Teresa Heinz Kerry: My Black Friends Call Me African American

First lady wannabe Teresa Heinz Kerry once insisted that her black friends think of her as African American and often refer to her in conversation using the term, a phrase almost universally employed by blacks in America to describe their race.

In 1993, Grant Oliphant - the spokesman for the wealthy Mozambican-born socialite at the time - told the Los Angeles Sentinel, "Her black friends support her decision to call herself African American."

Oliphant described his ketchup-heiress boss as "sensitive to black issues," saying she "traces interests in health care, human rights and the environment from her days of growing up in Africa."

"For decades, many of her black friends have referred to her as an African American," he claimed.

In a story headlined "White Woman Says She is African American, No Hyphen!" the Sentinel explained that Heinz Kerry had "long referred to herself as an African American since moving to the United States from Mozambique in 1964."

Oliphant justified his boss' description of herself as African American by saying she doesn't hyphenate the two words, saying that makes the term applicable to both blacks and whites who have come to the U.S. from Africa.

But Ron Walters, chairman of the political science department at Howard University, objected to Heinz Kerry's use of the term regardless of the hyphen. Walters told the Sentinel that she was not African, but a European living in Africa.

"It doesn't change things," Walters said. "It's not a consistent usage. Some people use the hyphen, and some people don't. They mean the same thing."

Heinz Kerry's description of herself as African American at a 1993 gathering of the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania caused a "storm of criticism" from local black leaders, the Baltimore Sun noted on Tuesday.

At the time, she was weighing a Senate run to replace her recently deceased husband, John Heinz, whose 1991 death made her heir to the Heinz Foods fortune and one of the wealthiest women in the U.S.

But as recently as 1995 - the year she married Sen. John Kerry - the Mozambican emigre was touting her African roots, according to Tuesday's Sun report.

A call to Sen. Kerry's presidential campaign inquiring whether his wife still refers to herself as African American was not returned by press time.

A spokesman for Sen. John Edwards declined to comment on the flap.

Rachel Nordlinger, spokeswoman for the Rev. Al Sharpton, said she had brought Mrs. Heinz Kerry's "African American" claim to his attention and was awaiting his response.

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