Kamala Harris Calls Out Trump’s Divisive Racial History in Presidential Debate

Tuesday night saw a war of words between presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. As expected, shots were fired from both sides, but Harris skillfully turned a negative into a positive.

In the debate, Trump went after Harris’ race but refused to acknowledge his past comments about her identity.

Following a question by moderator David Muir on what heritage Harris is, Trump said, "I don’t care what she is."

“Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.”

Muir then referenced Trump’s comments last month, claiming Harris “turned Black” for a political gain. Trump responded and said, “I don’t know.”

“All I can say is I read where she was not Black that she put out. I’ll say that. And then I read that she was Black, and that’s OK. Either one was OK with me.”

In an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Trump made the following comments:

“She was only promoting Indian heritage,” he said. “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.”

“Is she Indian or is she Black? he asked.

Well, she’s both, as Harris’ mother was Indian, and her father is Jamaican.

In a swift response, Harris implored that Trump had a divisive history with race that she described as “tragic.” She underscored that Trump discriminated against Black folks looking to live in his father’s buildings. And she scolded him for “calling for the Exonerated Five,” also known as the “Central Park Five,” to face the death penalty.

“I think the American people want better than that, want better than this,” Harris said at the debate.

Back in 1989, Trump paid for a full-page advertisement in New York City newspapers calling for

“the return of the death penalty for four Black teenagers and a Latino teen who were falsely accused of having raped a jogger in Central Park.” Their convictions, though, were overturned.

But the Republican candidate never apologized, consistently refusing to take back his comments, arguing that they had admitted guilt.

“They admitted, they said, they pled guilty, and I said, ‘Well if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person – killed a person ultimately,’” he said.

But DNA evidence linked a serial rapist to the crime. Even so, the teenagers spent years behind bars before their convictions were vacated in 2002. New York City later paid them $41 million in legal settlement.

Yusef Salaam, a New York City Council member, slammed Trump’s statements amid the most recent Democratic National Convention.