The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly. We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s… https://t.co/crRCa0HnT8 — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) 1561835669000

WASHINGTON: The ever-present issue of racism and nativism has erupted again in the US political area, this time drawing Kamala Harris , the mixed-race Senator from California whose mother is South Indian, into the controversy.Racist trolls began attacking Harris within hours of the Democratic debate on Thursday in which she claimed the black heritage and questioned her fellow Democrat Joe Biden’s record on race. From questioning her eligibility to run for the White House in a replay of the “birther” issue they used against Barack Obama , to suggesting she was not sufficiently black because her mother was Indian (her father was Jamaican), right-wing trolls sought to undermine Harris’ bid for the Democratic nomination that has got a boost after her performance in last week’s debates.The attacks were implicitly and briefly endorsed by President Trump’s son Donald Trump jr., who retweeted, and then deleted, an alt-right commentator named Ali Alexander, who argued that “Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves. She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.” Harris was also attacked by some African-Americans who claimed she was wrongly usurping their blackness."Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican," a critic, who identified as African American, wrote. "I'm so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. It's disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2? These are my people not her people. Freaking disgusting."Although it is well-documented that Harris was born in Oakland, California (just as it was well-recorded that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii), conspiracy theorists and racists trolls fueled posts that she was either an "anchor" baby or born in Canada to maintain that she is ineligible to run for the White House. "Anchor baby" is a term used to refer to a child born to a non-citizen mother in a country that has birthright citizenship that will help the mother and other family members gain legal residency.That attack misfired when left-wing trolls argued that Trump's own children could be construed as anchor babies since he married immigrant women who may not have been US citizens when the children were born.Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan was a cancer researcher who immigrated to the US from Chennai (then Madras) and her father Don Harris was an economics professor. They met as graduate students at Stanford. Kamala and her sister Maya, who is also a Democratic operative who has worked on the Hillary Clinton campaign, had a mixed upbringing, going to both a Hindu Temple and a Baptist church.The controversy over race, ever present in U.S politics, surfaced at the debate itself when Harris told Democratic front-runner Biden that his past stance against federally-mandating busing black students to white schools was personally hurtful because she had benefited from that educational opportunity as a little girl. "That little girl was me," Harris said emotionally, identifying herself as a Black American.Her performance led to a surge of support fundraising in her fight for the Democratic nomination against front runners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, all of whom were polling higher numbers than her. By some accounts she raised $2 million within 24 hours after the debate, with her team cranking up her outreach using highlights from the debate where she upstaged her opponents.Still, her fellow Democrats aspiring to clinch the party nomination backed her against the racists' attacks.“The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly,” Warren tweeted shortly after.“We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks.” Bernie Sanders sneered: “Donald Trump Jr. is a racist too. Shocker.” And from Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: “The presidential competitive field is stronger because Kamala Harris has been powerfully voicing her Black American experience. Her first-generation story embodies the American dream. It’s long past time to end these racist, birther-style attacks.”