A photo of a man and woman photographed with United States Vice President Kamala Harris at a fundraising gala by an NGO in 2016 is being shared on social media with a false claim that both of Harris's parents are of Indian origin and that she is misleading people about her ethnicity by pretending to be Black.
US President Joe Biden, on July 21, 2024, announced that he was ending his re-election campaign amid growing calls within the Democratic Party. Biden endorsed his VP Harris for the Democratic nomination. Harris has secured the support of a majority of Democratic delegates, paving the way for her to become the party's nominee. Several Republican leaders have attacked Harris with overtly racist and sexist remarks since the announcement.
The announcement has also triggered a slew of misinformation targeting Harris.
An X user posted the photo with text claiming, "You ain’t black if your parents ain’t black", and being shared on X with the caption, "Kamala Harris !!!!!!! Facts are facts! You ain't black if your parents ain't black."
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the people in the viral photo with Kamala Harris are not her parents, but two attendees at a fundraising gala by Pratham USA - is a non-governmental organisation focused on education in India.
A CNN article dated July 22, 2024 reported that Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California, United States, on October 20, 1964. The report mentioned that Harris’ father, Donald, immigrated to the US from Jamaica to study economics at the University of California at Berkeley, and was a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, immigrated to the US from south India in the late 1950s.
In Harris's 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” she wrote that her parents “met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement,” but the couple later divorced when she and her sister, Maya, were young.
We also found an Instagram post dated July 9, 2019, in which her mother (centre) and her younger sister Maya (right) can be seen.
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We also found a photo of Harris's father on Stanford University's website as he was a professor emeritus of economics there.
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Comparing the publicly available photo's of Harris's parents show that they do not resemble the two individuals seen in the viral photo.
Through a reverse image search, we found that the viral photo dates back to August 2016, and was taken in Palo Alto, California, at an event hosted by the Indian-American charity group Pratham in support of children’s education in India. The photo which was posted on Facebook by Pratham USA in 2016, was later deleted, view an archive below
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The woman in the viral photo is Rohini Parulekar. We also found another photo of Rohini at a Pratham USA event in which she is identified.
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The man in the viral photo is Suneil Parulekar, husband of Rohini Parulekar. We also found both Rohini and Suneil's names on Pratham USA's individual donor list. Below we can see that Suneil's DP matches with the man in the viral photo.
Harris, in a 2021 Facebook post mentioned that her mother had passed away in 2009. The viral photo of Harris with the Parulekar's was taken seven years later after her mother's death.
AFP had also fact-checked the same photo back in August 2020, and had reached out to a spokesperson for Pratham USA who had stated that the man and the woman pictured with Harris "are two supporters of Pratham," The spokesperson told AFP that the photo was taken at a fundraising gala for the organisation in California. Harris, who was the attorney general of the state at the time, spoke at the event.
BOOM has reached out to Pratham USA for a response, the article will be updated on receiving one.
