Kamala Harris: a progressive choice for vice-presidential candidate in an America still struggling with the language on race

In the US, the language concerning racial issues seems to be stuck in the days of slavery and segregation. Then, as now, people who were not seen as entirely ‘white’ were generally deemed ‘black’, rather than mixed race

Philip Bowring

Published: 3:30am, 23 Aug 2020

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Apart from not being Donald Trump, the choice of Kamala Harris as Democratic vice-presidential candidate is the best news for a long time in the history of race in the United States. Here is the daughter of a Tamil Indian and a mixed-race Jamaican, both immigrants, married to a man of European Jewish origin.

Here is proof positive that immigration and racial mixing can work for America, and an example to other countries (China included) which still identify physical characteristics with nationality and culture.

There is a significant element of ethnic politics in the choice of someone who ticks the black, Indian, white and Jewish racial boxes but ethnic voting has always played a role in US politics so the diversity Harris represents is evidence of the system working to include the previously excluded.

However, there is something disturbing in the trend of language on racial issues in the US, and the anglophone world generally. That is the insistence on the use of black-and-white terminology to describe complexity.

Language seems to have learned little since the days of slavery and segregation. Then, as now, those who were not seen as entirely “white” were generally deemed “black” rather than of the mixed race that so many of them were.

Thus, the likes of Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton are almost invariably reported as black even though their mothers were white and, in the case of Obama, almost entirely brought up by his mother’s family. Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth is described as Asian-American, though her father was a white US serviceman. Harris may choose to be black in political terms but to the outsider, her Indian roots appear stronger.

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Of course, individuals can identify with any side, both or none but it is not the media’s job to do that for them. It seems that there is no escape from the language of the past, the media failing to describe the reality of mixed race, despite ever-growing percentages in countries with significant immigration.

Language has been further abused recently with the use of a capital “B” – for Black – when referring to people. Some media outlets use a capital “W” for White, others stick to lower case. What makes a physical description a proper noun deserving a capital letter?

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One may be able to identify a Black American culture in the same way as a Tamil Indian one. But that cannot apply to most people being referred to as black who may be from anywhere from Papua New Guinea to Sri Lanka or Sudan.

Likewise, there is no such thing as “White” when even definitions of white vary. The use of a capital letter, particularly when adopted by self-proclaimed liberal organs, exaggerates racial divides in the name of racial justice.

White is just as difficult to define as black. Koreans and northern Chinese tend to have whiter skins than many so-called white Europeans. Indeed, Chinese saw themselves as white, relative to their southern Asian neighbours. White skin has long been admired. Chinese as “yellow” was a Western imposition.

Ethiopians, described as dark-skinned by the Greeks who coined the word Ethiopia, considered themselves to be white compared with their Nilotic neighbours, and Europeans to be pink after a day in the sun. Most skin colour perceptions are relative.

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Sudan actually means “land of the blacks” in Arabic. Sudanese come in varying shades of brown, hence are generally darker than their Arab neighbours in Egypt or across Arabia. Yet, for many Sudanese, black people are the conspicuously tall and deep black Dinka and Nuer peoples of the upper Nile, now mostly in South Sudan.

The Arab slave trade, sourced from lands to the west and south, flourished in Sudan and upper Egypt until at least the mid-19th century, but there was never the obsession with skin colour. Hence, the slaves and their progeny were absorbed into the broader population.

The same was the case in island Southeast Asia, where manpower shortages made slave raiding a profitable exercise for the people of the Sulu Archipelago. Although it altered local demographics, it left no lasting trace in terms of social differentiation.

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing arriving for the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. Perceptions of skin colour are relative. Photo: EPA

The obsession with dividing people into black or white has been peculiar to the West and especially the US. It may need many more Kamala Harris types before language reflects reality. “Black” or “White” represents a backward step of some magnitude.

So too does applying today’s rules to yesterday. It is forbidden in many quarters to mention the book The Nigger of the “Narcissus” by Joseph Conrad, yet it simply used the language of the day to describe a black man who was the dominant character in this novel of seafaring.

“Negro” is now viewed as offensive by some, despite being used with pride by Martin Luther King and Léopold Senghor of Senegal, the writer, statesman and originator of negritude as a cultural concept. Now “African-American” has mostly given way to “black” or “Black”. The black/white obsession continues.

Meanwhile, what the US (and Britain) needs is language dealing with multi-ethnic heritage. Hong Kong has its Eurasians but mixes are getting more complicated, as Harris illustrates. Can one really describe her every time as Indian-African-American or black and Indian? Tiger Woods tried “Cablinasian” but this mouthful didn’t stick. Mixed-race or multi-ethnic may do for now. At least they are not divisive. But a new word would be best. Any suggestions?

Philip Bowring is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator

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