Italy’s newspaper depicts Kamala Harris as ‘Red Indian’, defends action – Times of India

Italy’s rightwing newspaper IL Tempo has been slammed for depicting US vice president Kamala Harris as a Red Indian or a Native American in a case of mistaken identity amid row over Harris’ ethnicity triggered by former US president Donald Trump. The Republican presidential nominee recently wondered whether Kamala Harris was Black or whether she was Indian and said Kamala Harris turned Black recently and used to promote her Indian origin before.
The newspaper cover adds to the identity confusion as Kamala Harris has been depicted with the Red Indian headgear.Editor-in-chief Tommaso Cerno explained the cover and said there was no confusion over Kamala Harris’ origin. Kamala Harris was described with the headgear because ‘redskins’ are the symbol par excellence of all America’s minorities who are “galvanized” by her candidacy.

“How racial tropes work: ignorance runs so deep that Italy’s rightwing newspaper Il Tempo ignores that Kamala Harris’s mother was from Madras, India. Kamala is portrayed on frontpage as Native Indian under the title ‘white manhunt’,” an X user posted slamming the cover.

‘Kamala Harris became Black’
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” the former president said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention,” Donald Trump said.
“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went – she became a Black person,” he said at a recent convention of Black journalists in Chicago. After it snowballed into a major controversy, Trump shared Kamala’s ‘India heritage’ photo to prove his point.
Kamala Harris has Indian roots from her mother’s side as Shyamala Gopalan was born and brought up in Chennai — and Black roots from her father’s side. Her father Donald J Harris is Jamaican-American who moved to US in 1964.