“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts.We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho convention on Wednesday (local time).
Donald Trump had earlier said in an interview that Harris had changed her ethnicity from Indian to black.
“So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? But you know what, I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went – she became a Black person,” Trump said.
The White House also denounced the statement calling it “insulting”.
Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, referred to Trump’s term as the US president and said, “We all remember what those four years were like, and today we got yet another reminder. This afternoon, Donald Trump spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, and it was the same old show, the divisiveness and the disrespect. Let me just say, the American people deserve better.”
Calling herself and others like her as “the underdogs in this race”, Harris said, “We are not fighting against something. We are fighting for something. We know how much is at stake.”
Kamala Harris has Indian roots through her mother and Jamaican heritage through her father. Both of her parents immigrated to the US She was born in Oakland, California, and went on to study at Howard University, a historically Black university located in Washington DC.