About a week ago I posted a personal commentary about Indian Americans in America, one of whom happens to be none other than Vice President Kamala Harris . Oddly, I had not anticipated that she would so suddenly be transformed from her supporting role in President Biden’s re-election campaign to become the Democratic candidate for President of the United States herself! Here are some follow-up reflections on what this means to me in my personal attachment to the Indian-American community in the US. And I look forward to being actively involved in supporting her candidacy.
The fact that Kamala Harris has both an Indian ancestry by way of her mother and a black ancestry by way of her father is illustrative of the American idea of a melting pot. The phrase, to be sure, is a cliché that has become somewhat disreputable for its implication that everyone who comes to the US from elsewhere is expected to become Americanized. I do recall my parents describing how important it was for them, the children of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants, to distinguish themselves as truly American, including by speaking English even within the family – and to speak it with an American accent. And, of course, they deliberately did not encourage their own children to learn or speak Norwegian or Swedish.
The alternative phrasing today is to capture the American-ness of the diversity of immigrant populations by describing it as a mosaic or a salad bowl, rather than a melting pot. Of course, the implication is that each ethnic group has a distinct heritage that he or she brings to that mosaic. That is, each person is identified with his or her distinct grouping – a politics of identity, as it were – rather than a single “melted-into-one” American identity. This different perspective also allows for lots of different “identity” groups to come into being – while also retaining the notion that we are all part of the multi-sectored American identity (as in a mosaic or salad bowl that includes all of the pieces within the whole).
What I find especially appealing about Kamala Harris is that she has two distinct cultural links within her own identity. She is Indian-American, yes, but she is also black American. In fact, the black part of her identity appears to have been more significant in her upbringing than her Indian part (although both do seem to have played a role) because her mother chose to raise her in a predominantly black neighborhood. And while she was bussed from that black neighborhood to a predominantly white high school, she then chose to do her undergraduate studies at the predominantly black Howard University. Her father came from Jamaica, and I suppose there is a Jamaican-American part to her identity as a result. But it isn’t so much that she is identified today as Jamaican-American as it is that she is identified as a “home-grown”, if you will, black American.
Nonetheless, the key is that she is both Indian-American and black-American. And it is this mix of “more than one” identity that is increasingly relevant to our understanding of what it means to be an American. Nobody likes to talk about a melting pot anymore. But I think there is more to the American-ness of multi-cultural diversity in the US than distinct cultural identities mixing together in a salad. I am heartened, in this regard, that since 2000 the US Census has been giving people the option to self-identify with more than one racial category. Kamala Harris’s challenge – in contrast to the MAGA mentality of her opponent – is to show how American values and American culture are inclusive of this variety. And I am confident that she has the capacity to attract the support from across America that will make for a truly inclusive Presidency.
