The Lesser-Known Side of Harris’s Identity: Asian American

July 28, 2024

By Amy Qin

Ms. Harris, the vice president and likely Democratic nominee for president, is known widely as the first Black woman to be elected vice president.

But Ms. Harris, whose mother emigrated from India and whose father emigrated from Jamaica, is less known as an Indian American and Asian American. Asked to name a famous Asian American, only 2 percent of Americans said Kamala Harris, according to a
recent survey by The Asian American Foundation.

Ms. Harris does not shy away from talking about her Indian heritage and Asian American identity. She speaks often about the strong influence her Indian mother and grandfather had on her life. When she has addressed gatherings of Asian American leaders as vice president, she has often spoken in terms of “we” and “us” and referred to herself as a “member of the community.”

As a freshman senator, Ms. Harris, who assumed that role in 2017, was a member of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus. She has been a high-profile surrogate for the Biden administration to Asian Americans, hosting Diwali and Lunar New Year celebrations and even an Asian-themed night market at her residence in Washington.

Ms. Harris has long chafed at questions about her racial identity, arguing that she has always been comfortable with and proud of her background.

“I’ve never had an identity crisis,” Ms. Harris told the hosts of The Los Angeles Times’s podcast “Asian Enough” in 2020. “I guess the frustration I have is that people think I should have gone through such a crisis and need to explain it, but I didn’t.”

That Ms. Harris is not widely seen as an Asian American reveals the shifting boundaries of race in America, where the number of multiracial Americans continues to grow and where the big-tent Asian American racial identity is only adopted by some Americans of ethnic Asian descent.

Asian American civil rights leaders say that as vice president, Ms. Harris made it a point to ensure that Asian American voices were included in conversations around important issues like voting rights.

John C. Yang, the president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an advocacy group in Washington, recalled that in his meetings with Ms. Harris, she talked often about ensuring language access for Asian Americans on ballots. Ms. Harris has previously spoken about the discrimination her immigrant mother faced for speaking English with a heavy accent.

Some who do not see Ms. Harris as primarily Asian American said the nevertheless felt an affinity with her because of a shared experience of being a child of immigrants — or just feeling like an outsider trying to decipher mainstream American society.

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