THE world’s Asians, especially Indians, have a special reason to follow closely the American elections. The Democratic vice-presidential candidate is California Sen. Kamala Harris who exemplifies the growing diversity in American life, government, and politics, with her black and Asian background.
She was chosen last Tuesday by Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden to be his running-mate in the presidential election on November 3. They will be running against President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence of the Republican Party.
While the elections are being held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which will therefore be a major issue in the campaign, it is also coming after a series of nationwide demonstrations for racial equality following the killing of a black man, George Floyd, by white policemen in Minneapolis last May. Racial equality and human rights will therefore be key issues in the election.
Senator Harris went to Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, DC, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and economics. She went on to law school at the University of California, where she served as president of the Black Law Students Association and graduated with a Juris Doctor.
Asians, especially Indians, have a particular interest in Senator Harris, whose mother was Shyamala Gopalan, a breast-cancer scientist who emigrated from Tamil Nadu, India, in 1960, to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology at the University of California in Berkeley. Kamala and her sister Maya went to both a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple in Berkeley. They sometimes visited their mother’s family in Madras, now Chennai, India.
Harris’ father was an immigrant from British Jamaica who went to Berkeley for graduate studies in 1961.
Harris served as attorney general of California before being elected US senator from California where she championed several causes, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Immigration Is bound to be one of the major issues in the election, as President Trump has been known to oppose immigrants both from South and Central America and from Muslim nations.
If elected, Harris will be the first female, the first African-American, and the first Asian-American vice president of the country. A former woman aspirant for VP – Sarah Palin – who had run with Sen. John McCain in 2008, may be a Republican, but she is also a staunch woman leader, and she congratulated Harris on her nomination on Instagram and posted a long list of advice for her.
This demonstrates the appeal and the wide range of support Senator Harris is getting – from women, from immigrants, from black Americans and other minorities in American society, from advocates of racial and sexual equality. Millions of Asians, particularly Indians, will also be following her bid in the coming election which, if she wins, will make her the Democratic Party frontrunner in the next election.
