#WhenITurnedBlack trends after Trump attacked Harris's racial identity. It's Black Twitter's way of 'dealing with pain through humor.'

Moments after former President Donald Trump claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris "happened to turn Black," the hashtag #WhenITurnedBlack started trending on Wednesday, with Black X users reclaiming Trump’s remarks to share their experiences as Black Americans.

Roy Wood Jr., a former Daily Show correspondent, is the originator of the now-viral hashtag. The standup comedian told Yahoo News that when he posed the question, "When did the rest of you 'turn' Black?" it was his "tongue-in-cheek way" of taking something "ridiculous" and engaging "Black Twitter" — a collection of Black voices and online content creators who discuss culturally relevant events — with humor and sarcasm.

However, Wood explained that the reclamation of Trump’s remarks about Harris’s racial identity echoes the ability of the Black community to “shine a light” on their truth, but also leaves space to create “deeper conversations” that daily impact Black Americans, especially in a divisive political climate.

"It's no different than when [Trump] said 'Black jobs' and everybody started talking about What is a Black job? and that went for two, three days," he said. "But you say something silly, we're going to say something silly back. Get a quick laugh. And then within that, we can have more 'nuanced' conversations about race and ethnicity and nationality."

Trump’s ‘DEI’ remark at NABJ makes him Twitter target

At the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Chicago on Wednesday, Trump berated ABC News's Rachel Scott after she asked if it was "acceptable language" to describe Harris as a "DEI hire." Republicans have used the term to suggest that her multiracial identity is the only reason that she is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

After Scott asked Trump to define “DEI” — the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion — Trump questioned Harris’s racial identity.

"I've known her a long time, indirectly,” he said. “And she was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?"

Shortly after Trump’s remarks, Wood said that he conjured up this tweet to “crack a joke that's in alignment with something that [Black people] already have a very visceral opinion about” questioning a Black person’s racial identity.

"We now know Kamala's brave story. When did the rest of you 'turn' black? How old were you? Where were you when the blackness finally took over your body? Share your stories. This is a safe space. #WhenITurnedBlack."

"I think anytime you can take something ridiculous and have other people answer the question, you're able to show just how odd of an observation and how odd of a fact it is,” Wood explained. “If you believe that she ‘turned Black,’ then let's just take that and be silly and ask other Black people when they ‘turned Black.’"

‘Black Twitter’ reacts to #WhenITurnedBlack

It's no secret that Black Twitter has the propensity to seize a tense moment in American culture, repurposing something negative by adding lightheartedness.

“I think resilience and dealing with pain through humor are traits Black people have had to develop to survive and thrive in this country,” Wendy Stricker, a Los Angeles-based wellness advocate who counts herself as a member of Black Twitter, told Yahoo News. “Since our arrival [to America], we’ve turned lemons into lemonade and in doing so created an online culture that others are eager to emulate. With as much adversity as we’ve faced, we have to laugh to keep from crying.”

One person said they “turned Black” when “I learned I was doing the job of 3 people without the title or pay #wheniturnedblack.”

“I was 10 years old and my mother picked me up from school as she always did,” another user shared. “We were driving home when I spotted a McDonald’s and queried my mother if we could stop in for a meal. She responded, “do you have McDonald’s money?” and in fact, I did not. That’s #WhenITurnedBlack.”

"#WhenITurnedBlack I remember it in the 80s when mother returned from her black job took us to the store and uttered: 'When we get in here, you don't want nothing, you don't need nothing, don't ask for nothing'!!!" posted another X user.

"I turned Black the first time I played the big joker in spades. It was quite a momentous occasion #WhenITurnedBlack," posted @TheQueenMuse1.

Another X user said when they were in elementary school in the 1980s, they “vividly remember attending my first family reunion, meeting all my cousins and even my cousins' cousins. To my surprise, I discovered that a boy from my school was actually part of my family. Family reunions save lives, and that's all I have to say about that.”