Meet Kamala Harris: Daughter Of Hard-Working Immigrants To The Vice President Of The United States
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If you’ve been living under a rock and not paying attention to the news, the United States of America has just elected a woman as the Vice President for the first time since the inception of the country’s political sphere. She is the first person of color and the first woman to be elected into a position that is notorious for only electing white men. While she was originally aiming for the position of President, she had to back out due to financial constraints. However, Joe Biden announced that he wanted her to be his right-hand woman. In a video she shared online, we can see her taking in her victory when she said, “We did it, we did it Joe. You’re going to be the next President of the United States!” All this success didn’t reach Kamala overnight!. Here’s a look into the life and career of Kamala Harris:
Daughter Of Immigrants
Kamala was born on the 20th of October, 1964 to a South Indian immigrant mother and a Jamaican father. Kamala’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan was a biologist and had moved to the United States from Tamil Nadu at the young age of 19. She got a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley the year that Kamala was born. Kamala’s father, Donald J Harris is a professor at the University of Stanford and was a former Economics student at the University of California, Berkeley and got his PhD in 1966. Kamala’s parents split up when she was seven years old and she divided her time between her father’s house in Palo Alto and her mother’s house in Berkeley.
Life wasn’t easy on Kamala and she was subjected to racism from an early age. When she was young, she used to take the bus to a prestigious school that was trying to practice desegregation. The school at that time had a 95% population of white children and after the desegregation efforts, 40% of the population included black children. Kamala had spoken up about how her and her younger sister, Maya Harris faced discrimination in their father’s predominantly white neighborhood. Other children’s parents stopped their kids from playing with Kamala and Maya due to their Jamaican roots.
Kamala got the chance to explore both her Jamaican heritage as well as her Indian heritage during her childhood and spent a lot of her childhood visiting her mother’s maternal home in Chennai. Kamala’s grandfather, PV Gopalan was a progressive retired Indian civil servant and had a great influence on Kamala’s views towards life. She is still on good terms with her maternal aunts and uncles and her mother’s brother even made plans on visiting the US with the entire family to attend her swearing in ceremony. Kamala has also visited her paternal side of the family in Jamaica (1).
Education And Political Career
Kamala has always pushed for the protection of women’s and minority rights. After finishing off High School, she attended Howard University, which was a predominantly Black university and graduated with a degree in Economics and Political Science. Kamala then decided to pursue a career in law and attended the prestigious University of California, Hastings College of the Law and graduated in 1989. While studying there she was the president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA). She started her career as a district attorney in a county in California called Alameda County.
In February of 1998, Kamala was elected as the Assistant District Attorney in the city of San Francisco and she went on to become the chief of the Career Criminal Division. Kamala was known for being a strict prosecutor and particularly tough on cases of domestic violence, physical assault, robbery, burglary and homicide. Between the years of 2004 to 2011, Kamala was elected into the position of District Attorney in San Francisco (also the first woman of color to reach that position) and she managed to increase the felony conviction rate from 50 percent before she came into power to 76 percent by the year 2009. Kamala has been a huge proponent for LGBTQ rights and has even earned respect from the LGBTQ community after she fought hard to prosecute the murderers of a 17-year-old Latina trans woman in 2006 (2).
Kamala has also pushed for life sentencing rather than the death sentence. While many people in her office were opposed to the decision, she stood firm in her beliefs and pledged not to sentence convicted felons to death. She was also a strong proponent of minority and civil rights. Kamala had led a campaign against “Truancy” which is absenteeism from school. In 2010, she made history as the first woman and first woman of color to be elected into the position of District Attorney of the state of California. She was re-elected in 2014 when she ran for her second term as District Attorney.
Kamala is all set to enter the White House and resume her duties as the Vice President of the United States on 20th January, 2021. It’s incredible to see women break boundaries and hold such a high position of power. We hope for the best for Kamala Harris as she helps President-to-be Joe Biden as he takes control of the White House. What do you think of Kamala’s life story? Please tell us all your thoughts in the comment section below!
