Harris’ rise driven by call to action
From earliest years, her path has tracked the nation’s struggle for racial equality
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Hours before Kamala Harris took the stage for the first time as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick, she received a text message from a childhood classmate with photos from their school days.
In one of the pictures, a racially diverse group of first-graders are gathered in a classroom. Some had taken the bus from their homes across town to join white students from the affluent hillside neighborhoods in Berkeley, California.
A pensive Harris sits on the floor, dutifully looking ahead, a child in the center of an experiment in racial integration.
“That’s how it started. There’s no question!” Harris, 55, texted back to Aaron Peskin, the former classmate who is now a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Fifty years after she was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley’s public schools, Harris is now the first Black woman and first Asian American woman named to a major party presidential ticket.
From her earliest years, Harris’ path toward the second-highest office in the United States has tracked the nation’s struggle for racial equality. The start-and-stop progress and sometimes messy debate have shaped her life, from an upbringing by immigrant parents, a childhood among civil rights activists, a career at the helm of a flawed criminal justice system and her rapid ascent to the top of Democratic politics.
Those experiences forged a politician who is unafraid to buck the political powers that be, but also charts a cautious course through policy debates. As a senator and candidate, she’s emerged as a leader who knows the power of tough questioning and a viral moment, and also the weight of her role as a voice for women of color.
“She’s the right thing at the right time in this country,” said Peskin. “She understands how complicated life is, and what the promises of America are.”
Harris’s political rise, while fast, has not been without criticism and setbacks.
She’s been criticized for shifting policy positions. She faced questions familiar to women in politics, particularly women of color, about her ambition. Republican President Donald Trump labeled her “nasty” for her piercing interrogation of his nominees, including now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Some progressive Democrats, meanwhile, view her work as a prosecutor skeptically, questioning her use of policies they say are discriminatory.
Her own presidential bid, announced before 20,000 people in her hometown of Oakland, California, flamed out before primary season voting began. She struggled to raise money and present a clear vision.
Now she’s back in an election she calls the most consequential of her lifetime.
“My mother Shyamala raised my sister Maya and me to believe that it was up to us and every generation of Americans to keep on marching,” Harris said Wednesday in her first speech after Biden announced his selection. “She’d tell us: Don’t sit around and complain about things. Do something.”
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At Howard University, where Harris graduated without family wealth or high-powered ties, she joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s oldest sorority for Black women. Its network, along with those of eight other Black fraternities and sororities known as the Divine Nine, now offers Harris a powerful base of support.
She’ll also have her sister, Maya, who has been one of her closest advisors, and husband, entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff, who led a band of Harris supporters known as the #Khive during her presidential primary bid. The couple married in 2014, after her friend set them up on a date. His two adult children call her “Momala,” a play on her name and the Yiddish word for “little mother.”
Harris also bolstered her assets with the marriage, according to Senate finance records. She earns $174,000 from the Senate and reported an additional $277,000 in income from book advances in 2019. But their combined net worth, excluding real estate, ranges from $2.8 million to as much as $6.3 million, the records show.
Harris, mindful of her history-making role, on Friday called Biden bold for choosing a Black woman to join him on the ticket.
“I have not achieved anything that I have without the support of many who believed in the possibility of someone who has never been there before,” she said in an interview with the news outlet The 19th.