What's interesting is that Barack Obama did not officially start calling himself Black until after he decided to run for the presidency -- before that he called himself multi-racial. Kamala Harris used to call herself Indian-American until she decided to run for the presidency when all of a sudden she called herself Black -- and her own mother denied that she was Black, by the way.. Then after she dropped out of the Primaries she again returned to calling herself Indian-American until Biden offered her the V.P. slot.