when the woman who ran her daycare decorated the walls with pictures of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.
Harris was black when she enrolled at Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C., and she was black when she became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest historically black fraternity in the country.
Harris was black when she became district attorney of San Francisco, black when she was attorney general of California, black when she was elected to the U.S. Senate, black when she was Joe Biden’s running mate, and black when she was sworn in as vice president of the United States.
And she will remain black until she dies.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” her 2019 memoir.
“She knew that Maya and I would be seen as black girls in her adopted hometown, and she was determined to make sure we grew up to be confident, proud black women.”
Any doubts about their black heritage are the evil work of Donald Trump. For years, Trump spread the lie that Barack Obama was foreign-born – an evil, racist conspiracy theory aimed at undermining the United States’ first black president.
Trump revived this strategy and suggested – to a group of black journalists, of all people – that Harris had only recently begun to identify as black.
Harris, the child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, chose the morally right path.
“Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America,” said a statement from Harris’ campaign team. “So he is trying to divide us.”
Because of her Indian heritage, Harris identifies as Southeast Asian, which is proof that in America, many people check more than one box.
There is even dual citizenship, as evidenced by NBA stars like Joel Embiid. The Cameroon-born Philadelphia 76ers center holds a French and US passport and is a member of the US men’s basketball team at the Olympic Games.
You can be more than one thing, and you don’t always have to choose. You can be French and Canadian. You can be Jewish and an American citizen. You can be black and a journalist.
Which brings us to our other current Trump controversy. Before Trump ignited a firestorm at the NABJ convention, which wraps up Sunday, members were divided over whether the former president should have been invited at all.
The congress’s co-chair, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, even resigned from her post as congressional chair in protest against the invitation.
This appears to contradict our mission as journalists, which is to hold Trump accountable – as we would any other candidate – and expose the lies.
Mission accomplished.
