HOUSTON — During remarks given at a convention for a Black sorority in Houston Wednesday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris took time to address the comments former President Donald Trump made at the National Association of Black Journalists convention earlier in the day.
Harris attended a private campaign fundraiser Wednesday afternoon in Houston and then arrived at the George R. Brown Convention Center to speak to members of the Sigma Gamma Rho Black sorority as they celebrated their 60th International Biennial Boule.
While speaking at a panel at NABJ in Chicago, Trump claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her 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?” Trump said while addressing the group's annual convention.
Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants to the U.S. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities, where she also pledged the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting her colleagues’ legislation to strengthen voting rights and reform policing.
During her remarks to Sigma Gamma Rho, Harris said Trump's comments at NABJ were the "same old show."
"The divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better," she said.
Harris followed by saying Americans deserve a leader who "tells the truth" and a leader who doesn't "respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts."
"We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us, they are an essential source of our strength," Harris said.
Harris will stay in Houston overnight as she is set to attend the funeral of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and deliver the eulogy on Thursday.