When Trump attacks Harris’ racial identity, these Americans say it’s personal

Sean Webb didn’t expect to be sitting at his keyboard, sharing painful childhood memories.

But that’s what the 35-year-old employment specialist in Denver found himself doing recently.

In a series of Facebook posts, Webb wrote about how invisible he once felt when standardized test forms forced him to select a race by checking just one box. He wrote about the first, harsh moment when he realized others saw him differently than he saw himself – describing how a classmate once berated him with questions insisting he was Chinese or Japanese (He isn’t). And he wrote about the time when his high school civics class once spent an entire period debating whether he was a US citizen (He is).

Webb’s mom is Filipina. His dad grew up in Appalachia. He’s inherited those identities. He takes pride in them. Sometimes, his feelings about them may even go unsaid.

But Webb says he felt like he had to speak out and share his reflections on Facebook after hearing recent remarks from former President Donald Trump. Trump was taking aim at Vice President Kamala Harris before an audience at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, but his words hit Webb hard.

“Is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said, falsely claiming his political rival for the presidency “happened to turn Black” a few years ago.

“It felt like a direct attack against me and against other mixed-race people,” Webb says. “Especially his comment that implied that Vice President Harris should have to choose one or the other, and that you can’t be both. That’s my lived experience. You really must be both. Both sides of me inform my experience.”

It’s an experience that an increasingly large number of people in the United States can relate to. Webb, Harris and more than 33 million other multiracial Americans are, by some measures, part of the nation’s fastest growing demographic group. And for many of them, former President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Harris’ identity feel particularly personal.

There’s little doubt that Trump’s comments were in some part reflective of the country’s changing demographic realities, says Martha S. Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Results from the 2020 Census revealed the country is more racially and ethnically diverse than ever. The number of people in the US who identify as two or more races grew a stunning 276% between 2010 and 2020, according to Census figures, though experts say that jump may largely be the result of better measurement of the existing population.

But when it comes to thinking about the scale of the shift, Jones says she’d estimate it differently. Yes, there are more than 33 million people who identified as two or more races in the census. But imagine, she says, the vast network of people connected with them — parents, spouses, other family members, even friends.

“There’s a math to do that says this is not (33 million) people, this is a hundred million people,” says Jones, who’s working on a memoir about her family’s own multiracial history.

That all adds up, Jones says, to a country where many are likely to bristle at Trump’s framing of the issue, because their own lived experiences have shown them a different and more fluid reality.

Of course, multiracial Americans aren’t a monolithic group –— the umbrella term encompasses a vast array of beliefs, cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. And some wouldn’t describe themselves as multiracial or mixed race, preferring different terminology.

For her part, Harris has brushed off Trump’s criticism as “the same old show.” Referencing his remarks at a speech in Houston that same day, she slammed Trump’s “divisiveness and… disrespect” and added that “the American people deserve better.”

Harris’ father is from Jamaica, her late mother from India. In addition to honoring her South Asian heritage, she attended a historically Black university and has embraced and discussed her Black identity for decades, beginning long before she became a political candidate.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from doubling down and sharing numerous social media posts painting her as a political opportunist as he calls her racial identity into question. On Thursday, he told reporters he thought she was “disrespectful” to both sides of her heritage. The former president’s surrogates and supporters have also defended and repeated his false claims, arguing that Harris has only recently embraced her Black identity.

Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, himself the father of three biracial children, told CNN last week that Trump’s comments didn’t give him pause at all.

“Look, all he said is that Kamala Harris is a chameleon,” Vance said.

“She’s only Black when it’s time to get elected,” said Michaelah Montgomery, a Black GOP activist, drawing cheers from the crowd at a recent Trump rally in Georgia. “While you’re touting her as a savior for Black people, she identifies as an Asian woman. She chose her side, and it wasn’t ours.”

Model and media personality Amber Rose, who is biracial and a fervent Trump supporter, echoed that point in a recent interview, drawing a contrast between her own approach to racial identity.

“I have a Black mom and a White dad. And you know, for me, people get mad at me because I identify as biracial. I don’t pick a side. I don’t say I’m a Black woman. I don’t say I’m a white woman. I don’t feel like either. I feel like both,” she said. “And so I think the confusing part with Kamala is she really promoted herself as an Indian woman, and she picked a side essentially.  Even though she’s biracial, she picked a side. And now all of the sudden she wants the Black vote. And it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m a Black woman now’ … It seems disingenuous.”

Angela Lee was dreading the ripple effects when she first heard Trump’s remarks last week. The 38-year-old nonprofit executive director in Pasadena, California, says she’s played the video of Trump over and over in disbelief.

Lee identifies as Afro-Latina. She immediately thought about her two young daughters, who are Black and Puerto Rican, like her, and Korean, like their dad. Her heart sank as she imagined how they’d feel if someone said something like that to them on the playground.

“There’s a permission that was given in what he said, for other people to continue that conversation,” she says. “It gives me a stomachache.”

Lee says she’s offended by the implication that Harris is denying her Blackness if she emphasizes her Indian heritage at certain points.

In a recent post on Truth Social, for example, Trump shared a video of Harris cooking alongside Indian American actress Mindy Kaling and slammed the vice president as a “stone cold phony.” Lee says Trump’s interpretation is “completely incorrect.”

“The reality is, as mixed-race folks, when we show up in spaces, depending on the room, we are constantly taking the temperature. Does this space require me to be more Black? Does this space require me to be more Latina?” she says. “In that space, she was cooking Indian food with another South Asian, so of course she’s going to talk about her Indian heritage, because that’s what that moment required of her.”

Trump, Lee says, keeps raising the kinds of accusations she knows all too well.

“In high school, kids would tell me to my face that I wasn’t Black enough because of the lifestyle that my family and I lived, or the way that I spoke. … Or I was told I wasn’t Latino enough because my hair couldn’t be slicked back in a bun. Whatever it was, there was something about my presentation that negated my racial identity in their eyes,” she says. “And it’s painful.”

When asked to describe his race, Anthony McDowell generally has a go-to response: “Human.”

McDowell, 50, of Houston, also took to Facebook when he heard Trump’s recent comments, sharing a snapshot of more than a dozen family members with a caption.

“My mixed family. So I can identify as white, Asian, or even Asian American. See how that works.”

McDowell’s mom is Vietnamese. His dad was the first generation in his Irish family born in the United States. “My sister-in-law’s Black. My wife is Hispanic. Two of my sons are blonde hair, blue eyes. … When we go places, when people see us all, they think we’re like a church group, or we’re just like friends hanging out, when we’re actually a family. We’ve been called the United Nations of families.”

But since Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency began, McDowell says the pride he feels in his family’s diversity has been accompanied by a sense of dread amid what he says is growing hostility they’ve faced.

“I’m scared for my mother whenever she goes somewhere by herself,” he says. “I have even been told to go back to my country, and I’m like, ‘I was born here.’ I was born in Texas. I was born in Houston. This is my country. I served it. My mom’s a citizen.”

And in this divisive and decisive political moment, McDowell says his fears are intensifying. He worries about the “great replacement theory” rhetoric from some on the far right who he says seem to be threatened by racial diversity.

“I just want people to love other people. But it doesn’t seem like they see it that way,” he says. “They think that people are coming here to take everything from them, and no one’s doing that.”

Depending how the election goes, McDowell says he’s prepared to sell everything and move overseas to protect his family.

“I know this is a great country. I served in the military. I did my time for our country,” he says. “But it’s just gotten so fearful and so hateful lately.”

Despite his misgivings about Trump’s recent comments, and the painful personal memories they evoked, Sean Webb says he’s feeling hopeful about the future.

There are many things that excite him about Harris’ candidacy, including her mixed-race heritage. That part of her background, he says, helps make her even more qualified for the presidency, as she can draw on experiences navigating and embracing different cultures.

“I know she understands the feeling of coming from two worlds, and possibly being pulled between the two,” he says. “But she very clearly puts forward that she is both.”

And Webb says another event is also inspiring his optimism.

While watching this year’s Olympics, Webb says he’s also been struck by another reality.

“Especially on the gymnastics teams, on Team USA, you see every demographic representation,” he says. “And I think that’s what’s really beautiful, and what America should be, and what makes us strong.”

CNN’s Daniel Dale, Steve Contorno, Alejandra Jaramillo and Alayna Treene contributed to this report.