Pop star Janet Jackson was assailed on social media for saying she heard Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was not black.
‘She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.’
Jackson made the comments during a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, whose interviewer tried to correct the pop star on the spot. The 58-year-old was asked by Nosheen Iqbal whether she supported Harris to be the first black female president of the U.S.
“Well, you know what they supposedly said?” Jackson responded. “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”
“Well, she’s both,” Iqbal replied.
“Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,” Jackson responded. “I was told that they discovered her father was white.”
Iqbal said she was “floored” by Jackson’s statement and blamed a social media algorithm for pushing the pop star into alignment with “hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorists” who question Harris’ racial identity. Harris’ father was a Jamaican economist who divorced her mother, an Indian woman, when Harris was only 5 years old.
She went on to ask whether Jackson believed the country was ready for a president who is a female and a person of color, whatever color Jackson believed Harris to be.
“I don’t know,” Jackson said in what Iqbal described as a stage whisper.
“Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem,” she added.
Social media imploded with many on the left lambasting Jackson for the comments and compared them to comments former President Donald Trump made claiming Harris had only recently started identifying as black.
The issue became convoluted after someone claiming to represent Jackson offered a statement of apology, but she later said the apology was unauthorized and confirmed that she was not apologizing for the comments.
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