ASMA KHALID, HOST:
Race is never far from the conversation in American politics, and that's been the case with the 2024 presidential election and the historic candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has Indian and Jamaican Heritage. Harris herself has not made her racial identity a focal point of this campaign, but it has made headlines involving her opponent. Here's former President Donald Trump during an interview at a National Association of Black Journalists convention this summer.
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DONALD TRUMP: She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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?
RACHEL SCOTT: She has always identified...
KHALID: I wanted to get a sense of how people with similar racial identities to Harris feel about her candidacy and the conversations around her identity, and that's how I met Jaya Krishnan. She's 23, from the Bay Area and identifies as South Indian and Black.
JAYA KRISHNAN: Growing up, especially in a predominantly white environment, for some reason, I felt like people couldn't grasp the fact that I was both South Indian and Black.
KHALID: Many decades earlier, in 1959, Jolikha Ali was born in New York City. She's also South Asian and Black, now age 65 and goes by the nickname Joli (ph). And she says on the day she was born, there wasn't even an option on her birth certificate for her father's race.
JOLIKHA ALI: You know, I'm from the days where my birth certificate says my mom's Negro. And - but the birth - my birth certificate says my father's white. But right underneath, where is he from? And they wrote, Pakistan.
KHALID: Like Jaya and Joli, 52-year-old Hardeep Reddick, who grew up in Baltimore, didn't feel completely seen growing up.
HARDEEP REDDICK: We were always kind of looked at, my sister and myself - especially my sister had more African American features, I'd say, than I did - was a little darker-skinned and thicker hair - was always kind of looked at as, you know, those not-pure kids, if you will.
KHALID: Jaya, Hardeep and Joli joined me via Zoom earlier this week. All three of them say they are voting for Harris. And I wanted to know how they felt about the way Harris has navigated talking about her identity throughout this campaign, an identity that they share.
ALI: She has to go the extra mile. She has to prove to so many different people who can't understand that there could be a mixed family, a mixed relations that actually work. She's holding her own. It's very hard. It's, like, very hard to know what group you're in front of. What do they know already? How do they already perceive you? Do they just see you as a race, or do they - can they see you as a formidable candidate?
KRISHNAN: I mean, I didn't really think about, like, how much she was kind of talking about her racial identity until, like, the other candidate brought it up. I mean, she does come from two very different cultures, but she has, like, the right to identify, like, with both. And I think that she's been doing a good job of being a part of both.
REDDICK: I think it's also important for her to, you know, put out her identity to the population and to say, look, I come from multiple ethnic backgrounds. We're all Americans. I don't see it as a Black-and-white issue. This is an economic issue.
KHALID: Do you think that the vice president has an obligation to talk about her racial identity?
ALI: I think it's being forced on her to talk about it. I don't know that she has an obligation. I mean, you look at her - you either think she's Indian, or you think she's Black, or you don't care. Then, you know, it's too bad she has to even address this.
REDDICK: I mean, this is about being president is being president for everybody. It isn't like, I'm the white president for America or I'm the Black president for America. So it's really more about, you know, your character, what you're standing behind, what's the plan for your country. And, yeah, I don't think that she's obligated to really go into that. But, you know...
KHALID: As we spoke about Harris' Indian and Jamaican heritage, one big theme that came up repeatedly was former President Trump's comment that the vice president only recently began identifying as Black, which, by the way, is untrue. I asked each of them what went through their minds when they heard his comments.
ALI: Well, as I said before, he's uninformed. Should have been something he knew about.
KRISHNAN: His comments were, like, rude and hurtful, especially as someone who's heard them before, like, throughout my life. So I guess, like, when he said that, it kind of made me realize how much things aren't changing as much as I thought they were 'cause I - when I went to college, it seemed like everyone was more accepting of the fact that I was both. But hearing him say that makes me feel like I've gone back, like, to, you know, elementary school or middle school, where I would get kind of, like, made fun of or just rude remarks for just being from two very different cultures.
KHALID: Do you feel like the country, the politics, the cultural moment is different now, in the year 2024, leading up to this November's election than the conversations we were having in, say, October, November of 2008?
REDDICK: Yeah. I would say that it's - you know, it depends on where you are in the country, obviously, but the country is becoming more heterogeneous, you know, as we see immigration coming through and all - you know, all different people of different cultures entering into, you know, communities that before maybe were more isolated. I would say that I see a lot less racism in younger people. I see a lot more interracial dating.
ALI: I was excited when Obama was elected. I thought, oh, the tide is turn, or it's turning. And then - but Trump's rhetoric and what he's fashioned has brought us back quite a bit.
KHALID: And Jaya, what about you? I mean, what does it mean for you to be both Black and South Asian now in this moment in 2024?
KRISHNAN: I mean, I think that especially with the vice president running at this moment, it's a good time to kind of reflect back on my own identity. The ingrained racism within America, it still, like, definitely exists 'cause people constantly make ignorant comments or there's still microaggressions out there for people from mixed backgrounds, even though it's not as bad as in the '60s or the '80s. I mean, it's really cool for me to be a woman and to be Black and South Indian and have Kamala running for president.
KHALID: Jolikha Ali, Hardeep Reddick and Jaya Krishnan, thank you all very much for your time. I really do appreciate it.
KRISHNAN: Great. Thank you so much.
REDDICK: Pleasure. God bless. Take care.
ALI: Thank you, Asma. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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