‘Not black’: Trump comments on Harris’ race

A comment made by Donald Trump about Kamala Harris’ racial identity came back to haunt him at the presidential debate.

Donald Trump has denied having an issue with Kamala Harris’ race, despite bringing up her racial identity several weeks ago.

“I don’t care. I don’t care what she is,” he said during one of the many tetchy moments in the presidential debate which was held on Tuesday US time.

Ms Harris and Mr Trump went head to head in Philadelphia in what could be the pair’s only debate in a campaign that was turned upside down by Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race.

The debate touched on abortion, national security, the economy and at one point went in an unexpected direction when Mr Trump claimed immigrants were “eating dogs”.

A comment Donald Trump made about Kamala Harris’ race came back at the debate. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)

‘I don’t care what she is’

One of the moderators, David Muir from the US’ ABC TV network, asked Mr Trump about whether it was “appropriate” to weigh in on the racial identity of an opponent.

That was in direct reference to comments Mr Trump made in August at a Chicago event for black journalists when he said: “I didn’t know (Ms Harris) was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. And now she wants to be known as black”.

At the debate, Mr Trump replied that he didn’t care about Mr Harris’ racial identity.

“I don’t care what she is. I don’t care if you want to make a big deal out of something. I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is okay with me”.

‘Your words’: Host pushes Trump

“But those were your words,” Muir said, referring to Mr Trump’s Chicago comments.

“I don’t know,” Mr Trump said.

“I mean, all I can say is I read where she was ‘not black’ and then I read that she was black, and that’s okay. That’s up to her.”

Ms Harris, whose parents came from India and Jamaica respectively has never said she is not black. She has referred to herself as both African-American and Asian American, according to Reuters, often in the same sentence but sometimes separately. For instance, at a panel of black leaders in 2006 she referred to her African-American heritage. At times she has last talked about her Indian background.

Her White House biography, states she is “the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American” to be elected Vice President.

ABC broadcaster David Muir pushed Trump on the issue. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)

Ms Harris said it was “tragedy” that Mr Trump wanted to be a president yet she claimed “he has consistently over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people”.

“We have so much more in common than what separates us, and we don’t want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us, and especially by race”.

She claimed that Mr Trump’s family owned property company refused to rent to black people.

“This is the same individual who spread ‘birther’’ lines about the first black president of the United States (Barack Obama).

Kamala Harris said Trump was truing to divide America. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)

“This is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five young black and Latino boys who were innocent.

“He took out a full-page ad calling for their execution”.

That full page ad was about the “Central Park Five”. They were five teenagers wrongly convicted of horrifically beating Trish Meili in 1989 in New York’s famous park.

They all confessed after they claimed they were deprived of sleep, lied too and threatened. Subsequently, they would all recant their confessions but they were jailed.

It later transpired a serial rapist had beaten Ms Meili.

Mr Trump took out full page ads in several New York newspapers calling for the death penalty to be brought back in the state. While he didn’t refer directly to the case, the reference to “roving bands of wild criminals … of every age” was widely seen as a comment on the boys.

“A lot of people agreed with me on the Central Park Five,” he said at the debate in reply to Ms Harris.

US civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton (2nd R) was joined onstage by members of the "Central Park Five," at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)

“They admitted it, they said they pleaded guilty. And I said, well, if they pleaded guilty, they badly hurt the person, killed the person.”

He accused Ms Harris of having to “stretch back years, 40, 50 years ago, because there’s nothing now”.

Ms Harris said that Mr Trump wanted Americans to “point their fingers at each other”.

“I meet with people all the time who tell me, can we please just have discourse about how we’re going to invest in the aspirations and the ambitions and the dreams of the American people, regardless of people’s colour or the language that grandmothers speaks”.

Originally published as ‘Not black’: Trump comments on Harris’ race