Who’s afraid of being Black? Not Kamala, Beyoncé or Kendrick.
Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t take the race bait.
A few hours after Donald Trump falsely claimed that she suddenly decided to become “a Black person,” Harris reminded the crowd at a Black sorority convention in Houston that the former president was resorting to a familiar script. It was the “same old show,” she said, of “divisiveness and disrespect.”
She chose not to deflect attention away from her multicultural heritage or to double down on it. That tactic nullified an implication that being Black is something that needs to be authenticated, explained, disavowed or defended. It underscored that Blackness isn’t something that can be turned on or off.
Like Harris, my father is the child of an Indian mother and a Black father. Both he and his parents were born in and emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago. Because of him, I saw up close what Harris is conveying: that it’s possible to refuse to pit one heritage against the other even as you embrace Blackness as your primary political identity.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” her 2019 memoir. “She knew 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, like my dad, considers her Blackness something to be celebrated and, at times, protected.
I thought about those impulses a lot last week when Harris’ campaign chose “Freedom,” Beyoncé’s 2016 anthem featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar, as its theme song. Over the past year, both artists released powerful works designed to safeguard Black cultural expressions from being forgotten or exploited.
By nodding to them both, Harris moves their conversation about race from pop culture to electoral politics. For these musicians, an acceptance of identity politics in general, and of Blackness in particular, is not a cause for anxiety or alienation but rather a model for new multiracial coalitions.
In Beyoncé’s case, her recent album “Cowboy Carter” was born from not feeling “welcomed,” as she said in an Instagram post. Many have speculated that she is referring to an earlier foray into country music and the ensuing resentment she faced after performing her song “Daddy Lessons” with the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks) at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016. By showcasing African American country pioneers and white country legends, right alongside collaborations with white pop artists and Black contemporary country singers, “Cowboy Carter” expands our understanding of the genre by amplifying the contributions of those too often erased from it.
With the hit single “Not Like Us,” Lamar used a different strategy. As the culmination of his rap beef with Drake, whom Lamar sees as someone who exploits hip-hop culture, the song reminds us of the music’s SoCal and Southern African American roots. (In one verse, Drake, who is Toronto-born and biracial, is called “a colonizer” for what Lamar sees as his rival’s artistic and financial appropriation of the style, street cred and slang of notable Atlanta rappers like Future and Lil Baby.)
For some, Lamar seems to be questioning Drake’s identity, or mocking him for what he sees as his insecurity around American hip-hop culture. “Not Like Us” played at Harris’ recent rally in Atlanta and she referenced it in a spot at the BET Awards in June. But while the message may seem to put someone at the defense of his identity, the song’s popularity has inspired broad, interracial interpretations.
Debuting at the top spot on the Billboard 100, it has spawned everything from hilarious reaction videos to wedding songs and older adult dance parties. This week, a video clip of Parker Short, the president of Georgia Young Democrats, dancing to the song at the Atlanta rally went viral on TikTok. Outside the convention of Black journalists where Trump questioned Harris’ racial identity, a small brass band of white musicians changed the lyrics to “Trump’s Not Like Us.”
The conversation around Trump’s comments might mark a new moment in identity politics. Rather than forcing Harris to prove her authenticity as Black, South Asian or even American (as President Barack Obama did when he was pressured to release his birth certificate), it enables her to show a multicultural electorate her ease in navigating her multiple selves and histories.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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