Kamala Harris, who has already hit the 2020 presidential election trail, was asked on the radio about whether she smoked pot when she was young. She joked, “Half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me?” That didn’t sit well with her father, Donald Harris, who perceived the joke as a slam at his family’s heritage. He went off on the comment in a statement he released to a Jamaican news site.“My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote, according to Politico. Added Donald Harris: “Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.” ——-https://heavy.com/news/2019/02/donald-harris-kamala-father-dad-jamaican/
Harris asserts a black identity, so legally speaking in the contracting context she would be black/African American and not Asian. (She could also, I should note, properly check the “white” box if she identified as such.).In some contexts, it would not matter if Harris had any African descent. A Massachusetts court has held that for affirmative action purposes, at least, one can lawfully claim African-American status if one holds oneself out to be African American and others identify you as such. Malone v. Haley, 2 Mass. Civil Service Rep. 1014 (1990). https://reason.com/volokh/2020/08/11/is-kamala-harris-legally-african-american-indian-both-neither-or-something-else/