Since Vice President Kamala Harris became the likely Democratic presidential candidate, she and her campaign have leaned into her multifaceted identity, and her voters are doing the same ... kind of.
In the few weeks after Harris inherited the campaign from President Joe Biden, her supporters assembled on Zoom video calls split by ethnicity and gender, like White Dudes for Harris and Win With Black Women, to raise money for Harris’ campaign. Some spectators deemed it “cringe” while others accused the Democratic campaign of bringing back “racial segregation.” But the Harris campaign managed to raise millions while galvanizing supporters during the calls.
The video call for Black women raised $1 million for the Harris campaign. Other groups included Latino Men for Harris, Caribbean-Americans for Harris, Cat Ladies for Harris — referencing Sen. JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark — and Dads for Kamala.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is trying to find its footing on how to talk about Harris’ identity. During an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention in Chicago, former President Donald Trump had hoped to court Black voters, but instead made cringe-worthy remarks about Harris’ Jamaican and South Asian heritage.
Why identity politics can get tricky
Harris’ supporters quickly realized the campaign’s launch — whether by labeling Harris as “Brat,” a term popular among young women, or getting Beyoncé to sign off one of her songs, “Freedom,” for the Harris campaign — catered to women voters. In response, political operatives directed their focus to courting men, who have increasingly looked at the Republican Party for answers.
The meeting for “white dudes” didn’t restrict or ban people of color from participating. The second speaker was Maurice Mitchell, a Black man who heads the Working Families Party, a progressive party active on the coasts. The Zoom meeting also featured Jeff Bridges from “The Big Lebowski” and Mark Hamill from “Star Wars.” Hamill delivered his world-famous line — “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you” — to raise at least $50,000 out of the $4 million raised during the call, as The Guardian reported.
Despite these successes, the Zoom calls also garnered criticism. As Tyler Austin Harper wrote in The Atlantic, “Fighting right-wing white identity politics with left-wing white identity politics does not strike me as a method that aligns with liberal values. It doesn’t seem to make much strategic sense either: Segregated video fundraisers are odd and uncomfortable.”
Even Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, on the shortlist to be Harris’ running mate, said, “I gotta be honest, when I’m invited to an event with the name like, ‘White Dudes for Harris,’ it doesn’t usually sound like something I would join, but this is a terrific cause.”
Conservative commentators wielded stronger criticism. Fox News commentator Dana Perino compared White Dudes for Harris to “racial segregation.”
“When I hear, like, this racial segregation of the idea of ‘you just need this demographic,’ and then people proudly doing that — it makes me cringe. I don’t like it, I want to reject all of it.”
In response, the Harris campaign pointed to Trump using similar strategies.
“I’m a bit confused. This is what campaigns do is build coalition groups. Latino Americans for Trump, for example,” Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told Fox News.
“All politics is not identity politics,” Amit Ahuja, a political science professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told the Deseret News.
Harris’ multifaceted identity
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an Indian immigrant to the United States, knew she was raising two Black daughters.
“She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women,” Harris wrote in her 2019 autobiography, “The Truths We Hold.”
While the complexion of her skin and the texture of her hair led her to be labeled as Black, throughout her time in politics, Harris has leaned on the different facets of her identity.
This remains the case for her newly launched presidential campaign, Ahuja said.
Harris’ Black identity is “deeply informed by personal and historical experiences of racism” and the Indian part of her “is often thought of as pleasantly foreign or exotic,” the professor said.
She is also a woman, so she was the face of abortion rights in the Biden-Harris administration, but above all, she is American, validating the idea of America being seen as a melting pot of different cultures, he added.
Trump’s controversial statements at Black journalists conference
At the conference for Black journalists, Trump touted himself as “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”
He also claimed that migrants illegally crossing the southern border are taking “Black jobs.” When asked to elaborate, Trump said, “A Black job is anybody that has a job,” adding, “They’re taking the employment away from Black people.”
Aside from speaking about his record with Black voters, Trump mocked Harris and questioned her race, garnering the former president criticism.
“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?” he said.
“I respect either one,” he added, “but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went she became Black. ... Somebody should look into that too.”
Trump has faced criticism since he made the remarks, while others have defended Trump for showing up at the convention, a place where he wasn’t likely to find a sympathetic audience.
But “Trump may pay a price for these coded racial appeals,” said Ahuja, “especially if they continue and become widely understood and loudly rejected.”
In 2020, Trump won 8% of Black voters, two points higher than he won in 2016. This wasn’t surprising. Black and brown voters historically favor the Democratic Party by large margins.
But Black voters showed a lack of enthusiasm for Biden’s reelection campaign, and his support dropped, creating an opening for Trump. And so far polls show it’s unclear if Harris will be able to regain that support.
If Harris wins in November, she will be the first Black woman to serve as president, as well as the first president of South Asian descent, and she is leaning on these identities to win over voters.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman and former GOP presidential candidate, argued that politicians shouldn’t be using their ethnicity as a tool in their campaigns.
“We’re actually American. And the problem is, when you’re Kamala Harris, and you actually do lean into your identity politics, then you open the door to that type of criticism,” he said in an appearance on Fox News. But in a presidential race this tight, boosting engagement among various voter blocs could help determine the outcome of the race.
Speaker Johnson instructs GOP to attack Harris’ politics, not personality
A day after the Black journalists’ conference, Trump in a post on Truth Social thanked Harris for sending him a picture of her family members in saris and other traditional Indian garb years ago. “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated,” he wrote.
Some Republicans, including Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, labeled Harris a “DEI hire,” referring to the framework of diversity, equity and inclusion.
“If she (Kamala Harris) was a white person, she would not be sitting in the place she’s sitting right now. She’s Black. She’s a woman. That’s DEI to the core,” Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th District, said.
But GOP leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have urged Republicans to stay away from remarks on Harris’ race or gender. After a Republican Conference meeting last week, Johnson told reporters the upcoming “election will be about policies and not personalities.”
“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he continued, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”