NEWS / Republican front-runner Donald Trump attacks Democratic front-runner Kamala Harris’s “race” marker on birth certificate

Republican presidential front-runner and former US President Donald Trump attacked Democratic presidential front-runner and US Vice President Kamala Harris for allegedly misidentifying herself as being African American.

Trump reposted far-right activist Laura Loomer’s allegations that Harris is “lying about being Black” on the basis of her birth certificate. Loomer’s post on X (formerly Twitter) alleges that Harris’s birth certificate is being hidden by the mainstream media. California law allows any person to retrieve informational copies of anybody’s vital records. The informational copy shown by Loomer in her post does not list Kamala Harris’s race at birth but indicates that her mother Shyamala Gopalan is “Caucasian”, while her father Donald Harris is “Jamaican.”

Trump’s re-post came a day after he commented about Vice President Harris’s racial identity at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Convention in Chicago.

“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,” Trump commented, as quoted by The Washington Post, “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Harris responded to Trump’s remarks at an annual gathering of the historically African-American Sigma Gamma Rho sorority by calling his words “the same old show – the divisiveness and the disrespect.”

Harris’s mother was born in India, while her father is from Jamaica. She has been a member of the historically African-American Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority since the 1980s and attended Howard University in Washington, DC, which is historically known for its African-American culture.

Before becoming president, Donald Trump made claims that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had actually been born in Kenya despite having a birth certificate from the State of Hawaii.