Trump’s Questioning of Harris’ Race Shows Ignorance About Code-Switching

Kamala Harris has the range. She can grill Supreme Court candidates or meet with foreign dignitaries, then move on to hosting a Diwali celebration or a rapturous dance with an HBCU-style marching band.

Harris, the primary Black and Asian American woman to function vp, has developed a knack as an individual of color that enables her to navigate the halls of power or Main Street in a rustic where race and identity impact how someone is perceived and accepted.

Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is a talented code-switcher, which may involve deliberately altering her speaking style and expression to reinforce the impact of her message and ensure her message is conveyed.

Former President Donald Trump, during a controversial interview session on the National Association of Black Journalists, showed no familiarity with the concept. He suggested that Harris was inauthentic because she embraced all facets of her heritage. His inability to acknowledge code-switching also speaks to the widespread belief that whiteness, often correlated with speaking plain English, is the default in our politics and democracy.

“We need to celebrate all of us, and that means we need to celebrate all of our identities,” said Christine Chen, co-founder and executive director of APIAVote, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization focused on the Asian American Pacific Islander community.

“I think the more a candidate can embrace his multiple identities, the easier it is to connect with different communities and different people who identify with the different issues he supports,” added Chen, who’s Chinese American.

Trump, who falsely suggested at an annual gathering of black journalists that the vp was misleading voters about his race, waded into even murkier waters by insinuating that Harris couldn’t be trusted because she “turned black” after promoting her Native American heritage.

Harris doesn’t need to alter the source code to prove she’s a black American of Indian descent; she was born that way.

Shereen Marisol Meraji, former co-host of NPR’s award-winning podcast “Code Switch,” said Harris’ identity is complex and might still be difficult to navigate in a rustic that when encouraged multiracial people to favor one identity over one other.

“If you go through the world like I do, where I try really hard to accept both sides of myself, it’s like you’re being put through an authenticity test,” said Meraji, who’s of Iranian and Puerto Rican descent.

An assistant professor of race and journalism on the University of California, Berkeley, Meraji added: “The ability to code-switch and enter into different communities … is a huge asset. And I think for people who are competing against Kamala Harris, it’s also quite threatening.”

Many politicians are changing the colour code to make sure that key information is conveyed to voters and constituents with cultural resonance. It’s a well-recognized concept amongst Americans of color, including the 33.8 million individuals who discover as a couple of race, in line with the most recent U.S. Census.

Code-switching is nothing latest, and it’s not a skill entirely foreign to white people. But it stays one of probably the most effective communication tools that politicians of color use to exert influence and gain power in places where they’ve historically lacked it.

Code-switching can increase the likelihood of people who find themselves disadvantaged or ignored as a consequence of systemic racism receiving fair treatment, receiving high-quality services, or finding employment.

When Trump questioned Harris’ race in response to an issue about his own rhetoric on diversity, equity and inclusion, ABC News host Rachel Scott responded by citing elements of the vp’s biography that might prove she is black.

Scott noted that Harris attended Howard University, one of probably the most outstanding historically black colleges and universities within the country. At Howard, Harris pledged the historically black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. And most significantly, her Jamaican father and Indian mother each immigrated to the U.S. within the Sixties throughout the Civil Rights Movement.

It can be unfaithful that Harris accepted her Black or Native American sexual orientation or switched between them only when it benefited her politically.

In 2003, when Harris was elected district attorney of San Francisco, she told an area newspaper chain that many individuals weren’t used to her identity. “My Native American heritage is just as strong as my African-American heritage. One does not exclude the other,” Harris said.

As a candidate for California attorney general, she spoke of her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who taught her and her sister to “share pride in our culture.” In 2009, Harris told India Abroad, “When you think about it, India is the oldest democracy in the world—so that’s part of my background, and it’s definitely had a huge impact on what I do today and who I am.”

During the 2012 re-election campaign of Barack Obama, the primary black U.S. president, Harris addressed being an outsider in races wherein her opponent could outspend her on ads and endorsements. “I overcame the odds and became the first black female attorney general,” she said, referring to her 2010 election in California.

Trump’s questioning of Harris’ identity, which drew groans and laughter, was reminiscent of his role as a number one proponent of the false theory that Obama is ineligible to change into president because he was not born within the U.S. Trump’s Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, joined Trump on Wednesday in suggesting that Harris is “a fake person who caters to whatever audience is in front of her.”

“I don’t know if you saw this, but earlier this week… she went to Georgia and started speaking in a fake Southern accent,” Vance told the audience at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, referring to Harris’ campaign event in Atlanta, which was attended by a mostly black audience.

Vance, a white man whose wife is Indian American and whose three children are of mixed descent, is just not the primary American politician to concentrate on the speech and accents of politicians of color. In 2010, the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got here under fire for comments he made years earlier suggesting that Obama appealed to voters because he was a light-skinned black man “without any Negro dialect unless he wanted to have it.”

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White politicians have also been known to code-switch when talking to mostly black or Latino audiences, and lots of have done so with various degrees of success. In 2006, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was criticized for adjusting the rhythm of her speech while delivering the eulogy at Coretta Scott King’s funeral at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.

The difference is that within the not-so-distant past, white politicians’ profession survival didn’t rely upon their ability to code-switch. Harris still has a special life experience.

Chen said politicians of any race or identity can construct healthy relationships across communities in the event that they show compassion and are attentive to the needs of their constituents.

“Whether you’re white, black or some other identity, how you present yourself in the community will determine whether it’s an authentic relationship,” she said. “You’ll be able to address their concerns more effectively because you’re more educated and you understand what they’re going through.”