The silliest political controversy of 2019 refuses to go away. In a Breakfast Club interview, 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) admitted to previously using cannabis—“I did inhale,” she said—while also making known her Snoop Dogg affection and Jamaican heritage.
“Look, I joke about it and have joked about it,” Harris said when asked about past recreational cannabis usage on the radio program. “Half my family is from Jamaica, are you kidding me?”
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This joke did not go over well with Harris’s Jamaican father. In a statement he submitted to Jamaica Globe Online, Donald Harris slammed his daughter for “fraudulently stereotyping Jamaicans and accuses her of playing identity politics,” declares the Jamaica Globe headline.
“My dear departed grandmother … 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,” said Harris, an economics professor at Stanford University.
“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
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According to Politico, Donald Harris made the statement on his own accord and was unsolicited by the Jamaica Globe. In an email interview Donald submitted to Politico, he said he was uninterested in discussing the matter any further.
“I have decided to stay out of all the political hullabaloo by not engaging in any interviews with the media,” he wrote.
Kamala Harris’s campaign had no comment on her father’s statements. Harris’ parents separated then divorced a few years later when she was young. “Though Donald Harris remained a part of his children’s lives, Kamala Harris and her sister were raised by their mother,” writes Politico.
