The barbershop was abuzz with controversy.
A video clip has gone viral of several black men at a barbershop in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, openly questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris is “black.”
Harris, 59, who is biracial with a Jamaican-American father and an Indian-American mother, has come under attack over her race. Last week, President Trump questioned her racial identity and suggested she only recently began identifying as black.
The footage, from a local CBS affiliate, begins with reporter Joel Smith asking, “Does Kamala make you more or less likely to vote Democrat?”
One of the men quickly spoke up, asking his companions, “Is Kamala black or not?”
The man next to him answered matter-of-factly, “I’ll let her talk about it, but I can’t.”
“I agree,” said another man in the group.
“I heard she’s not,” a fourth man explained. “I heard she’s half black and half Asian.”
CNN host Michael Smerconish aired a clip of the exchange on his show Saturday, telling viewers that when he previously aired the segment on his radio show, a black call-in participant described the men as “low-information voters.”
President Trump sparked a debate over Harris’ racial identity last Wednesday when he asked about her race while attending a National Association of Black Journalists event in Chicago.
“I’d known her indirectly for a long time, but not much directly. She’d always been Indian, and she’d always just promoted her Indian roots. I never knew she was black, until a few years ago, when she happened to be black,” Trump said at the time.
“I don’t know if she’s Indian or black because she wants to be known as black,” he continued, “but you know, I respect both and she’s obviously not.”
The remarks sparked an immediate and heated debate. At the time, Trump was being asked about conservatives describing Harris as a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hire, a reference to President Biden’s promise to nominate a woman for vice president in 2020. Trump largely ignored the DEI question.
“It was the same old show,” Harris responded later that day, speaking at a prominent black women’s social club event in Houston. “Divided and disrespectful. Let me just say that the American people deserve better.”
Before Biden abruptly dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21, polls had suggested Trump was making some gains among black voters.
Pew Research dataFor example, it was found that 77% of black voters support Biden, while 18% support Trump, and this trend is especially pronounced among black men.
For comparison, 92% of black voters supported Trump in 2020, compared with just 8% for him. Pew Research. other Exit poll data They projected that Biden would beat Trump among black voters in 2020 by 87% to 12%.
Harris has now risen to the top of the Democratic field, having officially secured the number of delegates needed to be declared the party’s standard-bearer last Friday.
She is expected to announce her running mate this week.
