Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at size about her mom, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, throughout her speech on the ultimate day of the 2024 Democratic Nationwide Conference the place she formally accepted the Democratic nomination for president.
She defined how her mom, a “five-foot-tall brown lady with an accent” who got here to the U.S. from India at age 19, taught her and her sister, Maya, to “do one thing” about injustice.
Harris additionally talked about her father, Donald Harris, in her speech, recalling nice early childhood recollections.
“On the park, my mom would say, “Keep shut.” However my father would say, as he smiled, “Run, Kamala, run. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let something cease you.” From my earliest years, he taught me to be fearless,” she stated.
However when Harris was in elementary faculty, she stated, her dad and mom cut up up.
Signal-up for Your Vote: Textual content with the USA TODAY elections group.
“It was principally my mom who raised us,” she stated.
In accordance with Harris’ 2019 memoir, Donald Harris continued to see his daughters in the course of the weekend and summer time.
Who’s Donald Harris, Kamala Harris’ father?
Donald Harris is a post-keynesian economist who has written on Marxist principle. He’s a retired Stanford College professor who has served as an financial advisor to his residence nation of Jamaica. He additionally taught on the College of Wisconsin-Madison.
In her speech, Harris described her father as a “scholar from Jamaica” when he and her mom met.
Born in Jamaica, Donald Harris immigrated to the US to finish a doctorate diploma on the College of California, Berkeley. That’s the place he met Shyamala, who was pursuing a level in biochemistry there.
Was Kamala Harris’ father on the DNC?
Donald is Harris’ solely residing mum or dad. Shyamala died of colon most cancers in 2009.
However he was absent from the Democratic conference this week, as he has largely been from his daughter’s political life on the whole. He hasn’t weighed in on her political profession since 2019, when he criticized a remark she made about whether or not she’s smoked marijuana earlier than.
“Half my household’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” Harris had stated.
Donald Harris responded in a press release to Jamaica International On-line, saying that his grandmothers and fogeys “have to be turning of their grave proper now” to see their Jamaican identification being linked to “the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking pleasure seeker.”
Harris’ marketing campaign didn’t situation a response on the time.
Doug Emhoff, Maya Harris; Kamala Harris’ household on the DNC
Whereas Donald Harris did not seem on the Democratic conference, many different members of Harris’ household had been there.
They included her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, her sister Maya Harris, her stepchildren Ella and Cole Emhoff, and nieces and nephews Meena Harris, Alexander Hudlin, Jasper Emhoff, and Arden Emhoff.
Maia Pandey of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
