Janet Jackson questions Vice President Kamala Harris’ race.
Singer-songwriter spoke The Guardian Its Weekend Podcast to discuss his Together Again tour, which ends on October 13 in Glasgow, Scotland. During the conversation, the 2024 US presidential election came up. When the reporter mentioned that the United States was about to vote for its first black woman president, Jackson stopped him and shared his thoughts.
“Well, you know what they said?” Jackson asked. “She’s not black, that’s what I heard, she’s Indian.” She added, “Her father’s white, that’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t seen the news in days. I was told that they found out that her father was white.
The presidential candidate’s father, Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican-American economist and professor at Stanford University, Harris and his sister Maya were separated from their Indian mother at a young age.
Asked again if she thought America was ready for a woman president of color, Jackson admitted she wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I honestly don’t know. I think it would be confusing either way.
Jackson’s comments about Harris’ race followed Donald Trump questioning whether his opponent was actually a black woman at the National Black Journalists’ Conference in July.
“She’s always had Indian heritage, and she’s only promoted Indian heritage,” Trump said in Chicago. “I didn’t know she was black when she became black a few years ago, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or black?”
He continued, “I respect anybody, but she’s obviously not, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she became a black person. I think somebody should notice that, too.”
