Amid Black Mold Battle, Janet Jackson Questions Kamala Harris’ Race

Musician, actor and style icon Janet Jackson She has been outspoken about her views in recent years, with her 2017 State of the World tour kicking off with a video statement on her political stances. “We will not be silent. LGBTQ rights. Peace not war. Black Lives Matter. Immigrants welcome. Liberty and justice for all,” the message read on stadium screens during the tour. “Prejudice: no! Ignorance: no! Bigotry: no! Illiteracy: no!” the message continued.

These values ​​were in contradiction with the messages presented by the president at the time. Donald Trumpwhose own values ​​appear to have drifted even further from these principles during his current campaign to retake the White House. It appears that Jackson’s values ​​have changed as well, at least when it comes to his list of non-negotiables.

The 58-year-old singer’s 1986 song, “Nasty,” got an ironic boost in 2016 when Trump used the word against the Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton during this election cycle’s presidential debate. It was a moment of politics and pop culture that seems almost quaint today, given Trump’s tendency these days to reference his Democratic opponent, the vice president Kamala Harrislike a “slut.” (Unfortunately for the singer of “Bitch” Meredith BrooksThe American public seems less likely to dismiss Trump’s insults as a silly joke this time around.)

Janet Jackson fans will probably be relieved to learn that the megastar didn’t use such harsh language to describe Harris. But her description of a possible Harris presidency wasn’t exactly encouraging either. In an interview published Saturday by the Guardian, the “Pleasure Principle” singer perpetuated one of the most ignorant lies presented in this Idiocracy-negative presidential election trend: the lie that Harris was misleading about her race.

It is clear from reading the conversation that even journalists Nosheen Iqbal was baffled. According to the journalist (who also hosts the Guardian show Today Featured (podcast), she only asked Jackson about Harris because of the social justice messages Jackson presented in his work dating back to his groundbreaking work Nation of rhythm in 1989. “Well, you know what they would have said?” Jackson replied. “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”

The statement echoes one Trump made last July, during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists. At that event, Trump said of Harris: “She’s always been of Indian descent and she’s just promoting that.”

“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump continued of the vice president, who has never hidden her identity as the daughter of Donald J. Harrishis black Jamaican-American father and his mother Shyamala Gopalan, who came to the United States from India in 1958.

“I don’t know if she’s Indian or black?” Trump continued from the NABJ stage in July. “She was Indian all her life, and all of a sudden she made a shift and she became black.”

Although nearly every media outlet fact-checked Trump’s statements that day, it seems the message didn’t reach Jackson, who actually expanded on Trump’s lies during her interview with Iqbal. “His father is white. That’s what I’m told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a couple of days,” Jackson said when Iqbal corrected her. “I was told they found out his father was white.”

It’s unclear who the “they” Jackson refers to is, nor did she cite a source for the false claim about Harris’ father. Jackson’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Vanity Fairrequest for clarification.

As Iqbal wrote, “the people who most question Harris’ identity tend to be conspiracy theorists close to QAnon and Trump,” but since she doesn’t “think Jackson falls into that camp,” one has to “wonder what use algorithms are to her.” But just hours after the Guardian interview was published, Jackson was back in the headlines for another reason: her penthouse apartment is reportedly infested with black mold, a fungal growth that experts say can cause neurological problems, including memory loss, confusion, and cognitive impairment.

According to the Daily Mail, Jackson recently moved out of her $26,000-a-month Chelsea Barracks apartment in London after finding the toxic substance, and lived there “for several years.” The Daily Mail reports that she is now considering returning to the United States, which is surprising given what else she had to say about the aftermath of the upcoming election. “I think one way or another it’s going to be chaos,” Jackson said, before repeating herself. “I think there could be chaos one way or another. But we’ll see.”