Source: Gilbert Flores / Getty
Janet Jackson seems to be fully down the rabbit hole of misinformation. During a recent interview, the music icon said she heard that Vice President Kamala Harris is not Black, and fans on social media are not happy about her apparent naivete.
To be clear, Kamala Harris has an Indian mother and Black, by way of Jamaica, father. So that makes her both Black and Indian—so, both. She has identified as Black her entire life, and even attended HBCU Howard University. So anyone entertaining the notion that she somehow is not really Black is either misinformed or operating in bad faith.
As for Jackson, in an interview that was published on Saturday (Sept. 21), she told the Guardian. “Well, you know what they supposedly said? She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”
But when the writer told her that Harris was Black and Indian, she essentially doubled down on the ignorance, saying, “I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days. I was told that they discovered her father was white.”
For the record, Harris is 59 years old, meaning her daddy has been a known Black man for at least that long.
To add to the struggle, Jackson allegedly issued an apology on Sunday (Sept. 22) to Buzzfeed. However, her reps have since noted that the guy who provided that quote, Mo Elmasri, isn’t her manager as he claimed—so that mea culpa was not authorized. Also, Mr. Elmasri is now claiming he was fired by Jackson and Randy Jackson, with many pointing out that the latter has been known to believe conspiracy theories with his whole chest.
Man alive. Also, come on Randy.
Peep the reactions to Janet Jackson’s failure of the simplest of research in the gallery. Yes, Janet Jackson is icon, but she’s still going to catch this slander.