By NAN EDITORIAL TEAM
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. August 2, 2024: The so-called mainstream media and their biased commentators are at it again as US Vice-President, Kamala D. Harris, is now the de facto Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. They chose to ignore largely that Donald J. Harris is the father of Kamala D. Harris.
The facts are clear – Harris is a daughter of a black Jamaican/Caribbean man, and an Indian/Asian woman, both of whom are immigrants to the US, got married and conceived her. This makes her a Caribbean-Asian American – if you are to follow the facts exactly. That also makes her Jamaican and Indian American, and ethnically, Black and Asian. Those are the facts. Much like Barack Obama is factually African American because his father was born in Africa and his mother in America.
But somehow, the majority of mainstream media refuse to report those facts, even though they claim to pride themselves on their adherence to truth and the reporting of facts. They are content to report that she is the first Black and Indian American and first woman to ascend to the second highest office in the land. They are also thrilled to report all, about how Indians are celebrating – from art work, to pujas to sand castles. But hardly a peep about her Caribbean or Jamaican heritage and the fact that millions of Caribbean people are celebrating her too as evidenced by a global celebration in her honor on January 17, 2021 that was purposely ignored by the AP.
It’s almost as if Harris is an immaculate conception, conceived only by her Indian mother. So where did the black come from into the equation? Was it from the Holy Ghost? How is she Black if she is not Jamaican or Caribbean?
Kamala Harris Heritage
Kamala Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris was not born in America so therefore he is not African American. He was born in Jamaica in the Caribbean and simply migrated to the US. Donald J. Harris, is the son of Beryl Christie and Oscar Joseph Harris, who were of Afro-Jamaican heritage, aka BLACK!
Donald J. Harris is not a dead beat, to be simply dismissed and ignored. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University and was a professor when Kamala Harris was merely two years old. His PhD was secured from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. But don’t hold your breath to hear those facts.
Of course, the other fact is that the mainstream media is happily taking its cue from Kamala Harris,who as the current vice-president of the United States, is content to claim she is “Black” and Indian American, but not so happy on a national or global arena to also say the other fact – that she is Caribbean American and Jamaican American.
She was politically savvy enough during her campaign with Joe Biden in 2020, to speak to it when speaking to a Caribbean or Jamaican audience, but not at any national scale. When she sought the votes of Jamaican and Caribbean immigrants in Florida, she was only too happy to tell Caribbean radio hosts all about her love of Bob Marley, oxtail and scotch bonnet.
But when asked about oxtail then by Joy Reid on her MSNBC show, she deftly ignored the question, choosing instead to speak about her Shabbat with her husband and the Indian dishes from her mother she makes.
We all get that divorce creates angst and a lot of tension in children, who can resent one parent in the equation and that part of their heritage. But the facts are that Harris’ meteoric rise is mainly due to her Black ethnic identity and that Blackness came from her Caribbean/Jamaican father. Harris is also a grown 59-year-old woman who needs to deal with those personal bitterness and pain privately, now she is one of the most powerful women in the world and could be more powerful if she becomes President of the United States by a miracle.
On Sunday night, January 17, 2021, a global Caribbean inauguration celebration in her honor, featured several top Caribbean American and Caribbean leaders. This included the Prime Minister of Jamaica, from her father’s homeland, and entertainers who celebrated her in song. Harris, in remarks by video, barely acknowledged she has “roots in the Caribbean,” without any specific reference to Jamaica. Neither did she acknowledge her ancestral home, India. And she kept it general, speaking to “Caribbean American” voters.
As was the case when she accepted the vice-presidential nomination and when the ticket was declared the winner, when she was introduced by Senator Amy Jean Klobuchar on January 20, 2021, to take the oath of Vice President, she was introduced again as a Black and Indian American woman. And so the mainstream media, with its usual disrespect of the Caribbean and Caribbean Americans, is only too happy to continue spreading the fake news again!
Whatever VP Kamala Harris’ personal feelings and issues are with her father that has made her extremely uncomfortable with claiming Caribbean and Jamaican heritage, should not negate the facts and the reporting of them.
Kamala Harris is black because of her Caribbean-born father, Donald J. Harris. Those are the facts. She also chooses to carry the Afro-Jamaican name of her father and not of her husband or her mother.
The other absolute fact is that she was only chosen by Joe Biden as his running mate because of her Blackness, and not in anyway because she is Indian-American.
It is the only reason why the ticket was able to beat Donald Trump and send him packing – because Caribbean born voters in many key states swung it over for the ticket. They are the emerging bloc – the Black foreign-born voters who are fast becoming a swing voting bloc.
And Kamala Harris is tapping into that Blackness and Black voters again to help her win over Donald Trump in November. Many of those black voters are immigrants from the Caribbean. Her blackness runs straight to the Caribbean and to Jamaica. The mainstream media, and VP Harris especially, would do well to remember those facts – particularly if she really wants to win on November 5th and become President of these United States.
