Why Kamala Harris completely shunned her Indian background and identified as Black is unknown but could it affect Joe Biden’s electability if she is his running mate?

 

 

 

In three weeks, Kamala Harris might be chosen as the Vice President in Joe Biden’s Presidency. Along with Elizabeth Warren, Susan Rice, and Gov. Gina Raimondo, she is one of the top contenders. With the Black Lives Matter movement becoming a clarion call for a black democratic vice-presidential candidate, the timing couldn’t have been better for California’s junior Senator. But is Harris black? In a previous interview, Harris was asked and replied “I’m black, and I’m proud of being black. I was born black. I will die black.”

 

Last year, during the Democratic presidential debate, Donald John Trump, the eldest child of Donald Trump, shared a viral tweet, which he later deleted that said – Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican. I'm so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. It's disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2? These are my people not her people. Freaking disgusting.

— Ali Alexander (@ali) June 28, 2019

 

Whether this was from a bot targeting black voters or not remains speculation but the fact remains Harris’ mother is from South India and her father was from Jamaica. She is married to a white Jewish man from New York. Would it be a problem if she said, I’m black, brown, white, Indian, Jewish, and American?

 

What she wants to identify as is Kamala Harris’ prerogative. But similarly, in the court of perception, what the voter perceives is their choice. The door for whether Harris is Black or not has been closed on racist bigots with the help of the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement but will it alienate a vote bank that is increasingly cashing out to Donald Trump? Traditionally, Indian-Americans vote Democratic but in the 2016 elections, a sizeable number of one of the largest immigrant populations in America voted for Trump. The bonhomie of Trump and India’s populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been visible on two occasions in the past year - in Houston and in India.

At such a time, for a candidate to refuse to acknowledge her identity is to potentially alienate a people who would simply vote for her based on her Indian-ness.

 

This debate has been triggered in the past too with Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, tweeting "People aren't wholesale crazy for debating Kamala's racial solidarity any more than they debate it with any other candidate," she wrote. "What I am not going to let people do is pretend that black voters are stupid or wrong for doing what people surely do to us, which is question our bona fides."

 

The question here is about what she adds to the electability of Joe Biden as a running mate. If she is seen as Black, it helps. But if she refuses to acknowledge her Indian background it could alienate South Asians and create doubts about her black-ness. Since Harris hasn’t spoken much about the issue, the question of whether she adopted anything from her Indian mother in terms of culture comes up. On her part, Harris has already suggested that because she grew up in a black community and went to Howard University, the country’s few historical black universities, she identifies as black.

 

What she’s never been asked is why she couldn’t identify as being from two or more races – Indian and Black but instead chose only Black. With her sister Maya Harris holding the cards of her personal life close to their chests, the extended family in India has not spoken to the media. Harris, it should be remembered, has traveled to South India to meet her relatives in the past.

 

Harris has proclaimed this is the same birther controversy that Obama faced saying “this is the same thing they did to Barack,” but Obama himself has written in his book, ‘The Audacity of Hope,’ “that while he has experienced some light versions of typical stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own – nor has he lived the life of a black American.”

 

Kamala Harris, back row at left, in an undated family photo. Next to her, from left, are her grandmother Rajam Gopalan, grandfather P.V. Gopalan and sister, Maya Harris. With them are Maya’s daughter, Meena, left, and Harris’ cousin Sharada Balachandran Orihuela.

(Courtesy of Sharada Balachandran Orihuela) as posted in the LA Times. 

 

It is documented that her progressive Indian grand-father inspired Harris. So, while the Indian-American vote bank may not be enough to risk alienating the Black vote, the question of her refusal to acknowledge the tiniest role of Indian culture in her life will be like the Sword of Damocles hanging over her head, when it comes to the Indian vote. If this is a close election for Biden and Harris is his choice for Vice President, could it come down to this?