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Celebrity Ancestry: US Vice President Kamala Harris’s Ethnicity & Parents Heritage: 1.5m Google Her Race History & Mother & Father’s Ethnic Background
US VICE-PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS’s ethnicity and heritage seem hard to place for many who regularly Google queries about her ancestry and parents ethnic background. So what are the facts? By Ben Arogundade. Dec. 15, 2020.
DIVERSITY IN ACTION: US vice-president Kamala Harris, is the subject of much online curiosity about her ethnicity and her parents racial heritage. Is she black? White? Asian? Google records over 1.5 million search queries about her ethnic background and that of her mother and father each year.
IS US VICE-PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS black, white or Asian? These are just some of the questions curious fans ask about her online. Celebrities in general are the focus of intense scrutiny about every aspect of their lives, and Kamala Harris is no exception. Her ethnicity is a particular focus because the aesthetics of her face appear to suggest a combination of Asian and African ancestry.
KAMALA HARRIS RACE HISTORY ONLINE
This has resulted in thousands of Google search queries about the precise details of Kamala Harris’s ethnic background. The search giant records and publishes this data, and it has become a useful guide to the kinds of things that people around the world are thinking about at any given time. For example, the terms, “Kamala Harris ethnicity”, and “Kamala Harris race heritage,” are Googled approximately 10,000 times each per month around the world.
PARENTS ETHNIC BACKGROUND & HERITAGE
Harris’s parents are also the subjects of searches. Kamala Harris’s father and mother are Googled a total of 5,300 times per month globally, while the phrase, “Kamala Harris parents” is searched 100,000 times. If we add up all the search queries relating to Kamala Harris’s ethnic background and family history, it amounts to over 1.5 million monthly queries on this subject alone.
KAMALA HARRIS’S ETHNICITY
So, what are the facts about Kamala Harris’s ethnicity? The California senator was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California. Her parents are immigrants from Jamaica and India, who met as civil rights activists while they were students in 1960s America. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, (who died in 2009), was South Asian, from Tamil Nadu in Southern India. She was a cancer researcher. Her father, Donald Harris, is a retired Stanford University economics professor who was born in Jamaica. The couple divorced when Kamala was young, after which she was raised largely by her mother.
ETHNICITY IN INDIA
South Asians have been quick to celebrate Kamala Harris’s ethnicity and her mother’s ancestry following last November’s US election victory by Democrat Joe Biden. In the village of Thulasendrapuram, 200 miles from Chennai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India, locals chanted, “Long live Kamala”. Harris’s maternal grandfather was born in the village. Crowds gathered to watch the US inauguration on large TV screens, while others urged her to come back and visit her ancestral home.
HERITAGE & HISTORY REMIXED
Kamala Harris joins the ranks of other ethnically ambiguous celebrities such as Jennifer Beals, Rosario Dawson, and Halle Berry, all of whom have also navigated the furrow between the different aspects of their ancestry. The biographies of these celebrities have become crucial reference points for America's new generation of young bi-racials seeking answers to questions about identity.
