Column: ‘I’ve never had an identity crisis’: Kamala Harris on the power of mixed-race California

Hi and welcome to the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. I’m Shelby Grad, deputy managing editor for news, filling in for David Lauter today.

A generational shift

Thirty years ago, the Los Angeles Times polled residents of Orange County about their attitudes on interracial dating and romantic relationships. The poll found young people were highly supportive, with nearly 60% of those ages 18 to 34 saying they had dated someone from another racial or ethnic group.

Orange County was just beginning to shed its image as a conservative white bastion, and the survey underscored big divides between the older generation and the younger.

“My boyfriend is Latino,” a white Fullerton bank teller told the paper. “I haven’t run up against any resistance from my parents, but my grandparents don’t like it.”

Kamala Harris a rally in Oakland in 2019.

(Tony Avelar/AP)

I was a young reporter in the newsroom when the poll came out, and I remember being impressed with the findings. And that sentiment came to represent the way a new generation of Californians defined their experience — with the belief that the mixing of races is not only our strength, but our secret weapon.

Today, nearly 16% of Californians identify as being of two or more races. And that includes the woman who is poised to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

A 78-year-old man’s recent comments questioning Kamala Harris’ multiracial identity could easily be written off as the outdated notion of earlier generations. But it was Donald Trump, and his words had a political purpose.

Trump falsely claimed that Harris “was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn, she became a Black person.”

The news cycle since his comments Wednesday during a session with three reporters at the annual convention of the National Assn. of Black Journalists has thoroughly discredited and dissected his words.

A California childhood

But perhaps it is more instructive to hear in Harris’ own words what it was like to grow up as a mixed-race Californian, born in Oakland to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

“My Indian mother knew she was raising two Black daughters,” Harris told The Times’ Michael Finnegan in 2019. “But that’s not to the exclusion of who I am in terms of my Indian heritage.

“I grew up going to a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple,” she explained.

She described a rich childhood of family visits to India and of Aretha Franklin’s gospel rendition of “Young, Gifted and Black“ as a soundtrack of her youth in a Black middle-class neighborhood in the flats of Berkeley.

A picture of presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2019 in Oakland

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A picture of presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2019 in Oakland

Explaining identity to others

Harris went even deeper during an “Asian Enough” podcast interview with Frank Shyong and Jen Yamato in 2020. She talked about the challenges of explaining your identity to those unfamiliar with it.

“You’re required to explain things about yourself that otherwise you may not be required to explain. And that can be challenging for a number of reasons, including because you know, at that moment, you might prefer that the interview was about your plan for the economy,” she said with a laugh. “But you’re trying to help people figure out who you are even though you’re really comfortable in your own skin.”

Harris said she understood the need for voters — especially those never exposed to the diversity of her California — to get to know her.

“The challenge becomes, then, when you don’t fit in someone’s preconceived notion of who is president of the United States, because their only reference point is who has been president of the United States, and not one of those people looks like you, it presents a challenge,” she told Shyong and Yamato.

But Harris made a point of saying those struggles were never hers.

“I’ve never had an identity crisis,” she said, adding, “The frustration I have is that people think I should have gone through such a crisis and need to explain it.”

And she credited growing up in the Bay Area as one reason for that clear sense of identity : “There was such a cultural mix of people in the community. ... It just wasn’t an issue for me.”

More on Harris and California

Why are Latinos not on the VP list? Gustavo Arrelano asks. (L.A. Times)

Kamala Harris, the foodie (L.A. Times)

Harris keeps bringing in the cash (L.A. Times)

Harris was California’s top cop, but stood on sidelines at this moment (Politico)

Harris as San Francisco district attorney (The Marshall Project)

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Why California’s surge in immigration is lifting our economy
The exodus: Chevron, the oil giant born in California 145 years ago, is moving to Texas
The L.A. Times special: Tired of text spam from political fundraisers? Here’s what to do

Until next time,
Shelby Grad

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