Janet Jackson Falsely Claims Kamala Harris Is ‘Not Black’

Janet Jackson is speaking about the upcoming U.S. presidential election — and repeating a false claim about Vice President Kamala Harris.

When asked about her thoughts on Harris, 59, possibly becoming the first Black woman to be elected president, the Grammy winner, 58, told The Guardian that she “heard” the vice president is “not Black.”

“Well, you know what they supposedly said? She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian,” Jackson told the U.K. outlet.

Although Guardian journalist Nosheen Iqbal pushed back against Jackson’s claim, which has been circulated by former president Donald Trump and right-wing political pundits, the singer said of Harris, “Her father’s White.”

“That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,” Jackson continued. “I was told that they discovered her father was White.”

Jackson also said she isn’t sure if “America is ready” for a woman of color as a president, as The Guardian put it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.”

“I think there might be mayhem,” Jackson added. “Either way it goes, but we’ll have to see.”

Reports from outlets including CNN, the Associated Press and Reuters have proven false these claims about Harris’ race and ethnicity.

Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris, is an immigrant from Jamaica who moved to the U.S. to study economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, came to the U.S. from India and also studied at Berkeley, where the couple met.

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In July, Trump, 78, made false claims about Harris’ race at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting the Indian heritage,” Trump claimed at the time. “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?”

“But you know what, I respect either one, I respect either one, 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 a Black person,” Trump continued.

After Trump repeated the claims against Harris at the presidential debate on Sept. 10, the vice president said: “Honestly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president, who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people.”

Harris attended Howard University, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and in its story about Jackson, The Guardian quoted a line from Harris’ 2019 memoir The Truths We Hold, in which she wrote: “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters.”

Harris’ White House biography also states that she is “the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American” to be elected vice president.