So Kamala Harris shares heritage from India and Jamaica but identifies as black?  I though being black was the provenance of African heritage and why is it so sensitive of a question to raise?  Is it not a legitimate inquiry?  Usually when a question provokes such a disproportionate and angry backlash, it indicates that the inquiry is hitting a nerve because those being questioned have no good response.  Why are not African blacks offended when non-Africans are appropriating their culture for political purposes?

It’s funny, when Jessica Krug and Rachael Dolezal masqueraded as black women when they are white; they were taken to the wood shed for their temerity in culturally appropriating race.

If you don’t remember these two, Krug was a college professor of African Studies at George Washington University back in 2020 when according to a CNN post, she outed herself in an on-line magazine article where she said this in part.  “To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim:”  Later in that same CNN article, Krug is reported saying that she had no right to claim these identities, posting “doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures.”

Krug lost her teaching job and was pilloried by the local black community.

The story of Rachael Dolezal got more national attention.  Back in 2015, Dolezal was a prominent African studies professor at Washington State University.  She was also the head of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington.  And then some enterprising reporter interviewed her parents, who were both white.

NAACP President Cornell Brooks said of Dolezal, “just because one appreciates African American culture, it doesn’t mean you can disrespect the culture.”  CNN contributor Steve Perry said, “he resented the “cartoonish approach” of a woman he called a “fraud.”  Dolezal was ripped to shreds on Twitter as exercising her White Privilege.  She lost her job and was removed from her position at the NAACP.

So why the wildly different reaction to Kamala Harris?  Could it be that instead of Harris appropriating black culture, black culture is appropriating Harris?  If Harris can pass for black, especially in a world that is so afraid of culturally or racially offending, the black community can hook their wagon to Harris and have her, hopefully, pull them along for the ride with her.

And so there I think I have answered my own question about the seeming double standard.  The black community will hold you accountable for appropriating their culture, that is unless there is a payday and in that case, ok, let’s talk.  The chances of the black power structure walking away from Harris on principled grounds were as likely as an OJ guilty verdict or BLM passing an accounting audit.