{"id":57470,"date":"2019-02-03T04:47:14","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T04:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57470"},"modified":"2019-02-03T04:56:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T04:56:51","slug":"i-am-who-i-am-kamala-harris-daughter-of-indian-and-jamaican-immigrants-defines-herself-simply-as-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57470","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I am who I am\u2019: Kamala Harris, daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, defines herself simply as \u2018American\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018I am who I am\u2019: Kamala Harris, daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, defines herself simply as \u2018American\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2019-02-02<\/p>\n

Kevin Sullivan<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Correspondent<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nSen. Kamala D. Harris<\/a> (D-Calif.<\/a>), center, sings the Alpha Kappa Alpha<\/a> hymn at the sorority\u2019s annual \u201cPink Ice Gala\u201d on Jan. 25 in Columbia, S.C.<\/a> (Elijah Nouvelage\/Bloomberg News)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

SAN FRANCISCO<\/a> \u2014 In early 2010, an Indian American couple hosted a fundraiser in their elegant Pacific Heights<\/a> home for Kamala Harris<\/a>, then a Democratic candidate for California<\/a> attorney general.<\/p>\n

Harris had been San Francisco\u2019s high-profile district attorney for more than six years, but Deepak Puri and Shareen Punian had only recently learned that Harris was, as Punian said, \u201cone of our peeps<\/a>,\u201d a woman whose mother was an Indian immigrant.<\/p>\n

They had always assumed Harris was African American, and so did most of the 60 or 70 Indian American community leaders at the event, many of whom asked Puri and Punian why they had been invited.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least half of them didn\u2019t know she was Indian,\u201d said Punian, a business executive and political activist.<\/p>\n

Harris, 54, now a U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, would be several firsts in the White House<\/a>: the first woman, the first African American woman, the first Indian American and the first Asian American. The daughter of two immigrants \u2014 her father came from Jamaica<\/a> \u2014 she would also be the second biracial president, after Barack Obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s soul-searching quest to explore his identity, as the son of a white mother from Kansas<\/a> and a Kenyan<\/a> father who was largely absent from his life, was well-documented in his autobiography<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But when asked, in an interview, if she had wrestled with similar introspection about race, ethnicity and identity, Harris didn\u2019t hesitate:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d she said flatly…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harris, 54, now a U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, would be several firsts in the White House: the first woman, the first African American woman, the first Indian American and the first Asian American. The daughter of two immigrants \u2014 her father came from Jamaica \u2014 she would also be the second biracial president, after Barack Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,26,20,25],"tags":[455,29382,19040,19041,29381,29386,29390,29385,29388,5912,9568,29383,29387,29389,29384,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-57470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","category-women","tag-california","tag-deepak-puri","tag-kamala-d-harris","tag-kamala-harris","tag-kevin-sullivan","tag-leah-williams","tag-m-r-rangaswami","tag-matthew-davis","tag-regina-shelton","tag-robert-c-smith","tag-san-francisco","tag-shareen-punian","tag-sharon-mcgaffie","tag-shekar-narasimhan","tag-shyamala-gopalan","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57470"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57477,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57470\/revisions\/57477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}