AAP FACTCHECK – United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet claims that US Vice President Kamala Harris has only recently identified as Black in a bid to gain a political advantage.
This is false. Ms Harris has consistently identified and celebrated her Black racial identity over several decades – long before she entered politics.
“Kamala Harris has spent her whole life telling people she was Indian,” Senator Babet claims in a post on X.
“Now when it’s politically convenient she changes her tune and according to her and the corrupt mainstream media she’s all of a sudden black.
“She’s a race hustler, a liar, a moron, a communist and a danger to the free world as she’s for sale and she’s cheap.”
AAP FactCheck contacted Senator Babet for evidence to support his claim but did not receive a response.
Ms Harris’s parents were both immigrants to the United States who met at university.
Her father, Donald J Harris, was born in Jamaica and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India.
Throughout her life and political career, Ms Harris has embraced both sides of her racial heritage.
Ms Harris has publicly identified as Black for decades, including attending a historically Black university and being a member of Black student groups while at college in the 1980s.
In 1986, she graduated from Howard University, a predominantly Black university in Washington DC.
While studying at Howard, Ms Harris was also a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, a prominent student organisation known as “America’s premier Greek-letter organization for African American women”.
After graduating, Ms Harris studied at the University of California Law School in San Francisco.
A story from the March 3, 1989 edition of the law school’s newspaper (page 2) stated Ms Harris was a member of the Black Law Students Association.
In 2004, Ms Harris became the first female district attorney in San Francisco.
In her archived 2005 profile on the City and County of San Francisco website, she is described as “the first African American woman in California to hold the office”.
In 2011 she became attorney general of California. Her archived official State of California bio describes her as “the first woman, and the first African American and South Asian American, to hold the office…”
In a speech shortly after being elected to the US Senate in 2016, Ms Harris referenced both her Indian heritage through her maternal grandmother (four minutes 33 seconds) and being the second Black woman elected to the senate (5:21).
Once a senator, she also became a member of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
In a 2019 profile piece in the Washington Post, Ms Harris spoke of growing up embracing her Indian culture but living a proudly African American life.
Ms Harris’s official federal vice president biography also describes her as identifying with both sides of her cultural background.
Senator Babet’s assertion echoes comments made by former president Donald Trump at the convention for the National Association of Black Journalists in July.
CNN, Reuters and PolitiFact debunked the original false claim made by Trump.
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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