Talk:List of African-American United States senators

Merge / Duplicate entries
(content moved) I think this is a useful list, but I have to point out that it already exists almost in complete form at African Americans in the United States Congress. I don't know if the proper form is to remove the info from there and put it here, in full (with style changes), or merge it from here into there. But there should not be duplicate, and possibly unsynchronized lists. LH (talk) 20:19, 25 January 2009 (UTC) See Talk:African Americans in the United States Congress.

Added history
Discussions of African Americans or Republicans elected from the South after a gap of decades (and in some cases nearly 100 years) must have history added about the South's disfranchising constitutions and exclusion of African Americans from the political system. It wasn't a casual matter of party preference. I've added that.Parkwells (talk) 17:20, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Senator-elect
Harris cannot remain a part of the list. She is not a Senator, only an elect. No different than Trump as President-elect on List of Presidents of the United States. Harris is not sworn in yet. According to Los Angeles Times, "Harris will take the oath of office on Jan. 3, and she’ll officially step down as attorney general shortly before the ceremony ..." Time remaining is also not pertinent, she's not a Senator.

Also, I like the addition of colors to identify Senators that won re-election, but you need to provide a key so readers know what the colors mean. Please don't assume others will infer the purpose of the colors. Mitchumch (talk) 12:10, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

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Kamala Harris
Harris is routinely listed as African American in reliable sources: These and other WP:Reliable sources are the reason she is listed as African American on this list. Mitchumch (talk) 21:32, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * 1. Congress has listed "HARRIS, Kamala Devi" among Black Americans in Congress in the Member Profiles section here.
 * 2. The U.S. Senate list her as African American here. "Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) became the first African American to represent California in the United States Senate on January 3, 2017."
 * 3. Politifact "Kamala Harris's file" "Harris, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016. She became California's attorney general in January 2011. She was the first woman and the first African-American to hold the office in California's history."
 * 4. Washington Post in "Democrats add Harris, Booker to Senate Judiciary Committee" "The Senate Judiciary Committee will welcome its first African American members in this century after Democrats added Sens. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to the panel that handles judicial nominations and appointments to the Justice Department."
 * 5. Los Angeles Times in "Kamala Harris will be the first Indian American U.S. senator and California's first black senator" "She will also be just the second black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, and the first black senator from California."
 * 6. New York Times in "California Today: A Snooze of a Senate Race" "The race to succeed Senator Barbara L. Boxer of California was supposed to be one of the marquee contests of the year. It is a contest to fill the first open Senate seat in the nation’s largest state since 1992. It offers a window into the ethnic kaleidoscope that is California: Pitting a Latino, Representative Loretta Sanchez, against an African-American, Kamala Harris, the state attorney general."
 * 7. Fox News in "Sen. Kamala Harris raises eyebrows on 'Ellen' with Trump joke" "Harris, California’s first African-American senator, has not responded to the conservative response online."
 * I also want to add African-American United States Representatives that have Caribbean-born parents or were born in the Caribbean:
 * Rep. Shirley Chisholm
 * Rep. Yvette D. Clarke
 * Del. Stacey Plaskett
 * Rep. Mia Love
 * Del. Melvin H. Evans
 * Del. Donna Christian-Christensen
 * Del. Victor O. Frazer
 * Harris' Caribbean ancestry and label as an African American in reliable sources are not unique to her. Mitchumch (talk) 03:15, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * See Sockpuppet investigations/Hornets23. This has been going on for some time. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:48, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

User:Mitchumch the article is specifically about African-American senators, is it really necessary to include the info about African-Americans of Caribbean ancestry in the House of Reps? (I don't object to specifying Kamala Harris's ancestry just the list of other members of congress.) Ivar the Boneful (talk) 11:48, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hornets23 objection centered on Harris's ancestry, not the chamber of Congress in which she served. See "edit summary" objections made by Hornets23:


 * 07:56, 27 June 2018: "Kamala Harris is not an African-American"
 * 15:32, 27 June 2018: "I did read the citations as again she's not African-American her father is Jamaican not African-American she should be Jamaican-american, African-American and Jamaicans are different ethnic groups"
 * 15:38, 27 June 2018: "You can't put someone as African-American when it clearly states that Kamala Harris father is Jamaican not African-American it should be Jamaican-american"


 * As you can see, Hornets23 did not object to Harris being listed as an African American because she was in the Senate. Hornets23 objected because Harris was being listed as an African American in Congress.  Therefore, providing a list of other African Americans of Caribbean descent in Congress was an additional and effective way of demonstrating that she was an African American. Mitchumch (talk) 16:57, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

In fact, Senator Harris should not be labeled African-American, rather Caribbean-American. There is no proof at all that Senator Harris is of Negroid descent, probably some, though not much. According to Wiki's article on Senator Harris, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, is Tamil Indian. Senator Harris's father, Donald Harris, came from Jamaica. Donald Harris has stated that concerning his grandparents, one was related to a Plantation Owner in Jamaica, (more than likely Black Slave Owners), and the other side had an unknown ancestry. Even the Wikipedia article on Senator Harris states, "Despite this, Kamala Harris is most often referred to as African American rather than Caribbean American." This becomes even more interesting when one considers that the Senator, more than likely, has ancestry of Slave Owners, and is supporting Black Slavery Reparations. If Wikipedia has the need to list African-American U.S. Senators, then they should have proof that the person is really African-American, not a person that has very little African in them.Easeltine (talk) 16:27, 15 April 2019 (UTC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_HarrisEaseltine (talk) 15:54, 15 April 2019 (UTC) I am adding an article by Stanford Professor, Donald Harris, Senator Harris's father. https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/Easeltine (talk) 17:35, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Why this list?
Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia. A list of which senators are black and which aren't is not encyclopedic material—it's mostly organized political correctness. The key characteristics of a senator that should be enumerated are the state said senator represents, the period of his or her term, and political party association. So just what is the point of enumerating a senator because he or she is black? Being black doesn't make one a "better" senator than being white, Asian, etc. If race, in fact, matters in the Senate, where are the lists of white senators, Asian senators, American Indian senators, etc?

This list smacks of racial pandering and, in my opinion, fails to serve any purpose in this encyclopedia.

38.69.12.5 (talk) 07:13, 7 February 2019 (UTC)


 * We have this list because people are interested in it, and other sources have already written a lot about the topic. People are very interested in it, as a matter of fact – the article averaged 784 pageviews per day over the past three months. We don't have specific lists of Native American or Asian-American senators, but we do have List of Native American politicians and List of Asian Americans and Pacific Islands Americans in the United States Congress. A list of white senators would be very long and probably not of interest to many people. It is generally only rare characteristics where we make separate lists. It depends on the country though, e.g. in a black-majority country a list of black legislators would be pointless but a list of white legislators would be acceptable for Wikipedia. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 07:58, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:African-American gospel which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:19, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of current United States Senators which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 11:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Re-name article "Black American United States senators"
The article name should be changed to be more accurate.

This is in part because of the earlier hubbub over Kamala Harris's inclusion, but it also seems to be more pertinent. White supremacy in the United States wasn't determined by whether a person was many generations removed from West Africa or came to the U.S. by way of the Caribbean. It was always a descriptor for a racial category to be opposite to whiteness, whether the supposedly more scientific term "Negro" or one like "African American" intended to put Black Americans on par with other minorities (Italian American, German American, etc.).

There have only ever been six states represented by a Black person; only 11 people total out of the nearly 2000 who have served in the Senate have been Black, despite being present for the entire country's history, 1/8th the population or more, and eligible for 154 years.

It's notable, but their blackness and the racism they've overcome is what's notable, not the distinction between "African American" and "Afro-Caribbean American", or whether their parent was from somewhere in Africa verus being descended from enslaved people.--ADavidJohnson (talk) 04:46, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, racists gonna racist no matter what the article's called. We could also use "Black" more prominently at the top of the article. But there's nothing necessarily objectionable about the suggested name. Reywas92Talk 18:04, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Items in Table are Duplicated When Sorting
When I sort by (seemingly any) column there are duplicated items in the table. For example if I sort by `State` the first three elements are all California/Kamala Harris. Hwttdz (talk) 17:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, when a cell spans multiple rows (in this case Congresses), they are split into individual rows and duplicated when sorted, it's just how table sorting works. Could be fixed if the rows in the Congress column are merged or removed altogether. Reywas92Talk 18:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Hyphenation
In most cases African American is spelled with hyphen when used as a modifier, e.g. African-American culture, List of African-American mathematicians. Rsk6400 (talk) 13:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the article shouldn't have been moved. As a noun African Americans isn't hyphenated, but as an adjective like here it is. Reywas92Talk 14:27, 19 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Amen. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 15:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Another discussion with more participants was started here: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style. Rsk6400 (talk) 18:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)