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.

This was what former president and current Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump told the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31. It was a revealing insight into how he viewed his rival Kamala Harris’s multiracial identity.

During a heated exchange, Trump wrongly claimed that Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian heritage, had shifted her racial identity over the course of her career. Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, subsequently doubled down in support of his boss, using language such as “chameleon” and “flip flopping” to describe Harris’s politics and identity.

These comments were inherently disrespectful, as no one has the right to dictate another person’s racial identity. But the Trump-Vance ticket has tried to use Harris’s multiracial identity as a political tool to foster distrust in her among the American population.

Multiracial racism in America

So, why was Trump and Vance’s language so harmful? Despite being one of the most racially diverse countries in the world, the US has played a significant role in the perpetuation of racism.

The early 20th century introduced the “one drop rule” to America, which codified racism into law in some US states. It asserted that any person with even one Black ancestor was considered racially Black, regarding multiracial Americans with white ancestry “impure” and viewed them as contaminated.

This was a political effort to maintain power over enslaved Black populations, as “racial mixing” blurred the lines between who could be considered free, and who was not.

Prior to 1967 and the landmark Loving v Virginia judgment, which which ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional, almost half of the states enforced anti-miscegination laws that made interracial relations illegal, directed at Black-White unions but extended to ethnic groups. Therefore, mixed-race identities were discriminated against based on physical appearance, affecting their access to segregated residential areas and other social spaces.

One byproduct of this hateful racial theory was that mixed-race people, particularly women, became mythologised as deceitful and cunning tricksters. Historical and current white ruling classes feared multiracial people were somehow “shape shifters”, who accessed segregated white spaces and resources. Today, this appears in the way racial categories are imposed into which mixed-race people simply do not fit.

While mixedness is no longer considered a contamination, lingering beliefs in racial stratification can provoke uncomfortable emotions towards mixed-race identities, whose physical appearances do not match racist stereotypes about different ethnic groups.

This all makes Trump and Vance’s comments that much worse.

Questioning identities

The criticisms Harris has received have come from both politicians and the public. For example, some argue she is downplaying her South Asian identity, while others argue she is not “Black enough”.

Far-right critics, meanwhile, have used her parentage and upbringing to question her US citizenship altogether, a similar strategy used unsuccessfully – by Trump and others – to attempt to delegitimise former president, Barack Obama.

It’s possible people can argue Trump and Vance’s comments about Harris were not that harmful when it comes to the rough and tumble of politics. But this ignores the historical connection that mixed-race identities have in the way that political powers have attempted to separate their identities.

It perpetuates the legacies of racism that deemed mixed-race women as deceitful and attempting to pass themselves off as something they are not. A similar thing happened in the UK when it came to the public’s reaction to actress Meghan Markle when she married into the UK royal family.

Trump’s comment is by no means the first use of racial politics against Harris. Racial politics are not expressed only in moments of anti-mixed, anti-Asian and anti-Black discourse, but also in the linguistic choices of politicians and journalists with political intentions. For example, the White House identifies her as the:

… first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected for this position.

What this does is separates her identities to form three “firsts”. It implies her leadership is already implementing changes.

But social media users also continue to question her and some even suggest her mixed-race identity is somehow being used as a political tactic. One X user claims:

These narratives are perpetuating racist beliefs that people who are multiracial cannot hold two or more identities at any one time, and that having one somehow should dilute or cancel out the other.

In one room, Harris could be seen as a South Asian woman. In another, presumed to be a Black woman. These assumptions change depending on the beliefs of the people around her. What is shifting is not Harris’s identity, but the way it is being perceived.

Where is the counterargument?

What is less apparent is the way that racism in politics is directed at mixed identities. While there are responses from activists, academics, and organisations attempting to make the multiracial voice heard, this critical stance is yet to be seen in mainstream American politics (despite the US already having had a mixed president and vice-president).

In order to support the movement towards racial equality, we must also consider the ways multiracial identities are being weaponised. Language may seem to be a small issue on one level, but this is a lived experience of millions of multiracial people across the globe.

With Harris mounting a strong challenge to be the first Black woman, the first South Asian woman and, yes, the first mixed-race woman to occupy the White House, it’s time to move away from this tired historical notion that somehow mixed-race people are “tricksters” among us.