Republicans Are Once Again Questioning Kamala Harris’ Blackness

As the presidential election approaches and polls indicate a close contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, conservative commentators are exploring questioning Kamala Harris’ blackness.

During a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Fox News’ Peter Doocy questioned press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about why Harris seems to have “what sounds like a Southern accent.”

Jean-Pierre promptly dismissed Doocy’s inquiry and moved on, but conservative commentators are treating Doocy’s assertion—that Harris, who hails from Northern California, is adopting a fake accent—as a significant issue.

HARRIS SLAMMED FOR ‘FAKE ACCENT’ IN DETROIT SPEECH,” Fox Business blasted in a chyron.

“Kamala Harris rallies across the country repeating the same speech in different accents,” stated another Fox News headline.

“Kamala was raised by an Indian mother in Canada, but now she sounds like Fani Willis,” remarked Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Tuesday night, referencing the Black district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia.

What Harris is demonstrating on the campaign trail is known as code-switching: the practice of adjusting one’s tone and language based on the audience. This is not a new concept and extends beyond politics. Many Black individuals and other marginalized groups often engage in code-switching to culturally connect with their communities.

ALSO READ: Trump Makes Unfounded Racial Accusations Against Harris

But conservatives are instead accusing Harris, who identifies as both Black and Indian, of faking an accent as another way to question her identity. They’re trying to portray her as a fraudster who is only pretending to be Black.

It’s the same strategy that Trump deployed in a widely panned interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last month. “I didn’t know she was Black until several years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” he said. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Relating to Kamala Harris’ blackness, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who has mixed-race children, defended Trump and claimed he was just trying to say that Harris is a chameleon.

But conservatives who are trying to use Harris’ ability to code-switch as a line of attack are feigning ignorance. It’s something presidential hopefuls of various backgrounds and political ideologies have deployed during their campaigns. For example, former President George W. Bush used cowboy rhetoric to endear himself to Republican voters during his time in office, and in 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) spoke in Spanish and touted his use of “Spanglish” at a meet-and-greet in the Bronx, New York.

The dustup is also reminiscent of how conservative media treated the first Black president.

In 2007, as a senator from Illinois, Barack Obama delivered a speech, largely using Black dialect, to a mostly Black audience in Hampton, Virginia. In the speech, he talked about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and racism. When Obama ran for president the following year, the media covered the speech — but it was during his reelection campaign in 2012 that conservative pundits made a big deal of it.

The Daily Caller ran a video of the full speech, saying it revealed new, “inflammatory” comments.

Tucker Carlson, then working at the Daily Caller, took credit for breaking the story.

“This accent is absurd. This is not the way Obama talks,” Carlson told Sean Hannity on a Fox News appearance. “At least, it is not the way he has talked in the dozens, the scores of speeches I have watched him give, or public appearances as I’ve seen him make. This is a put-on. This is phony.”