Kamala Harris: The Daughter of Immigrants Seeking to Make History

24th August 2024

3 minutes read

Kamala Harris: The Daughter of Immigrants Seeking to Make History

Officially, Kamala Harris‘s name is on the Democratic Party’s ticket for the race to the White House.

The Democratic National Convention concluded with the announcement that Harris accepted the party’s nomination for the election to be held next November.

Harris will be running against the Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, who is striving to return to the White House.

Just a month ago, Harris wasn’t planning for this. However, President Joe Biden‘s decision to step down from the race following criticisms about his advanced age and mental state propelled his vice president, Kamala Harris, into the spotlight, making her the first Black woman candidate for the presidency.

In recent days, Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate for the vice-presidential role.

Who is Kamala Harris?

According to her biography on the official White House website, Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964.

She graduated from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of the Law. In 2014, she married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer. They have two children, Ella and Cole.

As the daughter of immigrants—her mother born in India and her father born in Jamaica—she grew up surrounded by a diverse community and a loving extended family.

She and her sister Maya were greatly inspired by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist and pioneer in her field, who came to the United States from India at the age of 19, and earned her PhD the same year Kamala was born.

Harris’s parents were activists in the civil rights movement and instilled in her a commitment to building strong alliances that fight for the rights and freedoms of all people.

In the introduction to her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, Harris clarified that her name is pronounced “comma-la” and that it means “lotus flower,” in honor of an important symbol in Indian culture.

She wrote that her parents “met and fell in love in Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement,” but the couple later separated when Harris and her sister Maya were still young.

Harris credits her mother with shaping both her and her sister into who they are today and teaching her daughters to be proud of their Indian and Black heritage.

On January 20, 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president, becoming the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected to this position.

Kamala Harris as Vice President

Just five years ago, Harris was a senator from California, hoping to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

She began her professional career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003.

Later, she became the first woman and the first Black person to be elected attorney general of California, the most populous state in the U.S. She was also the top legal and law enforcement officer of the state.

Harris used this momentum to fuel her successful campaign for a Senate seat for California in 2017.

However, her presidential ambitions did not succeed in 2020. Her skillful debate performances were not enough to compensate for policies that were not well-articulated.

Her campaign ended in less than a year, but it was Biden who brought Kamala, now 59, back into the spotlight by putting her on his ticket, a move many described as a “major stroke of luck.”

The White House says that the vice president has been a trusted partner for Biden, as they worked together to achieve massive accomplishments that have changed the lives of millions of Americans.