California Democratic Sen. Kamala D. Harris hardly had time to finish basking in the glow of her presidential bid’s five-star rollout before 20,000 adoring Oakland hometown fans, when two black-media-inspired questions hit her in the face: Why did she marry a white man? And: Is she black enough?

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Last March, the Economist-YouGov poll found that 17 percent of Americans think interracial marriage is “morally wrong.” On a racial basis, a nearly equal percentage of respondents felt the same way: 17 percent of whites said it was morally wrong. So did 18 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Hispanics.

Thus, notions of black inferiority still abide in some whites. So too, hostility toward intermarriage among some blacks who regard crossing the color line to marry a white person as an act of racial betrayal.

White and black separatists miss the point. Individuals, regardless of pigmentation, don’t marry a race. Marriage is a decision by two people — not two racial groups — to form a union. They do it because they want to share their lives — with each other.

“Look, I love my husband, and he happened to be the one that I chose to marry because I love him — that was that moment in time, and that’s it. And he loves me.” No more needs saying.

Heterosis, hybrid vigor, or outbreeding enhancement, is the improved or increased function of any biological quality in a hybrid offspring. An offspring is heterotic if its traits are enhanced as a result of mixing the genetic contributions of its parents.

Kamala Harris is off to the fastest start among Democrats who have already entered the 2020 presidential race, say party strategists and donors closely following the contest’s early stages.

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Neither Biden nor Sanders has entered the race, and the polls showing them at the top of the contest likely reflects their widespread name recognition. Biden served eight years as vice president to Barack Obama after a long career in the Senate, while Sanders ran a tough campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016 for the party’s presidential nomination.

Harris, in contrast, has not been on the national stage nearly as long. She was elected to the Senate in 2016 in a campaign that first brought her to national attention.

Democrats attribute her strong standing to a relatively seamless launch last month.

They say Harris largely beat her competitors to the punch in announcing a full-blown presidential campaign and capitalizing on the momentum which followed.

“There’s always been this motto, 'You have one day to launch and you have to get it right,' and Kamala crushed it,” said Robert Wolf, the prominent Democratic donor. “It’s the day that you have all the media buzz, the grass roots excitement and to tell your story. That is the one day all eyes are on you and she hit out of the ballpark.”