Kamala Harris

Like everyone of my generation, I grew up liking apples and grapes, watching Hollywood movies, memorizing the Gettysburg address and believing in the honesty of six-year-old George Washington who confessed he was the one who felled his father’s cherry tree. And of course, wishing to catch snowflakes (a wish that came true when I was awarded a scholarship grant to Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill.). So the goings on in the American political landscape are a must-see for us who live more than 10,000 miles away.

My interest in the 2016 US presidential election was on account of the Democratic presidential candidate’s being a woman – Hillary Clinton. The US embassy had invited a few of us in the local media to watch the election results online at the embassy. Many, not just us women, had a thrill seeing Hillary winning the popular vote (65,853,524 as against  62,984,828 garnered by Donald Trump, the Republican candidate), but, to our dismay, losing to Trump in the Electoral College (Trump winning 304 votes, and Hillary, 227 votes) – a unique feature of the American presidential election system.

So the above should explain why I am writing about Kamala Harris, the running mate of Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for president. The main reason is that she is a woman candidate for vice president, and more, she is the first Afro-American, and the first American Asian running for vice president. What we are watching on CNN now is the Democratic national convention, and already, Kamala is being bashed for her views and those of her followers who hold that Trump does not have the competence to be reelected president of the US, that in fact, he never did, when he ran in 2016.

The heated clamor for police reform and respecting the rights of black people is fertile ground for winning votes for Biden – and Kamala. One sure support for Kamala (from my stand) is her marching in Black Lives Matter rallies. But why is Kamala called Black? – a question repeatedly raised by Trump. Kamala Devi Harris was born on Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist, had emigrated from India in 1960 to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology at Berkeley. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Stanford University Emeritus Professor of Economics, who emigrated from Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study in Berkeley – where he met Shyamala Gopalan.  As we can see, Harris’ parents were highly educated.

In Berkeley, Kamala and her sister Maya grew up going to a black Baptist church and a Hindu temple. She was in kindergarten in the second year of Berkeley’s school desegration busing program which brought her to a school which had been 95 percent white. Her parents divorced when she was seven. When she and her sister visited their father in Palo Alto on weekends, neighbors’ kids were not allowed to play with them because they were black. When she was 12, Harris and her sister moved with their mother to Montreal, Canada where their mother had accepted a research position at Jewish General Hospital and teaching at McGill University. Her mother reminded the two girls that they were black.

At Howard University, a historically black university in Washington D.C. she majored in political science and economics, and interned as a mailroom clerk for California Senator Alan Cranston, chaired the economics society, led the debate team, demonstrated against apartheid and joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She earned her Juris Doctor from the UCLA, passed the Bar and gained admission to the State Bar of California on June 14, 1990.

She was deputy attorney in Oakland, California, from 1990 to 1998. While there, she specialized in prosecuting sexual assault cases involving children. From 2004 to 2011, she was the 27th district attorney of San Francisco. She made history in 2010 when she was elected attorney general of California, becoming the first woman and first African American to win the position. She ran again in 2014 and was reelected.

She wrote the book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer in 2009. The book, according to Wikipedia, examined myths in the criminal justice system and solutions to improve approaches to fighting crime. Her memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, released in January 2019, examines the “core truths that unite us and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them” in her own life and across the life of the US.

In 2005, National Black Prosecutors Association awarded Harris the Thurgood Marshall Award. That year, she was featured along 19 other women in a Newsweek report profiling 20 of America’s Most Powerful Women. In 2006, Howard University awarded her its Outstanding Alumni Award for “extraordinary work in the fields of law and public service.” In 2007 Ebony named her one of the 100 most influential black Americans; in 2008, she was named Attorney of the Year by a California Lawyer magazine. A New York Times article identified her as a woman with potential to become president of the US, highlighting her reputation as a “tough fighter”. In 2010, California’s largest newspaper Daily Journal designated Harris a top 100 lawyer and top 75 women litigators in the state.

She is married  to Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer and Kamala’s age, and father of two children by a first marriage. They are marking their five years anniversary on Aug. 22. Images of them on television taken during the Democratic National Convention, show how genuinely happy they are.

Kamala is the third woman to be named as a vice presidential candidate for a major political party and the first black woman. The first  was Geraldine Ferraro, who was chosen as Walter Mondale’s Democratic running mate in 1984, and Sarah Palin, who was named by John McCain as the Republican vice presidential pick in 2008.

Harris won a senator’s seat in November 2016, with the endorsement of then president Barack Obama and Joe Biden.  She vowed to protect immigrants from the policies of President-elect Donald Trump.

She was a firebrand in the Senate, opposing and questioning actions of colleagues and President Trump. As a member of the Senate judiciary committee, she demanded the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson for favoring Norwegian immigrants over others and claiming to be unaware that Norway is a predominantly white country.

Among those who felt uneasy with her avalanche of questions were Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General  William Barr. She voted for the  impeachment of  President Trump.

“We now face a choice: will we insist that we have one system of Justice that applies equally to all? The Senate is charged with deciding whether the President of the United States, with all of his power and supposed wealth, will be held accountable for his actions – or whether we will finally live up to the principle ‘equal Justice Under law.  She voted to convict President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.”

“America is crying out for leadership, yet we have a president who cares more about himself than the people who elected him, a president who is making every challenge we face even more difficult to solve.”

Biden has a perfect ally in his vice presidential pick. Then Americans must vote him president so Kamala can give him all the support he needs to make America great again.

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