Bringing questions of racial authenticity into politics is an ugly, bipartisan game

Last month, when Donald Trump questioned whether Kamala Harris was Black, Democrats exploded with indignation. Harris’ identity was up to her, they said, not to Trump. And it was racist for him to suggest that he knew her race better than she did.

I agree with all of that. But where were these critics when African American Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) was being called out as someone who “doesn’t get racism” because he’s a Black conservative? Sitting on their hands, mostly, if they weren’t joining the chorus themselves.

That tells you something important about the nasty game of raising questions about racial authenticity in American politics: both teams can play it.

Start with Trump, whose comments about Harris — the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother — drew gasps last week at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now, she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Never mind that Harris attended Howard — a historically Black university — or that she was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of America’s leading Black sororities. Here’s the larger point: Harris has the right to determine her own racial identity. And Trump has no right — none — to doubt it.

But he can’t help himself, apparently. In a social media post after the NABJ convention, Trump doubled down on his offensive remarks. “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian heritage are very much appreciated,” Trump wrote, attaching a photo showing a young Harris with sari-clad relatives.

Translated: She’s not “really” Black.

But that’s what Democratic critics said about Tim Scott in 2021, after he delivered the GOP’s rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Mocking Scott’s claim that America “is not a racist country,” they called him “Uncle Tim.”

That was a riff on the docile and obsequious Black man in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And that sentiment reflects its own kind of bigotry, too, because it implies that the critics understand Scott’s racial identity more clearly than he does.

It makes no difference that Scott has denounced Capitol Hill police officers for stopping him five times on his way to cast a vote. In each instance, Scott said, he had to ask a white colleague to tell the officer who he was.

Scott has also reported being shadowed by clerks in grocery stores. And police have pulled him over more than 20 times in 20 years. “I was not pulled over for going three miles over the limit,” Scott wrote in his 2022 book. “I was pulled over for being Black.”

So Scott doesn’t deny the presence of anti-Black discrimination in America; indeed, he has experienced it himself. But he rejects the idea that America is inherently racist, or that racism places a limit on what Black people can do and become.

His own story is a case in point. Born into poverty — and to a single mother — Tim Scott rose to the highest legislative body in the land. “Injustice is real,” Scott wrote in his book. “But infinitely more real is opportunity.”

That makes Scott a race traitor to some critics on the Left, who insist that he’s a toady for white people rather than an independent, autonomous Black man. “You can call me a prop, you can call me a token… you can question my Blackness, you can even call me ‘Uncle Tim,’” Scott told an Iowa audience, during his unsuccessful presidential campaign. “My existence shows your irrelevance. The truth of my life disproves your lies.”

Whatever you think of Tim Scott, he should get to define the truth of his life.

Exactly. Whatever you think of Tim Scott, he should get to define the truth of his life. It’s a slur — and a lie — to say that he’s not really Black, just as it is for Donald Trump to say the same about Kamala Harris.

Of course, we should be clear that while there are some unmistakable similarities between what’s been said about Harris and what’s been said about Scott, there is no equivalency here: this type of prejudice is a far more serious matter when a former president — and a current candidate for the office — indulges in it.

And don’t expect Trump to back away from it, which simply isn’t in his makeup. He’s got his story — albeit a baseless and tired one — and he’s sticking to it.

And that’s another way he’s different from President Biden, who told an interviewer in 2020 that African Americans who wondered whether to vote for him or Trump “ain’t Black.” That elicited a biting retort from Scott, who denounced Biden for “negative race-baiting.”

Then Biden did something Donald Trump will never do: He apologized. “No one, no one, should have to vote for any party based on their race,” Biden said. And, we might add, no one should have to prove their racial identity — to you, to me, or to anybody else.

Let’s call off this ugly game, once and for all. We’ll all be better for it.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools” and eight other books.