Several United States presidential candidates have voiced their support for Senator Kamala Harris following racist attacks against her, Huffpost reported on Sunday. Her attackers have claimed that the California Democrat does not represent African Americans.
The attacks began to flood Twitter on Thursday after Harris’ breakout performance on the second night of the Democratic debate when she challenged former Vice President Joe Biden’s record on race. The attack got more impetus with President Donald Trump’s eldest son retweeting a post from right-wing commentator Ali Alexander.
“Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black,” Alexander had tweeted. “She is half Indian and half Jamaican. I’m so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. It’s disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2?” Trump Jr retweeted it, adding the comment: “Is this true? Wow.” He later deleted the tweet.
“This is the same type of racist attacks his father used to attack Barack Obama,” Harris’ campaign spokesperson Lily Adams told The Washington Post over an email. “It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.”
Harris, a former California attorney general, is the biracial daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother. She is one of only two black presidential candidates for 2020.
“The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly,” tweeted Democrat Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. “We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks.” New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, also a Democrat, said Harris had nothing to prove.
“The presidential competitive field is stronger because Kamala Harris has been powerfully voicing her Black American experience,” Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg tweeted. “Her first-generation story embodies the American dream. It’s long past time to end these racist, birther-style attacks.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday, too, joined the bandwagon and claimed that Harris got “too much credit” for her debate performance, reported The Washington Post. “It wasn’t that outstanding,” Trump said at the end of a news conference in Japan where the president is attending the G20 summit. “He [Biden] was hit harder than he should have been hit.”
Harris’ campaign spokesperson retweeted nearly a dozen comments and articles on Saturday to defend her. “This stuff is really vile and everyone should speak out against it,” Adams tweeted. Harris herself, however, has not yet replied to any of these comments.
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