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- Donald J. Harris
Shyamala Gopalan
Aug 14, 2020 · The daughter of two immigrants — her father came from Jamaica, her mother from India — Harris grew up in a Black middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley, where her parents would often join...
Sep 13, 2020 · Senator Kamala Harris often tells the story of her parents’ romance. They were idealistic foreign graduate students who were swept up in the U.S. civil rights movement — a variation of the...
- Ellen Barry
- Overview
- Support from Asian and Black voters isn’t guaranteed
- Regardless of background, issues come first, advocates say
Before Sen. Kamala Harris broke historic barriers in the ivory halls of Congress, and now on the Democratic presidential ticket, she dug into her heritage on Howard University’s campus, one of the most prestigious historically Black colleges in the country.
“She was well-steeped in her heritage both as a woman of Jamaican descent and a woman of South Asian descent,” said Jill Louis, a Dallas-based corporate attorney, who attended Howard with Harris and is one of Harris’ line sisters in Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historically Black sorority. “She would talk about what it was like to have that heritage and how she experienced it.”
Ultimately, she said, Howard made students feel “comfortable in their Blackness and in understanding its expansiveness and to move and transcend as a human.” And the campus was the springboard from youth to adulthood where Harris embraced her roots as both Black and Indian, on a path toward making history as she has done this week.
Her selection as Joe Biden’s running mate on Wednesday cemented Harris' place in American history and catalyzed discussions around race in the political sphere.
Since the announcement was made, much of the focus has been on the fact that, if elected, Harris would become the first female, first Black and first Asian American vice president. It’s a realization that has prompted talk about what her status as the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants would mean for the marginalized communities she represents and beyond.
Advocates say that Harris’ multiracial background in an arena that's long been predominantly white has the potential to resonate with voters of color who have not seen themselves reflected in such a position of power.
While it's not yet clear how Harris' prosecutorial background could affect the ticket, it was a thorn in her side when she ran for president in the Democratic primary, and her selection as the vice presidential nominee will certainly renew scrutiny of her past. She spent seven years as the district attorney in San Francisco, followed by six years as California's attorney general, and in both tenures she was criticized for her of marijuana convictions and for arresting the parents of truant students, who were mostly Black, among other issues. Particularly progressive and young Black voters will likely demand answers from Harris.
Still, Black voters are reliably Democratic — 89 percent of them voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, compared to 8 percent for Trump. A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found, however, that racism and police misconduct are the most pressing issues among registered Black voters. And despite Biden's lead over Trump among Black voters — 92 percent to 5 percent — the poll found that about half “support Biden” and the other half mainly “oppose Trump.”
While Harris is expected to be a boon for the ticket, she did struggle to gain traction among Black Democrats in her primary campaign. Gillespie said that may have had more to do with the high number of candidates in the race and with Black voters thinking “strategically” rather than a general lack of interest in Harris’ candidacy.
Harris’ new status as a vice presidential hopeful arrives against the backdrop of an Asian American electorate that’s experiencing rapidly growing influence. In the past two decades, the group has ballooned by 139 percent, making it the fastest-growing demographic of eligible voters compared to all other major races and ethnicities. In comparison, the white electorate grew by 7 percent in the same period. Asian Americans also stand out as the only group composed of a majority of naturalized immigrants.
In recent elections, the Asian American and Pacific Islander population has trended left, with 79 percent voting for Clinton in 2016, according to an Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund exit poll conducted in 11 different Asian languages. South Asian Americans in particular voted most strongly Democrat with some subgroups like Pakistanis voting as high as 96 percent for Clinton. Indian Americans voted for the Democrat at 84 percent, a rate higher than the national average of the greater Asian American population, who voted for Clinton at 79 percent.
However, support for Harris among Asian Americans has not been guaranteed. Data from 2018, just before Harris formally declared her presidential candidacy in January 2019 on Martin Luther King Day, shows that 52 percent of Indian Americans had a “favorable” opinion of her. But another 20 percent had never heard of her. In interviews with several Indian Americans in February 2019, South Asian American leaders indicated that many in the community were likely unaware of Harris' Indian heritage.
Lakshmi Sridaran, executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together, a nonprofit civil rights group, emphasized that physical representation of the Asian American community is crucial, but it doesn’t equal political representation. She said she hopes the Asian American electorate assesses Harris as a candidate based on policy, listing issues like COVID-19 relief legislation and policing among topics voters should dig further into.
“As exciting as it is to have an Asian American and particularly a South Asian American in this role, what's important and what we encourage community members to do is assess her and engage her (and all candidates) on where she stands on issues that impact South Asians and to examine her voting record and policies," Sridaran said.
Kamala Harris is of Black, Indian and Irish Jamaican descent on her paternal side and of Indian descent on her maternal side. According to the Los Angeles Times , "Gopalan (Kamala's mother) was a Tamil Brahmin , part of a "privileged elite" in Hinduism's ancient caste hierarchy."
Jan 20, 2021 · By Chelsey Sanchez Published: Jan 20, 2021 9:20 AM EST. Save Article. ERIC BARADAT // Getty Images. Throughout the 2020 election season, California senator (and now Vice President-elect) Kamala...
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Aug 13, 2020 · by Matthew Yglesias. Aug 13, 2020, 5:30 AM PDT. Sen. Kamala Harris with a young girl whose mother is an immigrant from Mozambique. Alex Wong/Getty Images. Sen. Kamala Harris is the first...
Jan 20, 2021 · Kamala Harris’s father, Donald Harris, was from Jamaica, and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from southern India.
