Singer Janet Jackson‘s comments about Vice President Kamala Harris’s ethnicity became a subject of debate among the ladies on The View on Monday. Co-host Ana Navarro slammed the musician’s claim that Harris was “not black,” calling it “misinformation.”
In an interview with the Guardian, reporter Nosheen Iqbal asked the pop star about her thoughts on America possibly having “its first black female president.” Jackson reportedly responded that Harris was “not black.”
“That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian,” the 58-year-old singer said.
When the reporter replied that the vice president’s parents were Indian and Jamaican, Jackson responded that “her father’s white.”
“That’s what I was told,” she said, adding, “I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days. I was told that they discovered her father was white.”
The pop star received backlash for her comments in her wide-ranging interview while she was promoting her concert tour in Europe.
Navarro called Jackson “very irresponsible” on Monday and said the singer spoke “carelessly, to spread misinformation.”
“What she did was spread misinformation,” Navarro said. “I think it’s irresponsible when you have a platform the way Janet Jackson does, to use that platform carelessly to spread misinformation based on a racist allegation by Donald Trump. It was Donald Trump who tried to say Kamala Harris just turned black.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin, who is multiracial, said that Harris and others who are biracial or multiracial can identify “any way” in which they “choose to identify.”
“It’s unfortunate that Janet Jackson, an icon, admittedly said, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t been reading the news these past few days.’ I don’t know if it comes from misinformation, I don’t know if it comes from a lack of information; all I know is I don’t want to give it this much air,” Hostin said.
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Co-host Whoopi Goldberg defended Jackson by admitting she herself has made comments in which she was “wrong” and noted that the musician is “not a political animal.”
Goldberg also defended the singer as being in the middle of “mourning her brother,” as Jackson’s brother Tito, a founding member of the Jackson 5, died last week.
