Indian-origin Senator Kamala Harris racially targeted online
Washington, Jun 30: Kamala Harris, the first Indian-origin Senator and one of the top Democrats eyeing the White House in the 2020 presidential run, has been racially targeted online of her identity as "not an American Black", according to media reports.
Harris, 54, who was born in the US to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who were both immigrants, has directly confronted critics before who have questioned her black heritage.
Harris, Senator from California, was the target of birtherism-like attack, the latest jabs to racism faced by former President Barack Obama, CNN reported.
"Birtherism," promoted by some Republicans, including President Donald Trump before he assumed the presidency, was a movement that denied former President Obama was a natural-born US citizen, implying he was ineligible to be president.
"Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican," the critic, who identified as African American, tweeted.
"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," the critic tweeted.
The viral tweet by right-wing personality Ali Alexander, has also gone by the name Ali Akbar, The New York Times reported.
The tweet was however, re-tweeted by President Trump's son Donald Trump Jr.
Trump, a valuable Republican surrogate as his father faces a bruising 2020 race, posted the tweet of unverified information, then asked his more than three million followers: "Is this true? Wow," the report added.
"Don's tweet was simply him asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it's not something he had ever heard before," said the spokesman, Andy Surabian, "and once he saw that folks were misconstruing the intent of his tweet, he quickly deleted it."
Lily Adams, the campaign communications director for Harris, dismissed the attack, explaining that people, including President Trump, used similar rhetoric to question Obama's birthplace. Obama was born in Hawaii.
"This is the same type of racist attack his father used to attack Barack Obama," Adams told CNN.
"It didn't work then and it won't work now."
Harris has often resisted sharing her personal background on the campaign trail. But during Thursday's debate, she confronted former Vice President Joe Biden about his history opposing busing and said she herself had been bused to a public school.
Biden, however, defended Harris on Saturday, saying in a tweet that "racism has no place in America."
"The same forces of hatred rooted in 'birtherism' that questioned @BarackObama's American citizenship, even his racial identity, are now being used against Senator @KamalaHarris," Biden said. "It's disgusting and we have to call it out when we see it."
Of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared to be the first on Saturday to defend Harris.
"The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly," Warren tweeted. "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."
Other Democrats on the campaign trail chimed in.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee accused the Trump family of "peddling birtherism," an apparent reference to the president's attacks against Obama.
US Representative Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, also compared the online attacks, which claim Harris is not a black American because her father is Jamaican, to "birtherism," whose proponents claimed incorrectly that Obama was born in Kenya.
"The attack on @KamalaHarris is racist and we can't allow it to go unchecked," Ryan tweeted. "We have a responsibility to call out this birtherism and the continued spread of misinformation."
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Student found dead in hostel room in IIT Kharagpur
Kolkata (PTI): A 22-year-old M Tech student was found dead in his hostel room in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the second such incident reported on the campus within a span of 10 days.
The student, identified as Soham Haldar, was found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room on Tuesday and he was immediately taken to the institute hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead, an IIT Kharagpur official said.
Haldar, a dual-degree student in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, was a boarder of the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Hall of Residence on the campus.
Police from the Kharagpur Town police station have initiated a probe into the incident as preliminary findings indicated that it could be a case of suicide, though the exact cause of death will be ascertained following the post-mortem examination, the official said.
In a statement, the institute expressed deep grief over the student's death and said a detailed inquiry has been initiated.
The authorities have informed the family and are extending all possible assistance to them, it added.
Director Suman Chakraborty told PTI that the institute will strengthen the mechanism to identify stressed-out and depressed students and take follow-up steps to address their issues.
The grief-stricken parents of the student, who hailed from Barasat in North 24 Parganas district, have come to the campus and the authorities will speak to them, he said.
"Haldar's friends, faculty and staffers also could not gauge any stress or anxiety in him. But we need to enable students suffering from anxiety and extreme stress to open up their minds and do everything needed to prevent such incidents," he said.
Investigators are also scrutinising CCTV footage from the hostel premises to piece together the sequence of events leading to the incident.
The incident comes close on the heels of another student's death reported on April 18, when 21-year-old Jaibir Singh Dodia, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student from Ahmedabad, allegedly died after jumping from the eighth floor of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hall of Residence. That case is also under investigation.
The back-to-back incidents have once again brought the issue of mental health and student support systems at the institute into focus, especially in view of several such cases reported last year.
