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.
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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."
"It didn't work then and it won't work now."
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."
"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."