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SCREEN CAPTURE / CNN
Sen. Kamala Harris addresses the question about race. |
Of all the declared candidates running for POTUS in 2020, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, has been the most outspoken and least afraid to address that hot-button topic.
Speaking at a campaign event in South Carolina, Harris was asked a pointed question about race in America by Meg Oliver, a voter who identified herself as being raised as "a daughter of the south" and said she has is very close to people with unabashedly racist views -- including her father who she believes "was most likely in the KKK."
"I am embarrassed at what I see with a lot of the southerners and a lot of the members of our Congress," Oliver said in preceding her question. "I'm wondering what you can do... to heal the racial divides that Donald Trump has emboldened and what we as white people who don't believe in that and don't support that -- what can we do to help offset the obvious flashpoints of racial divide in this country."
Harris didn't hesitate in answering. "For too long, frankly in our country, for too long we have not had these honest discussions about race. We've just not. You can look at textbooks in public schools that have erased so much of the history, the awful shameful history on race in this country."
Lynching, until a few months ago, Harris cited as an example. Congress has tried but failed to pass anti-lynching legislation roughly 200 times since 1918, according to Harris's office. She co-authored, along with presidential candidate Cory Booker, D-NJ, a Senate bill makes lynching a federal crime.
Harris went on to tell the South Carolina audience that in order to move the "uncomfortable" conversation about race forward, "we have to speak truth to what happened."
"And we have to do it understanding -- and to the point of the spirit of you raising it, and the way you did -- it is in our collective best interest to speak these truths, to acknowledge what happened, to acknowledge then the vestiges of it that remain because they do. To get to a place where we can heal and we can be better. And I believe that is going to have to be about leadership -- that one is to your point -- not stoking the racism, the anti-Semitism, the white supremacy that we have been seeing because that is happening," she said.
"I know we are better than this, I believe that. But we will not achieve our true strength as a country if we fail to acknowledge the truth and speak it and recognize what must be done to address it," Harris said.
Efforts to put her in a racial or ethnic box has dogged the senator since she ran for office as San Francisco's District Attorney.
"And we have to do it understanding -- and to the point of the spirit of you raising it, and the way you did -- it is in our collective best interest to speak these truths, to acknowledge what happened, to acknowledge then the vestiges of it that remain because they do. To get to a place where we can heal and we can be better. And I believe that is going to have to be about leadership -- that one is to your point -- not stoking the racism, the anti-Semitism, the white supremacy that we have been seeing because that is happening," she said.
"I know we are better than this, I believe that. But we will not achieve our true strength as a country if we fail to acknowledge the truth and speak it and recognize what must be done to address it," Harris said.
Efforts to put her in a racial or ethnic box has dogged the senator since she ran for office as San Francisco's District Attorney.
Being bi-racial -- her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica -- Harris is continually being asked to talk about race: about her racial origins, how her parents affected her personal outlook and how she plans to heal the racial divide in the U.S.
Both the Indian American and Black communities claim her as one of their own and have trouble accepting the other half of her racial identity.
Because mainstream media, in general, still sees the U.S. in terms of black and white, she has had to walk a tightrope when answering questions about how she identifies herself.
“So I was born in Oakland, and raised in the United States except for the years that I was in high school in Montreal, Canada,” Harris told the crew. “And look, this is the same thing they did to Barack (Obama). This is not new to us and so I think that we know what they are trying to do. They are trying to do what has been happening over the last two years, which is powerful voices trying to sow hate and division, and so we need to recognize when we’re being played.”
She also said, “I think they don’t understand who black people are. I’m not going to spend my time trying to educate people about who black people are. Because right now, frankly, I’m focused on, for example, an initiative that I have that is called the ‘LIFT Act’ that is about lifting folks out of poverty.”
But in case people weren’t’ clear, she added, “I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black. I was born Black. I will die Black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.”
On the other hand, the South Asian community has also claimed that Harris is too ready to submerge her Indian background for the sake of political expediency.
She said she has not spent much time dwelling on how to categorize herself.
"So much so," she said, "that 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 said in a Washington Post interview.
Harris' background in many ways reflects the culturally diverse, racially blended society that is almost second-nature in California's Bay Area and is might be a harbinger of what might be more common across the United States, according to demographers.
She calls herself simply "an American," and said she has been fully comfortable with her identity from an early age. She credits that largely to a Hindu immigrant single mom who adopted black culture and immersed her daughters in it. Harris grew up embracing her Indian culture, but living a proudly African-American life.
"My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters," Harris writes in her recently published autobiography, The Truths We Hold. "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."
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was keenly attracted to the civil rights movement and the African-American culture of her new home in the 1960s and 70s. At first, she marched and protested with her black husband, then alone or with the girls after they divorced when Harris was very young.
Shyamala Gopalan brought her daughters home to India for visits, she cooked Indian food for them and the girls often wore Indian jewelry. But in the Bay Area, specifically, the liberal communities of Berkeley and Oakland, Harris worshiped at an African-American church, went to a preschool with posters of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on the wall, attended Civil Rights marches in a stroller, and was bused with other black kids to an elementary school in a wealthier white neighborhood.
It was no surprise that when it was time for college, she moved across the country to Washington to attend the historically black Howard University.
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SCREEN CAPTURE / CNN
In South Carolina, Meg Oliver asked the "$6 million question" about race. |
It was no surprise that when it was time for college, she moved across the country to Washington to attend the historically black Howard University.
"Her Indian culture, she held onto that," said Sharon McGaffie, 67, an African-American woman who has known Harris and her sister, Maya, since they were toddlers living in Berkeley, California. "But I think they grew up as black children who are now black women. There's no question about it."
In the Post interview, Harris said she disagreed with the perception that she has not stressed her Indian background, saying she had "been focused on the Indian community my entire life."
Despite her efforts to reach out to the Indian Americans, a survey by APIA Data showed that she remains an unknown to a majority of South Asians.
Despite her efforts to reach out to the Indian Americans, a survey by APIA Data showed that she remains an unknown to a majority of South Asians.
Harris said the view that she embraced her Asian heritage only more recently was "a matter of what people are aware of and what the press has focused on."
She pointed, for example, to her advocacy as early as 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, when South Asians became the targets of abuse and violence. "I was very active in fighting to make sure that the community was not the subject of hate and bias and ill-treatment," she said.
"I grew up with a great deal of pride and understanding about my Indian heritage and culture,"Harris said.
Former Kansas legislator Raj Goyle and Deepak Raj, co-founders of the Indian American Impact Fund, which supports and funds Indian American candidates provided a statement to India Abroad, saying: “The Indian American Impact Fund is thrilled by Senator Harris' groundbreaking announcement today.” They said, “As the first viable Indian-American candidate for president of the United States, she is a trailblazer for our community and a champion for our values ... and look forward to supporting her enthusiastically in the days and months ahead.”
Silicon Valley entrepreneur and women’s activist Shelly Kapoor Collins, founding partner of The Shatter Fund, has been a close friend and supporter of Harris from the time she ran for District Attorney over 15 years ago.
“Kamala is not scared to do the right thing and she doesn’t back away when things get tough," Collins told India Abroad.
“Kamala has been an inspiration and role model for me personally and now the rest of the country, especially women, will see what a tremendous force and fighter she is for those she serves.
“Kamala is California’s senator for all Californians and she will be President for all Americans. I couldn’t be more proud to have been a small part of her path from District Attorney to Attorney General to Senator, and now candidate for President of the United States,” she added.
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Sen. Kamala Harris accused critics of “identity politics” of weaponizing the term to diminish issues of race, gender and sexual orientation, pressing Democrats on Friday to address those issues head on.
“I have a problem, guys, with that phrase, ‘identity politics,’” Harris told the progressive gathering Netroots Nation, wading into a messaging debate roiling Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. “Because let’s be clear, when people say that, it’s a pejorative. That phrase is used to divide, and it is used to distract. Its purpose is to minimize and marginalize issues that impact all of us. It is used to try and shut us up.”
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