There was a swift backlash on Saturday after the pop star Janet Jackson challenged Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity in an interview with The Guardian. On Sunday, a man who identified himself as her manager apologized for her statements.
Then Ms. Jackson’s representatives quickly distanced her from that man and his apology, saying he was not her manager and was not authorized to speak for her.
The unusual turn of events began when The Guardian published a wide-ranging interview with Ms. Jackson timed to promote the European leg of her concert tour. When the reporter, Nosheen Iqbal, said the United States “could be on the verge of voting in its first Black female president,” referring to Ms. Harris, Ms. Jackson responded by saying: “Well, you know what they supposedly said? She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”
When Ms. Iqbal replied that Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee, is the daughter of an Indian woman and a Jamaican father who is Black, Ms. Jackson responded, “Her father’s white.”
“That’s what I was told,” she added. “I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days. I was told that they discovered her father was white.”
Across social media, people expressed bewilderment over Ms. Jackson’s comments. On “The View” on Monday, one of the hosts, Ana Navarro, said Ms. Jackson had been “very irresponsible” and had used the Guardian interview “carelessly, to spread misinformation.”
Mo Elmasri, who said he was Ms. Jackson’s manager, issued an apology on Sunday in which he said her statements were “based on misinformation.” Ms. Jackson, he told BuzzFeed, “respects Harris’s dual heritage as both Black and Indian and apologizes for any confusion caused.”
After the statement was repeated by other news media outlets, representatives for Ms. Jackson issued a statement to Variety, saying that Mr. Elmasri was not her manager and was not an authorized spokesman. They told Variety that Randy Jackson, one of Ms. Jackson’s brothers, is her manager.
Ms. Jackson’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment, and neither she nor her representatives appear to have tried to distance themselves from her statements about Ms. Harris.
Ms. Jackson’s comments echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s recent attacks on Ms. Harris’s racial identity. In July, Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, told an audience of Black journalists that Ms. Harris only recently “became a Black person.” This month, in a debate with Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump said that he had read that Ms. Harris was not Black. “Then I read that she was Black,” he said. “And that’s OK. Either one was OK with me. That’s up to her.”
Ms. Harris has long embraced both her Black and South Asian identities. She attended Howard University, a historically Black institution, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority established for Black college women.
A spokeswoman for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Mr. Elmasri’s profile on IMDb, the entertainment database, was mostly stripped of information by Monday afternoon, but earlier in the day it had showed him as being connected to “Janet Jackson: Family First,” a forthcoming Lifetime and A&E documentary series. (Variety reported that the page identified him as an executive producer.) He has also previously been identified as her manager in statements, including one that was issued last month promoting her upcoming Las Vegas residency.
Mr. Elmasri said in an email on Monday that he no longer worked for Ms. Jackson and that he was fired over the weekend after he issued the apology statement.
“I was fired by Janet and Randy, after attempts to improve her image in front of public opinion and her fans,” he said, “and this is something I do not deserve.”
The post Janet Jackson Repeats False Claims About Kamala Harris’s Race appeared first on New York Times.