US elections to take place this Fall have just become more interesting as former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has named California Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice President running mate.
History has been made by selecting the first Half Black and Half Indian woman to compete on a major party's presidential ticket and acknowledging the vital role Black voters will play in his bid to defeat President Donald Trump.
In choosing Harris, Biden is taking on a former opponent from the Democratic primary who after making clear that she did not believe Biden was racist, proceeded to sharply criticize him for having made “very hurtful” comments about having worked with two segregationist senators.
A lot of people want to know who is Kamala Harris. Here are some interesting things about her background.
The California Senator was born in Oakland, California, to two immigrant parents: an Indian-born mother nd Jamaican-born father. After her parent's divorce Harris was raised primarily by her Hindu single mother, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist.
The mother always kept ties with India as they visited the country with their mother but Harri has said that her mother adopted Oakland's African-American culture, immersing her two daughters - Kamala and her younger sister Maya - within it. "My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters," she wrote in her autobiography The Truths We Hold. "She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women."
Her eductation consisted of four years at Howard, Harris pursued her law degree at the University of California, Hastings, and began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office. She became the district attorney - the top prosecutor - for San Francisco in 2003, before being elected the first woman and the first African American to serve as California's attorney general, the top lawyer and law enforcement official in America's most populous state.
In her nearly two terms in office as attorney general, Ms Harris gained a reputation as one of the Democratic party's rising stars, using this momentum to propel her election as California's junior US senator in 2017.
While in the US Senate, Ms Harris has recieved praise for her prosecutorial-style questioning White House aspirations. When she launched her candidacy for president to a crowd of more than 20,000 in Oakland, California, at the beginning of last year, her 2020 bid was met with initial enthusiasm. But the senator failed to present a mandate for her campaign, and gave convuluted answers to questions in key policy areas like healthcare.
She was also unable to bank on the clear high point of her candidacy- debate performances that showed off her prosecutorial skills, often placing Mr Biden in the line of attack.
A California Democrat with a law enforcement background, Ms Harris tried to balance the fine line between the progressive and moderate wings of her party, but ended up impressing neither sides, bringing an end to her candidacy in December before the first Democratic race in Iowa in early 2020.
In March, Ms Harris endorsed the former vice-president, saying she would do "everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States".
Photo courtesy of Flickr.
