Let’s stop debating whether Kamala Harris is Indian or Black enough

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By Fareeha Molvi

(This post was originally published to Instagram on August 18, 2020)

Senator Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, was announced as Joe Biden’s running mate last week. Since then, the Internet has spawned hundreds of thinkpieces focusing on her biracial identity, essentially asking: Is she Black? Or is she Indian? Not only is this extremely triggering to mixed-race Americans, but it proves how impoverished our ideas of race are in this country. 

There’s a certain burden on people of color, especially those of mixed-race, to fit into convenient race boxes that make them “easier” to understand. Years of filling out the ethnicity box on standardized tests has literally groomed us to think of race as a neat, homogenous box with hard boundaries around it. Multi-racial folks throw these boxes into flux by exemplifying the diversity that exists within communities. 

“The question is not whether Harris is Black enough or Indian enough. Rather, it’s why do biracial people, especially those of color, have to continue to explain their own existence to us?” 

Fareeha Molvi

But instead of making space for them, we still try to force them into a box. I remember a middle school teacher advising a biracial peer to fill in the race box they felt most like. Even within our communities, we are guilty of asking mixed people to “prove themselves” as one of our own. This results in the sort of performative “cultural expressions” we’ve come to expect of famous people of color. This is how we find Harris in the kitchen with Mindy Kaling making dosas, even though she’s admitted to never really learning to cook Indian foods. The problem is not that she’s a “bad Indian” but rather that we’ve put her in an impossible situation. If she doesn’t acknowledge her South Asian side she’s seen as self-hating. Or if she does but she doesn’t do it in a way that’s seen as “legitimate” to us, it’s pandering. 

If Harris was the daughter of Italian and Polish immigrants, would it occur to us to ask whether she knew how to make pasta or pierogi? The question is not whether Harris is Black enough or Indian enough. Rather, it’s why do biracial people, especially those of color, have to continue to explain their own existence to us?