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| Why Kamala Harris Matters to Me | Why Kamala Harris Matters to Me |
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| When I arrived in the United States in 1984, an Indian graduate student wanting to study African-American history, I was an anomaly. Most of my fellow South Asians were in STEM doctoral programs. During the Reagan years, I supported the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and the Democratic Socialists of America in their attempt to push the Democratic Party and the United States to the left. Still, I could have ill-imagined that one day an African-American man would become the president or that a woman of Jamaican and Indian descent would be a candidate for the vice presidency. | |
| After graduation, I interviewed across the country for positions in early American history. I was asked over and over again why, as an Indian woman, I chose to study the history of slavery and the Civil War. Usually, I described the connections between Mahatma Gandhi’s notion of satyagraha, the struggle for truth, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s version of nonviolent resistance. The one interview where no one asked me that question was for a position in African-American Studies. I took that job. | After graduation, I interviewed across the country for positions in early American history. I was asked over and over again why, as an Indian woman, I chose to study the history of slavery and the Civil War. Usually, I described the connections between Mahatma Gandhi’s notion of satyagraha, the struggle for truth, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s version of nonviolent resistance. The one interview where no one asked me that question was for a position in African-American Studies. I took that job. |
| Black Americans do not need to be told about the long relationship between the Black struggle for freedom and decolonization in Asia and Africa. As the Rev. James Lawson, the leading civil rights strategist of nonviolence, now 91, said at the funeral of Representative John Lewis, whom he mentored in Nashville, the civil rights movement was really “the nonviolent movement of America.” Reverend Lawson and his fellow activists set out to demonstrate, as he put it, “the efficacy of satyagraha, of soul force, of love truth, that we would have to do it in Nashville. And so I planned, as the strategist and organizer, a four-point Gandhian strategic program to create the campaign.” Nonviolent protest, personified by Gandhi and Dr. King, has deep roots in the abolition movement, specifically the pacifist ideas of William Lloyd Garrison and Henry David Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience.” They influenced Leo Tolstoy, who in turn influenced Gandhi. What goes around comes around. | Black Americans do not need to be told about the long relationship between the Black struggle for freedom and decolonization in Asia and Africa. As the Rev. James Lawson, the leading civil rights strategist of nonviolence, now 91, said at the funeral of Representative John Lewis, whom he mentored in Nashville, the civil rights movement was really “the nonviolent movement of America.” Reverend Lawson and his fellow activists set out to demonstrate, as he put it, “the efficacy of satyagraha, of soul force, of love truth, that we would have to do it in Nashville. And so I planned, as the strategist and organizer, a four-point Gandhian strategic program to create the campaign.” Nonviolent protest, personified by Gandhi and Dr. King, has deep roots in the abolition movement, specifically the pacifist ideas of William Lloyd Garrison and Henry David Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience.” They influenced Leo Tolstoy, who in turn influenced Gandhi. What goes around comes around. |
| When Barack Obama became president, I also stopped explaining my name to strangers. When asked which historical figure living or dead he would like to have dinner with, Mr. Obama said, “You know, I think it might be Gandhi, who is a real hero of mine.” I, like millions of Americans, especially African-Americans, immigrants and other people of color, felt, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, that “we were eight years in power.” After the shock of Mr. Trump’s ascendance, the rise to national prominence of Kamala Harris, only the second Black woman to be elected to the Senate, has been therapeutic for me. | When Barack Obama became president, I also stopped explaining my name to strangers. When asked which historical figure living or dead he would like to have dinner with, Mr. Obama said, “You know, I think it might be Gandhi, who is a real hero of mine.” I, like millions of Americans, especially African-Americans, immigrants and other people of color, felt, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, that “we were eight years in power.” After the shock of Mr. Trump’s ascendance, the rise to national prominence of Kamala Harris, only the second Black woman to be elected to the Senate, has been therapeutic for me. |
| Despite well-deserved criticism from the left of some of their policies, Mr. Obama and Ms. Harris represent the cosmopolitan, interracial democracy that a majority of Americans aspire to live in today. Ms. Harris brings charisma and balance to the Democratic Presidential ticket, much like Joe Biden balanced Mr. Obama’s. Given her roots, Ms. Harris is also an appropriate riposte to Mr. Trump. Her record as California’s attorney general was on the whole progressive, despite serious missteps. She is well qualified to course correct when it comes to her own record and deal with the problems of police brutality and systemic racial inequality highlighted by the Movement for Black Lives. Her Indian background will also appeal to many Indian-American immigrants like me, if not to those who tend to be conservative and even racist in their views. As Preet Bharara, the Indian-American former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York tweeted, “The most excited person I talked to today was my mom. Because she cannot wait to vote for Vice President Kamala Devi Harris.” | Despite well-deserved criticism from the left of some of their policies, Mr. Obama and Ms. Harris represent the cosmopolitan, interracial democracy that a majority of Americans aspire to live in today. Ms. Harris brings charisma and balance to the Democratic Presidential ticket, much like Joe Biden balanced Mr. Obama’s. Given her roots, Ms. Harris is also an appropriate riposte to Mr. Trump. Her record as California’s attorney general was on the whole progressive, despite serious missteps. She is well qualified to course correct when it comes to her own record and deal with the problems of police brutality and systemic racial inequality highlighted by the Movement for Black Lives. Her Indian background will also appeal to many Indian-American immigrants like me, if not to those who tend to be conservative and even racist in their views. As Preet Bharara, the Indian-American former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York tweeted, “The most excited person I talked to today was my mom. Because she cannot wait to vote for Vice President Kamala Devi Harris.” |
| There have of course been many Indian-American politicians elected to office. One of the first was Judge Dilip Singh Saund, also from California, elected to Congress in 1956. Judge Saund’s election was a fitting conclusion to the infamous 1923 Bhagat Singh Thind case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Indians were not eligible for American citizenship. That decision led to the denaturalization of around 50 Indian-Americans. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, a direct result of the civil rights movement, abolished national quotas for immigration that gave preference to northern Europeans. In voicing a preference for immigrants from Norway, in 2018, Mr. Trump was harkening back to the immigration regime before its passage. | There have of course been many Indian-American politicians elected to office. One of the first was Judge Dilip Singh Saund, also from California, elected to Congress in 1956. Judge Saund’s election was a fitting conclusion to the infamous 1923 Bhagat Singh Thind case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Indians were not eligible for American citizenship. That decision led to the denaturalization of around 50 Indian-Americans. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, a direct result of the civil rights movement, abolished national quotas for immigration that gave preference to northern Europeans. In voicing a preference for immigrants from Norway, in 2018, Mr. Trump was harkening back to the immigration regime before its passage. |
| The 1965 law resulted in a flood of South Asian immigrants to the United States. Since then, many have been elected to office. Recently, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina were governors with presidential aspirations. But I felt no pleasure at seeing their rise, as they adopted the talking points of the Republican Party, small government, economic retrenchment and states' rights, which hurt their poor white and Black constituents in particular. | The 1965 law resulted in a flood of South Asian immigrants to the United States. Since then, many have been elected to office. Recently, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina were governors with presidential aspirations. But I felt no pleasure at seeing their rise, as they adopted the talking points of the Republican Party, small government, economic retrenchment and states' rights, which hurt their poor white and Black constituents in particular. |
| Among Democrats, the emergence of politicians of Indian descent like Representatives Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal and Raja Krishnamoorthi has been far more exciting, at least to me. All were elected, like Ms. Harris, in 2016, an important ripple effect of the Obama presidency. They all had the audacity to hope. After an exciting start, Ms. Harris’s campaign came to a grinding halt before the major caucuses and primaries. But her historic run, following in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman from a major party to run for the presidency, was undeniable. Ms. Harris was not just another Indian-American politician running for office; as a woman of Afro-Indian descent, she appeals to me despite my own politics being more to the left. Moreover, Black women, many of whom could not vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, have since proven to be the most progressive voting bloc in American politics and the backbone of the Democratic Party. | |
| Like most Democrats, I support Joe Biden because the country can ill afford the continuation of the “American carnage” that Mr. Trump ironically claimed he would end in his Inaugural Address. Mr. Biden’s big tent policy, his adoption of progressive policies championed by his opponents, and his promise to select a woman candidate for the vice presidency, sealed the deal for me. Mr. Biden had the luck to choose from an array of talented women. His decision to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate seems like a personal gift to me. Not only does she represent the very groups mocked and vilified by Mr. Trump: women, Black people and immigrants, but also, as a woman of Afro-Indian descent she might well be the future face of American politics. | Like most Democrats, I support Joe Biden because the country can ill afford the continuation of the “American carnage” that Mr. Trump ironically claimed he would end in his Inaugural Address. Mr. Biden’s big tent policy, his adoption of progressive policies championed by his opponents, and his promise to select a woman candidate for the vice presidency, sealed the deal for me. Mr. Biden had the luck to choose from an array of talented women. His decision to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate seems like a personal gift to me. Not only does she represent the very groups mocked and vilified by Mr. Trump: women, Black people and immigrants, but also, as a woman of Afro-Indian descent she might well be the future face of American politics. |
| Manisha Sinha (@ProfMSinha), a professor of history at the University of Connecticut, is the author of “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.” | Manisha Sinha (@ProfMSinha), a professor of history at the University of Connecticut, is the author of “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.” |
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