What Maya Rudolph’s SNL Impression Says About Kamala Harris

It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to comment on Kamala Harris. Only days after she became her party’s presumptive nominee for vice president, Trump questioned her racial identity. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” he told the National Association of Black Journalists. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Trump’s remarks were more than just racist. On a deeper level, he was questioning Harris’ authenticity and truthfulness. In his view, Harris was a phony, someone using her race for personal gain. To Trump, her mixed heritage — Indian and Jamaican ancestry, her upbringing in California, and her education at a historically Black university — was just a deception.

Nicole Holliday, a sociolinguist at UC Berkeley, anticipated such reactions. Holliday specializes in how people construct their social identities through speech. She studied Barack Obama’s crafted biracial image and, when Harris ran for president in 2020, she saw an opportunity to study Harris’ unique persona. Years before criticism of Harris began, Holliday set out to analyze how the vice president speaks and what her linguistic patterns reveal about her racial identity.

Harris’ speech patterns and pronunciation are influenced by her formative years. A proud “daughter of Oakland, California,” she grew up in the Bay Area, spent time in Montreal, and attended Howard University. This diverse background means Harris’ accent is a mix of California and African American English.

Holliday collected audio clips from the 2020 primary debates to study Harris’ pitch, and the results were telling. When Harris criticized Joe Biden for his stance on school integration and busing, she famously concluded with, “that little girl was me.” Holliday noted that on the word “that,” Harris’ pitch had a distinctive fall, followed by a rise, a pattern known as an L+H* pitch accent. These patterns have different interpretations in African American English versus Mainstream US English typically spoken by white individuals.

“White people only use that pattern when they’re being contrastive,” Holliday explains. “Black speakers across the United States use it more broadly.” Consequently, white listeners unfamiliar with African American English may perceive Harris as argumentative. “The rises and falls happen in unexpected places,” Holliday says, “so they try to make sense of it using their own linguistic framework.” How “Black” Harris sounds, therefore, depends on the listener’s perceptions.

Another element of Harris’ accent is the “phrase-initial falsetto” — a noticeable squeak at the beginning of a sentence. When a sentence begins with “I,” it can sound, to those unfamiliar with Black speaking patterns, as if Harris is being contradictory. However, Holliday clarifies this is not the case. What Harris is actually doing is speaking naturally in the linguistic patterns she was exposed to growing up.

This divergence in interpretation may even contribute to why some describe Harris as “crazy.” “Listeners unfamiliar with her speech patterns might hear an ’emphatic’ tone,” Holliday notes. “When overlaid with racist ideologies, it can lead to judgments of her being ‘unhinged.'”

Pretending these pitch variations is difficult; even renowned actors like Meryl Streep would struggle. This complexity led Holliday to compare Harris’ speech to Maya Rudolph’s impersonations on “Saturday Night Live” in 2022. Rudolph, a skilled impressionist with a similar demographic background to Harris, provided an ideal comparison. Holliday found that while Rudolph nailed Harris’ speech patterns, she exaggerated them for comedic effect.

Harris’ linguistic influences are diverse. Although Holliday did not focus on Indian linguistic features due to insufficient exposure during Harris’ childhood, she examined thousands of phrases Harris used in the 2020 debates. Harris exhibits the California Vowel Shift in some instances yet deviates from it in others. For example, she pronounces “cot” and “caught” differently, unlike many Californians. Additionally, she maintains distinctions between “pin” and “pen,” aligning more closely with African American English.

Holliday found that Harris employs some features of African American English, such as dropping the copula before words like “gotta” and “gonna,” and occasionally using “I’mma.” These elements, however, are also commonplace in popular culture, further complicating the parsing of Harris’ identity from her usage.

Ultimately, Holliday suggests these linguistic choices serve dual purposes. They function as informal political speech accessible to all audiences while also signaling shared identity to Black listeners. “Every politician modifies their speech,” Holiday explains. “The challenge for Harris is that her multifaceted identity is subject to scrutiny, often through a lens not applied in good faith.”

Harris’ unique position as a multiethnic woman subjects her to unprecedented identity-based attacks. Describing her as an undeserving “DEI hire” and mocking her speech patterns weaponizes race baiting in a novel way. Holliday’s research challenges Trump’s simplistic and harmful views on identity, emphasizing that people are shaped by their varied experiences. “We become ourselves in the spaces we inhabit,” she concludes. “Harris is no less authentic; she simply embodies many spaces.”

Source: National Association of Black Journalists, UC Berkeley