Opinion | Kamala Harris: a progressive choice for vice-presidential candidate in an America still struggling with the language on race

In the US, the language concerning racial issues seems to be stuck in the days of slavery and segregation. Then, as now, people who were not seen as entirely ‘white’ were generally deemed ‘black’, rather than mixed race

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Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event on August 12. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:30am, 23 Aug 2020Updated: 1:04pm, 4 Nov 2020

Apart from not being Donald Trump, the choice of Kamala Harris as Democratic vice-presidential candidate is the best news for a long time in the history of race in the United States. Here is the daughter of a Tamil Indian and a mixed-race Jamaican, both immigrants, married to a man of European Jewish origin.

Here is proof positive that immigration and racial mixing can work for America, and an example to other countries (China included) which still identify physical characteristics with nationality and culture.

There is a significant element of ethnic politics in the choice of someone who ticks the black, Indian, white and Jewish racial boxes but ethnic voting has always played a role in US politics so the diversity Harris represents is evidence of the system working to include the previously excluded.

However, there is something disturbing in the trend of language on racial issues in the US, and the anglophone world generally. That is the insistence on the use of black-and-white terminology to describe complexity.

Language seems to have learned little since the days of slavery and segregation. Then, as now, those who were not seen as entirely “white” were generally deemed “black” rather than of the mixed race that so many of them were.

Thus, the likes of Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton are almost invariably reported as black even though their mothers were white and, in the case of Obama, almost entirely brought up by his mother’s family. Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth is described as Asian-American, though her father was a white US serviceman. Harris may choose to be black in political terms but to the outsider, her Indian roots appear stronger.