Kamala Harris has range. She might grill Supreme Court nominees or meet with foreign dignitaries, then host a Diwali celebration or dance enthusiastically alongside an HBCU-style marching band.
It’s a skill that Harris, the first Black and Asian American woman to serve as vice president, developed as a person of color to navigate the corridors of power or Main Street in a nation where race and identity influence how someone is received or embraced.
Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is a skilled code switcher, a term that can include deliberately adjusting someone’s speaking style and expression to optimize relatability and ensure they convey a message.
Former President Donald Trump, during a controversial interview session at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, he demonstrated no familiarity with the concept. He implied that Harris is inauthentic by embracing all aspects of her heritage. His failure to recognize code-switching also speaks to a prevailing belief that whiteness, often correlated with speaking in clearly enunciated English, is the default in our politics and democracy.
“We need to celebrate ourselves, which 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.
“The more a candidate can embrace their multiple identities, I think it’s a way to connect with different communities and different people who identify with different issues that you stand on,” added Chen, who is Chinese-American.
Trump, who falsely suggested to the annual gathering of black journalists that the vice president has been misleading voters about her race, has plunged into murkier waters by insinuating that Harris is untrustworthy because she “happened to become black” after promoting the their Indian heritage.
Harris doesn’t need to code-switch to prove she’s a Black American Indian woman; she was born this way.
Shereen Marisol Meraji, former co-host of NPR’s award-winning “Code Switch” podcast, said Harris’ identity is layered and can still be challenging to navigate in a nation that once encouraged multiracial people to favor one identity over another. .
“If you walk through the world like I did, where I’m trying to embrace both sides of myself, then it’s like you’re subjected to these tests of authenticity,” said Meraji, who is of Iranian and Puerto Rican heritage.
Assistant professor of race and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Meraji added: “The ability to code-switch and enter different communities… is a huge asset. And I think for people competing with Kamala Harris, it’s also quite scary.”
Many politicians change color codes to ensure vital information is delivered to voters and constituents with cultural resonance. This is a familiar concept among Americans of color, including the 33.8 million people who identify as being of more than one race, according to the latest U.S. Census.
Code switching is nothing new and it is not a skill that is completely foreign to white people. But it remains one of the most effective communication tools that black politicians use to exert influence and gain power in places where they have historically lacked it.
Code-switching can help increase the likelihood of receiving fair treatment, obtaining quality services, or securing employment opportunities for people who are disadvantaged or overlooked due to systemic racism.
After Trump questioned Harris’ race in response to a question about his own diversity, equity and inclusion rhetoric, ABC News interviewer Rachel Scott responded by citing elements of the vice president’s biography that could prove she is black.
Scott noted that Harris attended Howard University, one of the most prominent historically black colleges and universities in the country. At Howard, Harris pledged the historically black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. And more specifically, his Jamaican father and Indian mother immigrated to the US during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
It is also false to claim that Harris simply accepted being black or Indian, or code-switched between the two, when it benefited her politically.
In 2003, the year Harris was elected district attorney of San Francisco, she told a network of local newspapers that many people were not accustomed to her identity. “My Indian heritage is as strong as my African-American heritage. One does not exclude the other,” said Harris.
As a candidate for California attorney general, she spoke of her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, teaching her and her sister to “share the pride of our culture.” In 2009, Harris told India Abroad: “When we 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 influence on what I do today and who I am. .”
During the re-election campaign of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, in 2012, Harris reported being the underdog in races where her opponent could outspend her on commercials and advertisements. “I overcame all odds to become the first black attorney general,” she said, referring to his 2010 election in California.
Trump’s challenge to Harris’ identity, which drew groans and laughter, had echoes of him as the chief propagator of a false theory that Obama was ineligible to be president because he was not born in the United States. Trump’s Republican running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, on Wednesday sided with Trump when he suggested that Harris is a “phony 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 with a fake Southern accent,” Vance told the audience at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, referring to Trump’s campaign event. Harris in Atlanta, which was attended by a predominantly black audience.
Vance, a white man whose wife is Indian-American and whose three children are of mixed heritage, is far from the first American politician to fixate on the speech and accents of politicians of color. In 2010, the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was criticized for comments he made years earlier suggesting that Obama appealed to voters because he was a light-skinned black man “with no black dialect unless he wanted to have one.”
White politicians have also been known to code-switch when in front of predominantly black or Latino audiences. And many have done so with varying degrees of success. In 2006, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was criticized for adapting the cadence of her speech when delivering remarks at Coretta Scott King’s funeral at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. attended.
The difference is that, in the not-so-distant past, the career survival of white politicians did not depend on their ability to switch codes. Harris continues to have a different lived experience.
Chen said politicians of any races and identities can develop healthy relationships across communities if they demonstrate compassion and respond to the needs of their constituents.
“Whether you are white or black or any other identity, how you show up in the community will determine whether or not it is an authentic relationship,” she said. “You will be able to address their concerns more effectively because you will actually be more educated and understand what they are going through.”
____
Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed.
____
Aaron Morrison is AP’s race and ethnicity news editor and reports from New York. He can be reached at amorrison@ap.org.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
