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Vice President Kamala Harris has faced a barrage of attacks about her race — including one from Donald Trump, who claimed Harris “happened to turn Black” only recently.
During a question-and-answer session with the National Association of Black Journalists on Wednesday, the former president questioned: “Is she Indian or is she Black?”
In short, she’s both. The presumptive Democratic nominee is both the first Black and Asian-American vice president.
The vice president was born in California while her father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Harris has spoken openly about how she grew up appreciating both cultures.
Trump’s remark is particularly strange, seeing as during her 2020 presidential run, Harris made headlines after calling out Joe Biden’s past record on race and and school busing: “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bussed to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
Harris attended Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC, and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the first Black sororities in the nation. She has spoken fondly of her Jamaican heritage.
In 2021, she recalled her father taking her and her sister to see Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1978 — her first concert ever. “We sat up top in the back of the theater and, as I watched the performance, I was in complete awe,” Harris told the Washington Post at the time. “To this day, I know the lyrics to nearly every Bob Marley song.”
“My father, like so many Jamaicans, has immense pride in our Jamaican heritage and instilled that same pride in my sister and me,” Harris told the outlet. “We love Jamaica. He taught us the history of where we’re from, the struggles and beauty of the Jamaican people, and the richness of the culture.”
The twice-over Fulbright Scholar is now a professor emeritus at Stanford, where he served as faculty from 1972 until his retirement in 1998, according to his bio. He was the first Black scholar to receive tenure in Stanford’s economics department. The 85-year-old has dedicated much of his work to his native country. He served as an economic consultant to the Jamaican government and as an economic adviser to several of the country’s prime ministers, his bio states.
In 2019, when she was running in the Democratic presidental primary, Harris was asked in a radio interview about her stance on the legalization of weed. She responded: “Look, I joke about it, I have joked about it. Half my family is from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?”
Throughout her career, Harris has also emphasized the influence of her mother in her life. Gopalan, a cancer researcher, passed away in 2009.
Harris also wrote in her memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” about how her mother cooked her daughters Indian food, gave them Indian jewelry and took them on visits to India, where she spent time with her grandfather. Harris described her grandfather in a 2009 interview as “one of the most influential people in my life” as well as “was one of the original Independence fighters in India.”
In her memoir, Harris begins by explaining the meaning behind her first name. “It means “lotus flower,” which is a symbol of significance in Indian culture. A lotus grows underwater, its flower rising above the surface while its roots are planted firmly in the river bottom.”
Still, Harris noted that while her mother taught her daughters to be proud of her Indian roots, she understood that in America, onlookers would first and foremost see her children as Black.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women,” she wrote.
Despite Trump’s suggestion that Harris only recently started presenting herself as a Black woman, in 2010 when Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney, some in the political sphere admitted they didn’t know she was also Indian.
Around half of the 70 guests at a fundraiser hosted by an Indian-American couple “didn’t know she was Indian,” Shareen Punian, a political activist and host of the event, told the Washington Post in 2019.
Harris told the outlet that while others have wrestled to categorize her in one group or another, she hasn’t stressed over it: “When I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created.”
“My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it,” she continued.
In addition to Trump, a host of Republicans have recently made Harris the target of racist comments — with some calling her a “DEI” hire — short for “diversity, equity and inclusion” — and others have even referred to her as “colored.”
But throughout her time in the public eye, the vice president has chosen to focus on the positives, touting America as a place of opportunity.
“The American people deserve better,“ she told Sigma Gamma Rho sisters in Houston hours after Trump’s remarks. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”
After Harris and Joe Biden cemented their 2020 election victory, Harris mentioned her mother in her victory speech: “When she came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment, but she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.”
At the DNC in 2020, Harris spoke about how her parents “fell in love in that most American way — while marching together for justice in the Civil Rights Movement.”
“My parents marched and shouted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It’s because of them and the folks who also took to the streets to fight for justice that I am where I am,” Kamala wrote in a 2020 Instagram post. “They laid the path for me, as only the second Black woman ever elected to the United States Senate. Years later, we are still fighting for justice and to confront the systemic racism that has plagued our country since its earliest days.”
