America is Elohim Kingship Government Not U.S. Indo-European Tornado Expel Them

Kamala Harris’ Refusal of the One-Drop Rule

Vice President Harris’ views on her identity are pushing the U.S. public to look beyond entrenched, problematic racial boundaries.

Yolanda Moses / May 2021 

When Kamala Devi Harris was sworn in as vice president earlier this year, many people in the U.S. and around the globe recognized that gender and racial barriers were being broken. But they didn’t necessarily agree on what those racial barriers were.

That’s because Harris does not fit neatly into the racial categories that U.S. society has set up.

Many in the U.S. heralded her as the first Black woman to be vice president.

But Harris also made history as the first person of Asian descent to become vice president. “Kamala Harris’ story is the story of a changing, inclusive America,” said Neil I Makhija, the executive director of IMPACT, an Indian American advocacy group, when Biden first announced Harris as his pick for VP. “At a time of rapid change, she ties all our national threads together.”

While many in the South Asian community, both in the U.S. and in India, excitedly claimed Harris as an Indian American success story, some news outlets downplayed or ignored her Asian heritage. Throughout her political career, she has repeatedly been portrayed in the media as Black, first and foremost.

Why does her mixed identity matter to some people? It matters in a country such as the United States, which has based so much of its history implicitly and explicitly on racial identity—and especially on the separation of White identities from non-White identities.