A post shared on Facebook alleges Vice President Kamala Harris said, “If he’s white, he’s going to be racist.”

Verdict: False

There is no record of Harris making that statement. The remark appears to be a misinterpretation of a 2018 Vanity Fair headline.

Fact Check:

The Facebook post claims Harris, the first woman of color to be elected vice president, once said, “If he’s white, he’s going to be racist.” It is unclear who Harris is referring to in the alleged quote. (RELATED: Did Kamala Harris Say, ‘Our Military Are Soulless Cowards’?)

But there is no record of Harris making the statement. Check Your Fact reviewed press releases published on the White House website and found no similar comments to the one attributed to her in the Facebook post. Searching media reports and her verified social media accounts also turned up no instances of the remark. Nor could the statement be found in an archive of her deleted tweets.

The quote, which has been circulating online since at least 2019, may stem from a misinterpretation of a similar quote in a 2018 Vanity Fair headline which reads, “‘He’s still going to be racist if it’s a white nominee’: Can Kamala Harris, non-identity politician, find her way in an identity-politics moment?” The article quotes Jeremy Bird, the national field director for former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, as saying the statement featured in the article’s headline in reference to former President Donald Trump. It is possible the quote misattributed to Harris in the Facebook post originated as an altered version of that statement from Bird.

This is not the first time a quote misattributed to Harris has spread on social media. Check Your Fact in January debunked a viral post that claimed she once said that Trump supporters will “beg” her for a “loaf of bread.”