Birth certificate doesn’t list Kamala Harris’ race, but that’s not proof she isn’t Black

After former President Donald Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity July 31 at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, some of his supporters used social media to echo his baseless claim that she hasn’t identified as Black until recently.

Laura Loomer, a conservative activist, shared a copy of what she said was Harris’ birth certificate in a July 31 X post and wrote, "Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say that she is BLACK OR AFRICAN. @KamalaHQ is a liar. Donald Trump is correct. Kamala Harris is NOT black and never has been."

Loomer shared a similar post on Truth Social, which Trump reshared.

We contacted Loomer for more evidence to support her claim and she said, "Jamaican is a nationality. Not a race. You do understand there are white Jamaicans right? Nowhere does it say she’s black."

"Her birth certificate says Caucasian and Jamaican. Can you tell me where on that birth certificate it says she’s black? Or are you preparing to lie and say that all Jamaicans are black?" Loomer added.

The birth certificate does not address Kamala Harris’ race. She has long identified as a Black woman throughout her life and political career and also embraces her Indian heritage. 

The version of the birth certificate Loomer shared matches one that was published online in August 2020 by the Bay Area News Group to accompany a San Jose Mercury News article about her eligibility to be vice president.

That version of the birth certificate shows Harris’ father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. In a box that says "color or race" of the mother and father, it listed "Caucasian" for Gopalan and "Jamaican" for Donald Harris.

There is no box for the child’s race.

The birth certificate in Loomer’s post is an "informational copy" that anyone can request. It can’t be used for identification, as a "certified copy" can. Those copies contain the same information, with some possible redactions on the informational copy. Both are considered "certified" copies, the California Department of Public Health said.

The state also keeps a confidential section of a birth record that is only available to certain people, and includes medical and social information such as "race, occupation and medical data," that is often used for public health or research purposes, a California Department of Public Health website about obtaining a birth certificate copy said. 

The confidential portion of Harris’ birth certificate did not contain more specific information about her parents’ race, as that information was on the public portion, the department said. State law says only the person named on the birth certificate, the parent who signed it, or if no parent signed it, the mother, or a person who has petitioned to adopt the child named on the certificate, may request this confidential copy.

The state’s current certificate of live birth also doesn’t collect information on the race or ethnicity of the child. Previous versions collected information specified by law over the years, but the child’s race hasn’t been a field on recent birth records, including in 1964, the health department said in an email to PolitiFact after publication of this story. 

A blank version of California’s current live birth certificate provided to PolitiFact has boxes for the birthplace of parents, but no box for their race. In the confidential section, there’s a box to list whether a parent is "Hispanic, Latino or Spanish" and another to list up to three races or ethnicities. It does not have a box for the race of the child.

The birth certificate does not list Kamala Harris’ race, but that doesn’t tell us anything about her racial identity. It also doesn’t mention Donald Harris’ race, but he is Black.

Attacks about racial identity and ethnicity have followed Harris throughout her political career. Conservatives have recently revived baseless birther accusations that Harris is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens. (To be clear: She was born in the U.S. and is eligible to be president.)

It’s true, as Loomer said, that Jamaican is a nationality, not a race. However, the vast majority of Jamacians (92.1%) are Black, according to a 2011 Population and Housing Census report. That report showed that about 0.16% of Jamaica’s 2.6 million-person-plus  population is white. A more recent population Census that began in 2022 has not been finalized.

Genetic studies have shown that the vast majority of Jamacians descended from people from sub-Saharan Africa.

The African diaspora refers to many communities of people of African descent dispersed throughout the world through historic movements, including slavery. About 15 million African men, women and children were kidnapped from their homelands and sold into enslavement throughout the Americas and the Caribbean.

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Experts told PolitiFact in an earlier story that people who say Jamaican people are not African ignore slavery’s global reach.

"Slavery impacted many people from Africa, and we went to many places," Howard University political science professor Keneshia Grant said. "Harris’ father’s people got dropped off in Jamaica. Mine got dropped off in Haiti. The African diaspora is huge, and it is worldwide, so to suggest that a Jamaican is not African, or connected to Africa is not acknowledging the vestiges of slavery."

Harris’ Jamaican-born father, Donald Harris, became the first Black scholar to gain tenure in Stanford University’s economics department, The New York Times  and The Washington Post have reported.

In a 2018 essay about sharing his Jamaican roots with his daughters, Donald Harris lamented court-appointed limits in his custody battle for his daughters, sarcastically writing that they were "based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting (especially in the case of this father, "a neegroe from da eyelans" was the Yankee stereotype, who might just end up eating his children for breakfast!)."

Kamala Harris in a 2003 profile in AsianWeekly, referred to her father as "a Black man."

We contacted Donald Harris and Kamala Harris’ campaign but did not immediately receive a response.

Harris has long identified publicly as a Black woman who grew up in a multicultural household. In her 2019 autobiography, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey," Harris wrote that she and her sister, Maya, were "raised with a strong awareness of and an appreciation for Indian culture." She added that her "mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters" and was determined that they "would grow into confident, proud black women."

Harris moved from California to Montreal when she was in middle school when her mother, by then separated from Kamala’s father, took a teaching position there. 

In high school, Harris identified as Black, some of her classmates told The New York Times in 2020.

Harris returned to the U.S. to attend Howard University, a historically Black university, in Washington, D.C., and later earned her law degree at the University of California, Hastings in 1989.

At Howard, Harris pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority. As a senator, Harris was in the Congressional Black Caucus.

Throughout her political career, Harris has identified herself as a Black woman who also embraced her South Asian heritage. 

Her official California attorney general biography said she was "the first African American woman and South Asian American woman in California to hold the office." Her official White House biography said she was the "first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American" to be elected as vice president.

In a 2019 interview on "The Breakfast Club" radio show, Harris said, "I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black. And I was born Black. I will die Black."

Loomer claimed a birth certificate proves Harris is not Black and never has been because it doesn’t say she is Black or African.

But Harris’ birth certificate did not include information about her race. The certificate did list her parents’ birthplace and "color or race." Her mother, born in India, listed "Caucasian" and her father, a Black man born in Jamaica, listed "Jamaican."  The certificate does not say Kamala Harris is Black, nor does it say she is not. 

Harris has long identified as a Black woman who also embraced her Indian heritage. The claim that a birth certificate that doesn’t assign a race to her is proof that she’s not Black is False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.

UPDATE, Aug. 7, 5:30 p.m.: This story was updated to include more information about California birth certificates from the California Department of Public Health received after publication. The ruling is unchanged.

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