Even after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election, Americans continue to argue about her race.

During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump accused Harris, who is biracial, of toggling between being Indian and being Black. Once, a Fox News reporter suggested she had started speaking like a Southerner, prompting discussions about her supposed accents.

On the internet, claims questioning Harris’ racial authenticity played out on a very visible and modern cultural battleground: memes.

Memes are visual markers of cultural happenings that often circulate and replicate widely due to their simplicity and resonance.

As a professor of African American digital media culture, I think the Harris memes serve as a vehicle for users to excavate complex and unfinished cultural conversations, such as racial authenticity, as I detail in my 2024 book.

In other words, the Harris memes can be seen as representing Americans’ contradictions and complexities regarding the issue of race and authenticity, more so than characterizing the candidate herself.

Coconut tree meme

Because Harris doesn’t discuss her multiracial background very often, memes allow the public to address the cultural examination of the first Black and South Asian female presidential candidate.

One of the most recognizable memes questioning Harris’ race is that of the coconut tree.

The meme was born after a speech Harris delivered in which she shared that her mother would urge her to be aware of her cultural context. Harris said leaders should be aware of historical context when trying to help young people in education. They should pay attention, she added, to the context of those young people’s parents, grandparents and extended households.

At one point, Harris quoted her mother as saying: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

For some, the coconut tree became a metaphor of joy in the otherwise banal political system. For example, the North Carolina chair of the Democratic Party tweeted in July 2024, “We all fell out of the coconut tree today into a gym full of democrats!!!!