During an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in July, former President Donald Trump accused Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris — who is of Indian and Jamaican descent — of deciding to “turn Black.”
Many journalists and scholars I spoke with said it was a hurtful, strategic remark likely aimed at discrediting Harris. In an August CNN interview, Harris implied she thought the same, saying Trump was using the “same old tired playbook,” and refused to address the issue any further.
On a national scale with millions of eyes watching, Harris had to deal with the common microaggressions she and other multiracial people — including me, a half-Chinese, half-white journalist and professor — face their entire lives.
Multiracial Americans are the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, increasing 276% from 2010 to 2020, according to the 2020 U.S. census. Around 33.8 million people — over 10% of the population — reported being multiracial in 2020. And yet, the public commonly puts mixed-race people into singular categories that erase one or more of their identities. This type of thinking comes from an academic concept scholars Marc P. Johnston and Kevin L. Nadal coined in 2010 called monoracism — a system of power that insists people only have one racial identity, as a means to oppress multiracial people.
“Monoracism creates an automatic distrust,” said Lisa Delacruz Combs, a half-Filipino and half-white professor and independent scholar whose research focuses on multiracial identity in higher education and media. “It makes people think, ‘I can’t put you in the categorical system I was raised to understand and learn. You do not fit in one of these boxes that was on my forms when I was a little kid. I don’t know how to interact with you.’”
But there are ways to ensure monoracism doesn’t prevail and people’s multiracial identities are respected in reporting. Here is how journalists can cover mixed-race people carefully and responsibly, according to multiracial journalists and professors.
Ask respectfully how a person identifies
Every expert I spoke to said the top best practice for covering multiracial identity is to ask your source or subject how they prefer to identify — much like how it’s now standard for journalists to ask their sources for their pronouns. When reporting on Indigenous people, reporters should make sure to ask about their tribal affiliation and how they want that presented in the story. (This is guidance I put into practice for this piece; I also use “multiracial” and “mixed race” interchangeably, as there isn’t a consensus on these identity terms).
“Self-identity is what I always tell our writers to lead with,” said Lauren Hardie, who is mixed and the managing editor of online publication Mixed Asian Media, which holds media workshops and panels. “Because in every way possible, I want the person who we’re interviewing to feel respected and feel seen. It’s not our job or anyone else’s job to tell you who you are.”
However, it’s important to ask questions of identity respectfully. As a mixed-race woman, I’ve been asked “What are you?” and “Where are you from?” countless times — questions that can come off as rude and often make the mixed-race person feel interrogated and othered.
“‘What are you?’ makes it feel like you’re just being boiled down to your ethnicity and what you look like,” said former NBC News senior reporter Ali Gostanian, who identifies as Chinese, Jewish and Armenian. “You have to be very tactful when asking. It’s very important to explain to folks who you’re interviewing why you’re asking this specifically for the story. For example, ‘I’m looking to speak with this type of person and I understand that you may identify as this.’”
If asking questions like this feels awkward, Hardie suggested journalists just say so. “Get it out of the gate and say, ‘I’m about to ask an awkward question’ and allow the subjects the autonomy to answer in the way that serves them,” she said.
Understand the nuances of mixed-race identity
Like Harris, multiracial public figures are often perceived as one race over another. Sometimes that is the celebrity’s or politician’s choice. During his presidency, Barack Obama — who has a white mother and a Black father — said he identified as African American, because “that’s how I’m treated and that’s how I’m viewed. I’m proud of it.”
On the other hand, rapper Cardi B identifies as Afro-Latina. But she’s experienced the erasure of her multiracial identity and has been questioned about her Blackness; the star has had to defend her roots throughout much of her career. This is why asking how a mixed-race person identifies is crucial.
“In the Black community broadly, there are people who will say, ‘I’m biracial,’ there are people who pass for white, and then there are people who say, ‘I’m Black,’” said Donna Patterson, who identifies as Black and is the chair of Delaware State University’s department of history, political science and philosophy. “But just because maybe their mother is white, and they say that they’re Black, they’re not necessarily erasing that their mother is white, too.”
Patterson suggested journalists not only ask people how they self-identify, but also research their background and offer context into the nuances of their identity.
Specifically for Harris, Patterson advised reading more about Harris’ mother’s hometown in India — Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu — while also looking at her Jamaican identity, her status as a first-generation daughter of immigrants and her time at Howard University, a historically Black college where she was a member of the oldest Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. “These nuances, these bits that are coming from different parts of the diaspora and parts of the world, when you’re bringing in her South Asian identity,” Patterson said.
Kalya Castillo, a psychologist who identifies as biracial, Black and Japanese, said it’s important to note when a multiracial person embraces the many aspects of their culture because it can be “incredibly painful” to see only one part of their identity acknowledged. When people with multiracial identities are reduced to one race, it can feel like a parent or loved one is being erased.
“A lot of times multiracial people are told how they should be identifying and it’s very conflicting,” Castillo said. “It’s so ingrained in us that we don’t fit in a box, that we are somehow not accepted the way that we are. The idea of embracing both feels so rare in society.”
Others may prefer to be identified by their specific ethnic identities, rather than broad terms like “multiracial.” TV political reporter Manuelita Beck identifies as Hispanic and a member of the Navajo Nation from the By the Water’s Edge clan. When she has referred to herself as multiracial, people have assumed she’s half-white based on her surname, which is from her former marriage.
“I’m very light-skinned and I have that light-skinned privilege, and so I’d get pulled into not getting coded correctly,” she said. “I’ve certainly gotten that in newsrooms a lot, especially because I often go by my nickname, which is Lita. People just don’t make the connections.”
Avoid falling into the trap of asking if someone is ‘enough’
Mixed-race people, like Harris and Cardi B, are often questioned if they are “enough” of one race to qualify as that race. These notions are rooted in American history and policy that journalists should be familiar with and contextualize.
The end of slavery prompted the “one-drop rule,” a legal classification where anyone who had any amount of Black ancestry was considered Black. Questions about who is Native enough go back to blood quantum laws, created by white settlers to calculate how much Indigenous “blood” Native Americans had to limit their citizenship.
“When you are biracial, you’re constantly justifying who you are, and having to explain it,” Beck said. “And then you’re challenged on it from people who don’t have any authority, or don’t have any knowledge of your cultures — that judgment is very frustrating and exhausting.”
In fact, multiracial people are at higher risk for mental health issues, with 25% of people with mental illness identifying with two or more races, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
“How can it not impact your mental health if you’re constantly being told, ‘Well, you’re not enough this, you’re not this, or you’re just this,’” said Alex Chester-Iwata, founder and CEO of Mixed Asian Media, who is biracial and identifies as Japanese American and Ashkenazi Jewish. “You’re just erasing me as a person. Or, oftentimes, we get the opposite where people see us as this shiny little thing that is so exotic.”
To check biases and avoid stereotypes, journalists should ask their mixed-race colleagues to talk through stories or for a sensitivity read — as long as their colleagues don’t mind and have the time. And when sources have complicated relationships with their mixed-race identity, it’s OK to acknowledge that, too.
“Just say why it’s complicated and write that in the article,” Combs said. “You can even give an example.”
Engage with mixed-race people about larger cultural implications
Harris’ multiracial identity — much like her gender and parenting status — will likely continue to dominate the public discourse throughout the rest of the presidential election. When Trump’s questioning of Harris’ Blackness made headlines, it demanded context and follow-ups.
“Something missing from some of the coverage at the time was this lack of understanding that people who are biracial get those questions all the time their whole life,” Beck said. “It’s worth unpacking what that means and thinking about how we judge people so much on their appearances and what we think they are.”
No matter the story, journalists should always ask how a news event affects the people at the center of it — in this case, mixed-race Americans.
Gostanian said she appreciated coverage, found in The Washington Post and NBC News, that asked multiracial people how they felt about Trump’s comments. “I thought that was a really good way of addressing it because it centered mixed people in the conversation,” she said, “while also allowing for different folks sharing how it made them feel.”
