(Disclaimer: completely cynical and tongue-in-cheek)
- You must be only “half-black”
- You must not be descended from actual United States slaves
- ( and probably most important) You must have a sister named Maya
Your logic is sound. Riddle me this: Why is Harris being described so frequently as black" and “of Indian ancestry” when each of these non-parallel phrases describes one of her parents?
ETA: “Maya” means “illusion.”
What are you saying? That even though one’s parent is black or Indian, one is not black or of Indian ancestry? In that case, what is she?
… and you probably ought to team up with Joe Biden!
We already found out 4 years ago what it takes for a POS to be elected.
No, I’m asking why non-parallel language isn’t being used. Why am I hearing and reading “of Indian ancestry, and black,” not “of black ancestry, and Indian,” or “black and Indian,” or “of black and Indian ancestry”? I’m trying to get at the question of how the media describes her and what, if anything, that says about the constructs of these identities in the popular imagination.
Back in the 1970s, I remember the New York Times Sunday Magazine published an article about a Black model, and in a misguided attempt to praise her loveliness they said something along the lines of, “her warm coloring is beautiful, but she’s not black enough to be offensive.”
You could get away with writing stuff like that in the 1970s, though I do remember a letter or two calling out the casual racism being published in a subsequent edition. But sadly, although that was a dreadful thing to write, it hinted at an unpleasant truth - not that Blackness was actually offensive, but that White Americans were easily threatened by the achievements of POC.
Unfortunately, I think that in terms of its willingness to accept POC as leaders, America is about where we were in the 1970s with regard to models.
Because anti-Black prejudice takes precedence over any other bigotry in the minds, such as they are, of the bigots. It is the very same reason as why was President Obama called Black when one of her parents is white.
Did you just misgender Obama?
Oops. That was purely accidental. I was thinking of typing, “Remember Obama’s mother? She is white”.
Mind you, I supported President Obama, so that typo was not intentional at all.
I know, I’m just joking 
As I understand it, both Obama and Harris have made life choices that show they embrace their Black identity. I can’t point to anything specific for Obama, because my memory is pathetic and it has been years since I read “Dreams of My Father,” but I recall thinking at the time that when he moved to Chicago he deliberately made himself at home in the Black community.
As to Harris - from what I’ve read about her, she went to Howard University and fully identified as a Black woman. In the lead-up to her victory speech, one of the commentators noted that she’d been active in one of the Black sororities (I forget which one), had notably managed to unite the “Divine Nine” behind her candidacy, and that viewers should watch for Greek t-shirts on Black women when the camera panned the crowd, as an indicator of her power to unite Black women.
Of course, I might be full of shit; I don’t personally know either Obama or Harris and never will. But I see nothing odd about being biracial and fully identifying with one or both sides of one’s heritage.
Because she is herself black, but she’s not herself Indian?
India’s a specific country. The two terms aren’t equivalent. Obama’s black; and he’s of Kenyan ancestry; but he isn’t Kenyan.
Wins the thread.
This is exactly correct. Americans are “lumpers” to borrow an informal taxonomic term. It always goes by appearance first in the United States and high enough melanin count = Black, no matter what the specific background. The individual may think of themselves as of mixed heritage, but to everyone else outside the family they’re Black. This can potentially have positive connotations in the sense of finding community in a shared minority experience, as with Obama and Harris. But it does tend to over shadow wider diversity.
You might still act why she is considered black and not southeast Asian, though. That probably stems from two factors – the historical way that Americans have treated being black, with the whole “one drop rule” thing; and, perhaps more importantly, the fact that Harris herself chose to be a part of the Black community and self identifies as Black.
Not a single race is a monophyletic group, so cladistically races as a biological reality are bullshit.
Hey, what do you know? That’s true!
Why would anyone consider her Southeast Asian?
Because her mom is Tamil and I was responding to a post that objected to characterizing her as “indian” because India is a country, hence Indian is not analogous to Black.
Eta: if there is a different term than “southeast asian” that better encapsulates the people of the Indian subcontinent I’d love to hear it and learn!
OK, but India is not in Southeast Asia, which Wikipedia defines as “consisting of the regions that are geographically south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent and north-west of Australia” and including the countries of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam.
Edited to add, perhaps South Asian or “from the Indian subcontinent” are better terms.