California's multiracial population is soaring

Former President Trump's recent false attack questioning Vice President Kamala Harris' racial identity comes as the number of people in the U.S. identifying as multiracial is surging — particularly in California.

Why it matters: Trump's comments illuminate how some Americans consistently misunderstand the complexities of people from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds and how those identities shape their lives.

State of play: In California, 14.6% of the population, or nearly 6 million people, identify as multiracial. That's up from 4.9% , around 1.8 million, in 2010.

• California has the fifth highest percentage in the U.S., behind Hawai'i, New Mexico, Texas and Florida. The national mark is 10.2%.

Zoom in: San Francisco County reported about 43,600 multiracial residents in the latest census count, 5% of its overall population.

Flashback: Trump's comments at the National Association of Black Journalists convention July 31, that Harris primarily identified as Indian and "became … Black" recently, stirred discussions about her identity.

Reality check: Harris regularly cites her background as the daughter of an Indian immigrant woman and a Jamaican immigrant man.

• She grew up attending both a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple, and as a child was bused to Berkeley's Thousand Oaks Elementary School during its second year of integration in 1970.
• Harris went on to attend Howard University (an HBCU), where she joined the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.
• As a U.S. senator she was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Zoom out: Harris is hardly alone. People who identify as multiracial are among the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population.

• Mixed Black and Asian people in particular are an ever-increasing political bloc, thanks in part to content creators like Ryan Alexander Holmes, who has built a following chronicling his life and family experiences as a African and Chinese American man.
• Sacramento also hosted its first-ever Blasian March last summer.

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