Meet the People Who Inspired Kamala Harris To Step Into Politics, Her Parents
As the first Black female Vice President Kamala Harris makes history, she has been very vocal about her heritage and the support of her family. From her husband, Douglas Emhoff, to her sister Maya Harris, and her stepchildren, Kamala hasn’t been shy about her love for her family and paying homage to her parents. Keep reading to get to know Kamala Harris' parents, Shyamala Gopalan and Donald J. Harris, and how they shaped her.
Kamala Harris is biracial, and her parents were both immigrants
Kamala is biracial, African American and Indian-American. Her parents Shyamala and Donald, who both immigrated to the United States, from India and Jamaica respectively.
Kamala Harris' parents inspired her to get into politics
They were influential in the political path that she chose to follow. “My parents marched and shouted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It’s because of them and the folks who also took to the streets to fight for justice that I am where I am,” Kamala wrote in an Instagram post. “They laid the path for me, as only the second Black woman ever elected to the United States Senate.”
Her mother would have been more than proud: "My mother understood very well she was raising two black daughters," she wrote in her 2018 autobiography,
Shyamala Gopalan and Donald J. Harris first met at University of California Berkeley
Activism and fate brought Shyamala and Donald together. The pair crossed paths at an off campus meeting in 1962 where Donald discussed the parallels between his home, Jamaica, and the United States. Shyamala stayed after to introduce herself. Donald recalled how their relationship progressed after the first meeting in an interview with The New York Times, “At a subsequent meeting, we talked again, and at the one after that. The rest is now history.”
Kamala Harris’ parents divorced when she was seven years old
When Shyamala and Donald separated, Kamala was five years old, and they divorced when she was seven. Their marriage took a hit as Donald took short term teaching positions at two different universities in Illinois. When he was awarded a tenure track position at the University of Wisconsin, Shyamala stayed with the children in Oakland and West Berkeley before eventually moving to Canada. Donald has written in an essay for Jamaica Global Online that his interaction with his children came to an abrupt halt in 1972. He wrote, "after a hard-fought custody battle in the family court of Oakland, California, the context of the relationship was placed within arbitrary limits imposed by a court-ordered divorce settlement based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting (especially in the case of this father, 'a neegroe from da eyelans' was the Yankee stereotype, who might just end up eating his children for breakfast!). Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father.”
Shyamala Gopalan was a prominent breast cancer researcher
As the oldest child in a high achieving Tamil Brahmin family, she always wanted to be a biochemist. But at Lady Irwin College, founded by the British to provide an education in science to Indian women, she was forced to settle for a degree in home science. At 25, she earned her Ph.D. in nutrition and endocrinology at UC Berkeley. Shyamala's work took her to many top research institutions including University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Department of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, as well as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "She made substantial contributions to the field of hormones and breast cancer, publishing her research in countless journals and receiving numerous honors,” according to her obituary.
Kamala Harris’ mom died from cancer
Kamala’s mother passed away February 11, 2009 of colon cancer. “It was one of the worst days of my life,” the Vice President-Elect wrote in a New York Timesopinion piece reflecting on the day she found out her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Kamala posts on social media about her to the extent that she directly cites Shyamala as an inspiration for the presidential run. According to Kamala, her mom was so supportive, that she was even her first campaign staffer.
Related: 100 Inspiring Kamala Harris Quotes and Kamala Harris Debate Quotes
Donald Harris is a professor of economics at Stanford University
While Kamala has often spoken about her mother and sister on social media, there hasn't been much about her father. According to Donald’s bio at Stanford University, he joined the faculty in 1972 after three years as a tenured professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison. At Stanford, he was a leader in developing the new program in Alternative Approaches to Economic Analysis as a field of graduate study. For many years he also taught the popular undergraduate course Theory of Capitalist Development. He took early retirement in 1998 to pursue his long-term interest in "developing public policies to promote economic growth and advance social equity."
Related: Stars Celebrate as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are Declared President Vice President Elect
Donald Harris introduced his daughters to their Jamaican heritage at an early age
In an essay Donald wrote for Jamaica Global Online, he says he showed his daughters, Kamala and Maya, their heritage through frequent visits to Jamaica. He wrote, "One of the most vivid and fondest memories I have of that early period with my children is of the visit we made in 1970 to Orange Hill," he recounted. "We trudged through the cow dung and rusted iron gates, up-hill and down-hill, along narrow unkempt paths, to the very end of the family property, all in my eagerness to show to the girls the terrain over which I had wandered daily for hours as a boy."
Her father was critical of one of Kamala Harris' jokes on the campaign trail
In February 2019, on her presidential campaign trail, Kamala was asked whether she smoked pot when she was young during a radio interview with The Breakfast Club. She joked, "Half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me?" It didn’t go over well with her father. He responded to a Jamaican publication saying,"My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics." However since then, in an email to Politico, Donald said he is staying out of the political spotlight by not engaging in any media interviews.
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