Former President Donald Trump used his turn before the nation’s largest professional association of Black journalists to question the racial identity of his rival for the White House this fall, telling a shocked National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago that Vice President Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”

It took Trump all of 10 days running in a head-to-head against the first woman and first incumbent of Black and Indian-American heritage to openly question her background.

“I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said, raising questions that echoed the ex-President’s persistent and discredited questions about former President Barack Obama’s place of birth. “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of the sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a Black person.”

Harris has always identified as a product of a multicultural family, […]