Donald Trump questioned Kamala Harris’ ethnicity on Wednesday, July 31, stating that he was unaware of her African American heritage until a few years ago when she unexpectedly transitioned to it. The fact that Harris is both Indian and Black makes him the likely candidate for the Democratic nomination for president after Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign. Harris is the daughter of parents who immigrated to the United States from India. Her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan Harris, is a cancer researcher who moved to the United States originally from India. Her father, Donald Harris, earned his degree in economics and was born in Jamaica.
Donald Trump, who is 78 years old, made these statements while speaking at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. He stated, “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.” So, I’m not sure, is she of Indian descent or is she of African descent?
By becoming the first woman to assume the position of vice president in 2020, Harris also made history by being the first person of African heritage and the first person of Asian origin to hold the post.
According to the Associated Press, Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, replied to the statements made by President Trump during a news conference immediately after the event. She told reporters, “It’s insulting and no one has any right to tell someone who they are nor how they identify.”
During his campaign, Donald Trump often brought up the topic of race, and he is infamous for promoting the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a mother from the United States and a father from Kenya, responded to inquiries over his origins by presenting his certified short-form birth certificate in 2008 and his validated long-form birth certificate once again in 2011. After that, however, Trump cast doubt on the veracity of those papers, which his detractors saw as a continuation of his bigoted pursuit.
Who is Kamala Harris?
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who was born on October 20, 1964. She is now serving as the 49th Vice President of the United States of America, having held the office since 2021 during the administration of President Joe Biden. She is not only the first African American and the first Asian American to hold the position of vice president, but she is also the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in the history of the United States. As a member of the Democratic Party, she was a senator representing the state of California in the United States Senate from 2017 to 2021. Prior to that, she held the position of attorney general of California. Harris is the presumed candidate of the Democratic Party for the presidency in the election that will take place in 2024. This comes as a result of Joe Biden’s decision to retire from the campaign for the presidency.
Harris received degrees from both Howard University and the University of California College of Law in San Francisco. He was born in Oakland, California. “At the beginning of her legal career, she worked in the office of the district attorney (DA) of Alameda County. Subsequently, she was recruited to work in the office of the San Francisco District Attorney, and then she went on to work in the office of the City Attorney of San Francisco. She won the election for District Attorney of San Francisco in the year 2003. It was in 2010 that she won the election for the position of Attorney General of California, and she won it again in 2014. After defeating Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election, Harris became the second Black woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the United States Senate. She served as the junior senator for the state of California from 2017 to 2021.
Kamala Harris’s Early Life
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20th, 1964 in the city of Oakland, California. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a professor of biology who made significant contributions to the field of breast cancer research via her study on the progesterone receptor gene. It was in 1958 that Shyamala, then 19 years old and a graduate student, made the journey from India to the United States. 1964 was the year that she got her doctoral degree, having completed her studies in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley. Donald J. Harris, Kamala Harris’s father, is an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University. He moved to the United States from Jamaica in 1961 to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his doctorate in economics in 1966. It was in 1962 that Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan first met, and they tied the knot in 1963.
Kamala Harris’s Personal Life
Harris had a relationship with Willie Brown, who was the Speaker of the California Assembly, throughout the 1990s. In the year 2001, Harris was involved in a short romantic connection with Montel Williams, who was a talk show presenter. The person who introduced Harris to Doug Emhoff, the man who would later become her husband, was a mutual acquaintance who arranged for the two of them to go on a blind date in 2013. Emhoff, who was born into a Jewish family, worked as a lawyer in the entertainment industry and eventually earned the position of partner-in-charge in the Los Angeles office of Venable LLP. In Santa Barbara, California, on August 22, 2014, Harris and Emhoff tied the knot and became husband and wife. From his former marriage to the film producer Kerstin Emhoff, Harris is the stepmother of Emhoff’s two children, Cole and Ella. Emhoff is the father of both of these children. According to estimates, Harris and her husband had a combined net worth of $5.8 million as of August 2019.
Kamala Harris’s Net Worth
Kamala Harris’ financial standing has been a topic of interest, especially following her elevation to Vice President. In 2023, Yahoo! Finance estimated her net worth to be between $6.75 million and $15.29 million.
However, her financial disclosure form for 2023 paints a more complex picture, with her net worth fluctuating from -$2,108,952 to $5,839,999. According to Forbes, Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have a net worth of around $8 million, which is an increase from the $7 million that they had in 2021. This number is nearly twenty times the median net worth of people in the United States who are in their age group.
