Kamala Harris: Biden's Running Mate?

US Senator Kamala Harris - chosen by Joe Biden as his Democratic vice-presidential candidate - is known as a prominent black politician. But she has also embraced her Indian roots.

"My name is pronounced "comma-la", like the punctuation mark," Kamala Harris writes in her 2018 autobiography, The Truths We Hold.

The California senator, daughter of an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father, then explains the meaning of her Indian name.

"It means 'lotus flower', which is a symbol of significance in Indian culture. A lotus grows underwater, its flowers rising above the surface while the roots are planted firmly in the river bottom."



Early in life, young Kamala and her sister Maya grew up in a house filled with music by black American artists. Her mother would sing along to Aretha Franklin's early gospel, and her jazz-loving father, who taught economics at Stanford University, would play Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane on the turntable.

Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris separated when Ms Harris was five. Raised primarily by her Hindu single mother, a cancer researcher and a civil rights activist, Kamala, Maya and Shyamala were known as "Shyamala and the girls".

Her mother made sure her two daughters were aware of their background.

"My mother understood very well she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident black women," she wrote.

"Harris grew up embracing her Indian culture, but living a proudly African-American life," wrote the Washington Post last year.

http://instagram.com/p/CBRp35ojoax

When she ran for a senate seat in 2015, the Economist magazine described her as the "daughter of an Indian cancer researcher and a Jamaican economics professor, she is the first woman, first African-American and first Asian attorney general of California".

The 55-year-old senator says she has not grappled with her identity and describes herself simply as "an American".

In a video with Indian-American comedian and actress Mindy Kaling, posted to the senator's Youtube page during Ms Harris's presidential run, the two cook Indian food together and chat about their shared south Indian background.

Kaling says that while not everyone knows about that half of Ms Harris's heritage, other Indian-Americans she meets often bring up the fact.

http://instagram.com/p/B9MndAdnoHs

"It's like our thing we're so excited about, to have you running for president," says Kaling.

Kaling asks Ms Harris whether she was raised eating south Indian food.

Ms Harris reels off names of Indian dishes made at home: "Lots of rice and yogurt, potato curry, dal, lots of dal, idli".

She also says when she visited her mother's home in India, her grandfather would cheekily ask for French toast - made with eggs - when her vegetarian grandmother was out (in India, eggs are considered non-vegetarian).