I see that some of my friends on social media seem to be echoing the white guy who told black journalists that his black opponent isn’t black. I suggest they (and everyone else for that matter) read this profile of Kamala Harris from five years ago.

Harris didn’t merely answer reporters’ questions about her family background, she discussed it at length in her own memoir. As the Washington Post explained in 2019:

She [Harris’ mother] brought her daughters home to India for visits, she cooked Indian food for them, and the girls often wore Indian jewelry. But Harris worshiped at an African American church, went to a preschool with posters of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on the wall, attended civil rights marches in a stroller, and was bused with other black kids to an elementary school in a wealthier white neighborhood. When it was time for college, she moved across the country to Washington to attend the historically black Howard University.

In a larger sense, Harris’ story is typically American, one all Americans should be proud of. She certainly is:

In her first campaign stop after announcing her bid for president on “Good Morning America” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Harris appeared on her old Howard campus to take questions.

“You’re African American, but you’re also Indian American,” a reporter said.

“Indeed,” she replied.

“How do you describe yourself?”

“Did you read my book? How do I describe myself? I describe myself as a proud American.”

Donald Trump’s real audience yesterday wasn’t the National Association of Black Journalists. His target audience wasn’t even black voters, though he doubtless sought to peel off a few by questioning whether his opponent is somehow authentically black. No, Trump was seeking to energize his own voters by slandering his opponent as an undeserving, affirmative action fraud. Rest assured, many of those MAGA supporters now pretending that Vice President Harris isn’t “black enough” will be pulling the lever for Trump in November precisely because she is.

While Trump, the man who asked “where is my African American” at a 2016 rally, was playing the race card, the Vice President was addressing a gathering of one of the nation’s oldest black sororities. Harris was and remains an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha even all these years after graduating from Howard.

After you read the Post article, ask yourself a few questions. If he had lived in the South, could the Vice President’s father have married anyone he wanted? Had a drink at any water fountain? Sent his daughter to the nearest public school? When he became a citizen, could he have voted before 1965?

Or imagine the Harris family not in Oakland but in New York City in the early 1970’s. Could they have rented an apartment from Donald Trump and his father?