Janet Jackson is making headlines and trending on social media after claiming she “heard” that VP Kamala Harris “is not Black” and that her “father is white.”
The 58-year-old pop icon made the statements during an interview with The Guardian when asked for her thoughts on America potentially electing its first Black female president.
Her response left the interviewer “floored.”
The interview excerpt reads:
“Well, you know what they supposedly said?” she asks me. “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”
She looks at me expectantly, perhaps assuming that I have Indian heritage.
“Well, she’s both,” I offer.
“Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,” she coughs. “I was told that they discovered her father was white.”
I’m floored at this point. It’s well known that Harris’s father is a Jamaican economist, a Stanford professor who split from her Indian mother when she was five.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in her book The Truths We Hold.
The people who are most vocal in questioning the facts of Harris’s identity tend to be hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorists.
I don’t think Jackson falls into that camp, but I do wonder what the algorithms are serving her. I start again.
Harris has dual heritage, I say, and, given this moment, does Jackson think America is ready for her – if we agree she’s black? Or, OK, a woman of colour?
“I don’t know,” Jackson stage whispers. “Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.”
She doesn’t think there will be a peaceful transition of power?
“I think there might be mayhem,” she falters. “Either way it goes, but we’ll have to see.”
Janet Jackson is trending on Twitter as the public weighs in and share their reactions.
Read a few tweets below.
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Source: The Guardian
