Singer/songwriter Janet Jackson has hopped on the rumor train when it comes to VP Kamala Harris‘ heritage.
During a recent interview with The Guardian, Jackson bizarrely questioned whether the 2024 Presidential candidate is black.
“Well, you know what they supposedly said? She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian,” she told the reporter. When the profile writer clarified that she is of both Black and South Asian heritage, Jackson answered, “Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days. I was told they discovered her father was white.”
Jackson’s comments align with right-wing conspiracy theories that have been perpetuated by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
At the presidential debate held earlier this month, he said, “I don’t know. I mean all I can say is I read where she was not Black. And then I read that she was Black and that’s OK. Either one was OK with me. That’s up to her.”
It has been proven that Harris’ father, Donald, is a Jamaican American professor of economics at Stanford University, while her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a renowned breast cancer researcher and scientist, came from southern India. Both parents immigrated to the United States and met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
In Harris’ 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, she wrote, “My mother, grandparents, aunts and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots. Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture.”
She added, however, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya [her sister] and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”
The Jackson interview took another strange turn when she started talking about “all this child trafficking crap that’s going on,” especially since her late brother Michael Jackson secured several child sexual abuse allegations prior to his passing.
When it comes to the 2024 election, Jackson says she believes the U.S. will descend into “mayhem” regardless of the results this November.
Jackson is a multiplatinum artist who has influenced some of the biggest R&B and pop stars from Britney Spears to Kendrick Lamar.
The five-time Grammy-winning artist has also appeared on screen in Will & Grace (where she played herself), Fame, Good Times, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, and Poetic Justice, for which she won an Oscar nom for Best Original Song.
She is currently on the second leg of her Together Again tour. Her older brother, Tito, the founding guitarist of The Jackson 5, died this week.
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