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“I am who I am,” he said Kamala harris last year when the Washington Post asked him if he had struggled with racial introspection because of his dual heritage. “You may have to find out, but I’m fine,” he told the reporter.
The sharpness of her response was perhaps a consequence of a lifetime of questions like “but what exactly are you?” And the vice president-elect’s response reveals an unwillingness to be placed in someone else’s box. In short, Harris’s racial identity is not his problem.
Among the many “firsts” associated with her appointment as vice president is that she has become the first biracial incumbent of the position. And unlike most people of dual inheritance in the United States (as well as the United Kingdom), both parents come from minority communities.
Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, traveled from India in 1958 to study at the University of California in hopes of finding a cure for cancer. It was on the Berkeley campus that he met Donald Harris, another foreign student who had moved from Jamaica to study economics. They shared a passion for politics and both were drawn to the civil rights movement. They had been raised in different cultures, but both perspectives had been shaped by British colonial rule.
Today, Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Harris. He tweeted: “His success is groundbreaking and a matter of immense pride not only for his chittis [a Tamil word for aunts], but also for all Indian Americans. “Of course, Andrew Holness, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, also celebrated his election” … we are proud that he has Jamaican heritage, “he tweeted.
So how do you define yourself? Afro-American? American Indian? Well, mainly as “American”, of course. But on the first page of her book The Truths We Hold, the ‘About the Author’ section, Harris is described as “black”, the “second black woman elected to the United States Senate …”. She wrote: “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters.” She adds that she was “raised with a great awareness and appreciation for Indian culture.”
Racial identity is too often defined by other people. It is formed not only by genetics, but also by socialization; it is a mix of nature, nurture and choice. It’s always complex, but for mixed-race people it’s often dynamic too. And the nuances of lived experiences that get overlooked can disappear completely with forceful descriptions.
A study conducted by three American psychologists in 2013 identified an apparent tendency to “change race” among people of dual inheritance, “identifying” and “disidentifying” with different parts of their racial identity as a coping mechanism. But the research focused on people of mixed white and minority descent, as is often the case in conversations about mixed races. Harris’s dual heritage is different.
My parents are also from India and Jamaica, so I share what is a rare racial mix in Europe and America. I’m familiar with some of the questions Vice President-elect Harris has almost certainly had to reject: “Does it make you feel more ethnic?” or “do you feel more Indian or more Jamaican?” For me, the absence of white heritage creates endless intrigue among other people and places my feet outside of the dominant racial group. It almost certainly shapes and confuses the way some people perceive me. I am often encouraged by strangers to select a culture to facilitate understanding, as if I were queuing at a buffet.
In June, Harris told the New York Times: “I’m really sick of having to explain my experiences with racism to people so they understand that it exists.” But of course, you will be asked and asked again. And you will be asked to choose a label to help other people apply a set of preconceptions about who she is.
Black? Indian? Jamaican? Antillean? American? For the vice president-elect, she is all of those things. It is not that complicated.
