Stay updated on Hawaii and national elections coverage
2024 Hawaii & National Election Coverage

There was a swift backlash Saturday after pop star Janet Jackson challenged Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity in an interview with The Guardian. On Sunday, a man who identified himself as her manager apologized for her statements.

Then Jackson’s representatives quickly distanced her from that man and his apology, saying he was not her manager and was not authorized to speak for her.

The unusual turn of events began when The Guardian published a wide-ranging interview with Jackson timed to promote the European leg of her concert tour. When the reporter, Nosheen Iqbal, said the United States “could be on the verge of voting in its first Black female president,” referring to Harris, Jackson responded by saying: “Well, you know what they supposedly said? She’s not Black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”

When Iqbal replied that Harris, the Democratic nominee, is the daughter of an Indian woman and a Jamaican father who is Black, Jackson responded, “Her father’s white.”

“That’s what I was told,” she added. “I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days. I was told that they discovered her father was white.”

Across social media, people expressed bewilderment over Jackson’s comments. On “The View” on Monday, one of the hosts, Ana Navarro, said Jackson had been “very irresponsible” and had used the Guardian interview “carelessly, to spread misinformation.”

Mo Elmasri, who said he was Jackson’s manager, issued an apology Sunday in which he said her statements were “based on misinformation.” Jackson, he told BuzzFeed, “respects Harris’ dual heritage as both Black and Indian and apologizes for any confusion caused.”

After the statement was repeated by other news media outlets, representatives for Jackson issued a statement to Variety, saying that Elmasri was not her manager and was not an authorized spokesperson. They told Variety that Randy Jackson, one of Jackson’s brothers, is her manager.

Janet Jackson’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment, and neither she nor her representatives appear to have tried to distance themselves from her statements about Harris.

Jackson’s comments echoed former President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Harris’ racial identity. In July, Trump, the Republican nominee, told an audience of Black journalists that Harris only recently “became a Black person.” This month, in a debate with Harris, Trump said that he had read that Harris was not Black. “Then I read that she was Black,” he said. “And that’s OK. Either one was OK with me. That’s up to her.”

Harris has long embraced both her Black and South Asian identities. She attended Howard University, a historically Black institution, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority established for Black college women.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Elmasri’s profile on IMDb, the entertainment database, was mostly stripped of information by Monday afternoon, but earlier in the day it had showed him as being connected to “Janet Jackson: Family First,” a forthcoming Lifetime and A&E documentary series. (Variety reported that the page identified him as an executive producer.) He has also previously been identified as her manager in statements, including one that was issued last month promoting her upcoming Las Vegas residency.

Elmasri said in an email Monday that he no longer worked for Jackson and that he was fired over the weekend after he issued the apology statement.

“I was fired by Janet and Randy, after attempts to improve her image in front of public opinion and her fans,” he said, “and this is something I do not deserve.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company