Just hours after former President Donald J. Trump made false assertions about her racial identity, Vice President Kamala Harris had an extraordinary opportunity to respond.
Speaking on Wednesday night in Houston at a convention of one of the nation’s most prominent Black sororities, before an audience of thousands of Black women clad in gold blazers, Ms. Harris delivered a glimpse of how she might handle the crude and racist attacks from Mr. Trump that seem likely to continue over the next three months of a turbocharged presidential campaign.
With careful precision, the vice president acknowledged his statements, made at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, and condemned his behavior. But although she often casts herself as a fighter eager to confront Mr. Trump, she showed restraint on Wednesday, refusing to engage in a debate with a white man critiquing her Blackness.
“It was the same old show,” she said. “The divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better.”
Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian American and whose father is Black, and who attended the historically Black Howard University, made only a brief diversion from her standard stump speech to address Mr. Trump’s false claims without directly engaging with them. He had said that she once identified as Indian American, and then “all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a Black person.”
Her surgical comments demonstrated an understanding that fighting the former president on his terms could amplify his lies, her allies said. A prolonged discussion of her racial identity could also distract voters from the issues that the Harris campaign believes will resonate most, such as abortion, economic inequality and the protection of democracy.
And her response underscores lessons she may have taken from her first presidential campaign, during the 2020 Democratic primary, when critics repeatedly called her racial identity into question.
Her remarks on Wednesday night suggest that when Ms. Harris does engage this time around, she will focus on Mr. Trump’s divisiveness, casting herself by contrast as a figure of unity and progress, political strategists said.
Stefanie Brown James, a founder of the Collective PAC, which supports Black candidates for office, said Mr. Trump’s remarks only highlighted his penchant for personal insults over substance.
“He’s trying to drag her to watch the circus, and she’s trying to run a country,” Ms. Brown James said. “So, no, she’s not going to pay attention to it, and I don’t think that she should. Because what did he show was different about himself? Nothing.”
During her first presidential campaign, Ms. Harris faced attacks on her Blackness from both white conservatives and some Black voters, and she responded to them head-on.
In a wide-ranging interview in 2019 on “The Breakfast Club,” a popular radio show focused on hip-hop and Black culture, Ms. Harris said her identity had been weaponized against her “to sow hate and division,” similar to what had happened to former President Barack Obama.
She also addressed criticisms she faced for having married a white man, Doug Emhoff. And she rebuffed questions about whether she was “Black enough” to appeal to Black voters nationally.
“I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black,” Ms. Harris said. “I was born Black, I will die Black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.”
But her more direct approach did not stifle the conversation. Instead, the interview went viral over remarks she made about the rap artists she listened to. Some accused her of playing up parts of her identity to court Black voters.
Another notable moment came several months later, during a Democratic primary debate, when Ms. Harris memorably criticized President Biden, at the time one of her opponents, over his past opposition to the federally mandated busing of Black children to majority-white schools. She faced racist attacks on social media after the debate, and congressional Democrats rose to her defense.
Mr. Trump has shown that he may continue attacking Ms. Harris’s identity, despite warnings from other Republicans that the tactic could backfire.
After his appearance in Chicago on Wednesday, he flew to Pennsylvania for a rally in Harrisburg, where his campaign displayed an old news headline about Ms. Harris having been elected the first Indian American attorney general of California.
And Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, defended Mr. Trump’s remarks at his own rally on Wednesday night, denouncing Ms. Harris as a “phony” and telling CNN on Thursday: “She is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she is in front of.”
The Harris campaign chose to highlight other comments Mr. Trump made in Chicago, including his promise to pardon the rioters who attacked the police as they stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign’s communications director, criticized Mr. Trump in a statement on Wednesday and re-upped calls for him to commit to a presidential debate in the fall. He did not refer directly to the substance of Mr. Trump’s attacks on Ms. Harris’s identity.
“Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign,” Mr. Tyler said. “It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans.”
Several of Ms. Harris’s allies have pointed to the leagues of Black women who support her campaign and who can challenge attacks on her race and gender.
While the vice president may not directly address Mr. Trump’s false claims about her racial identity, they argue, voters and organizers can defend her — but they, too, will have to strike a delicate balance.
“There’s the importance of speaking out and challenging it,” said Jotaka Eaddy, a veteran Democratic strategist and an organizer of the Win With Black Women Zoom calls that have garnered support and donations from thousands of Black women.
“But it’s also important, and more so when it’s mis- and disinformation and lies,” she said, “to just combat the lies with the truth.”
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