The TLDR: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has finally picked his running mate: 55-year-old Kamala Harris. If the Dems win in November, she will become the first woman—and Black/Indian—Vice President of the United States! Here’s everything you need to know about the woman who is often described as the ‘female Obama’. Oh, and her name is pronounced ‘comma-la’ (as the US media are careful to specify). 

The ‘female Obama’

Harris has long been compared to the former president thanks to her personal history.

A biracial heritage: Her father, Donald, is a Jamaican-born professor of economics at Stanford University. Her mother, Chennai-born Shyamala Gopalan, was an endocrinologist, who met and married Donald in Berkeley back in 1964—at the height of the civil rights movement. They had two children—Kamala and Maya—and divorced when Harris was seven years old. 

A single parent’s child: Like Obama, Harris was raised primarily by her mother—and barely mentions her father. Her mother—and maternal grandfather—have played a big role in shaping the course of Kamala’s life. 

Also a lawyer: She also trained as a lawyer but at the Hastings College of Law, University of California not Harvard and—unlike Obama—pursued a highly successful legal career. She previously served as the California Attorney General and the District Attorney of San Francisco.

Also, a memoir: Like Obama, Harris has written three books, including the most recent, ‘The Truths We Hold’—published right before she threw her hat into the Democratic primary. It was very much a memoir-meets-campaign pitch a la Obama’s ‘The Audacity of Hope’.

Indian or Black or both?

Unlike Obama—who struggled with his biracial identity—Harris has always embraced both sides of her heritage. A gift given to her by Harris’ amazing rule-breaking mother, and her highly progressive grandparents.

An Indian mother: Shyamala Gopalan was the eldest of four children—born to Rajam, a woman rights activist, and PV Gopalan, a senior bureaucrat. In 1958, she surprised her parents by applying for a Master’s degree at Berkeley—a university her parents had never heard of. According to her brother:

“It was a big deal.. At that time, the number of unmarried Indian women who had gone to the States for graduate studies—it was probably in the low double digits. But my father was quite open. He said, ‘If you get admission, you go.’”

And so she did, and went on to earn a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology—becoming a successful breast cancer researcher. 

An activist mother: At Berkeley, Shyamala plunged head-first into the civil rights movement—and met Donald at campus protests. She was always deeply immersed in the Black community and activism. And she raised her daughters as Black, as Harris makes very clear: 

“My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls… She was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”

An Indian family: But Shyamala also kept her children tightly connected both to her family in Chennai and their South Asian heritage. Harris writes:

“My mother, grandparents, aunts and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots … we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother’s words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue (Tamil)—which seems fitting to me, since the purity of those emotions is what I associate with my mother most of all.”

Kamala’s take: As a candidate for the Democratic nomination, Harris has been more forthcoming about her Blackness than her Indian heritage. But when pushed, this is how she amended that key line in her memoir:

“My Indian mother knew she was raising two Black daughters… But that’s not to the exclusion of who I am in terms of my Indian heritage… I grew up going to a Black Baptist Church and a Hindu temple.”

Well, if you really care, you can always judge for yourself. Here is Harris and Mindy Kaling making masala dosas.

Point to note: Shyamala Gopalan died of colon cancer in 2009. Remembering her mother, Harris wrote: "There is no title or honor on earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter. That is the truth I hold dearest of all." And here’s a lovely tribute video to Shyamala that her sister, Maya, just tweeted out:

PS: In 2014, Harris married entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish American and has two kids from a previous marriage.

Can she win?

Harris’ fortunes depend mainly on her running mate, Joe Biden—who is ten points ahead of Donald Trump in the polls. OTOH, Hillary was 5-9 points ahead of him as late as November, 2016. 

Is she ‘Black’ enough? Harris was undoubtedly picked because she is Black (Biden already announced that his running mate would be a woman). Yes, there’s the pressure of running in the midst of the BLM movement, but Biden also owes a big debt for his Dem nomination to African Americans—specifically women. As a union leader said:

“This has sent a lightning bolt of electricity across a base that has been watching and waiting and looking for a reason to be excited about this race… I have a Black mother who is literally through the roof, and she is emblematic of the visceral excitement of the base that drove Barack Obama to the White House.”

OTOH. Harris’ own presidential campaign failed because she did not capture the Black vote—which she lost (oh the ironies!) to Biden. And that “enthusiasm gap” may prove to be her undoing. Already, some Black commentators are saying: “I think Biden is going with what he and other leaders in the party think is the safest choice. They thought, ‘Any Black woman will do.’” 

More damningly this: “Some people are saying, Kamala feels like an outsider, talking to voters, particularly Black women voters. It’s like she’s not one of us.” 

Also not a plus: Harris’ record as a prosecutor is tough on crime—which is a hard sell to a liberal base enraged by the death of George Floyd and other Black victims of police violence.

Point to note: Presidential campaigns are rarely decided on the merits of the VP nominee. At best, Harris’ aim will be to 'first, do no harm'.

Reading list

• LA Times has a lovely read on Harris’ grandfather, PV Gopalan. 
• Vogue ran an in-depth profile on Harris back in 2018 (which tells you something about her star power). Our favourite bits are about her grandmother “who in the 1940s was known for driving through small Indian villages in a Volkswagen Bug, brandishing a bullhorn, and informing women about how to get birth control.”
• Marie Claire profiles her mother Shyamala. Plus: this clip of Harris tearing up as she recalls her mother’s death.
• Also worth your time: Mercury News on Harris’ immigrant childhood. 
• India Abroad has the best reporting on Harris’ Indian mother and grandparents, and her childhood memories of Chennai—including some lovely photos. 
• This Poynter opinion piece analyses why the US media labels her as ‘Black’.
• New York Times explains why Biden picked Harris.
• FiveThirtyEight assesses Harris’ impact on the Democratic ticket.
• This Black commentator in The Lily is just brutal on Harris.