Photo Credit: Emily Elconin / Bloomberg via Getty Images (found on Vox News website)
Kamala Harris’s victory as the first South Asian, Black, and female vice president was hailed as a historic moment, signaling a new era of progress for women and minorities in American politics. But as the 2024 election approached, many who once saw her as a beacon of hope found themselves questioning whether representation alone is enough to fulfill the promises of justice and equality.
Wearing a mask as a precaution against the ongoing pandemic, clad in a white suit with a beaming smile on her face, flags waving back and forth enthusiastically as supporters honked their cars in excitement, thousands of voters welcomed Kamala Harris, the nation’s first South Asian, Black, and female Vice President, with open arms. The day was Nov. 7, 2020, when many felt that the tide of American history was changing as a woman finally secured the second-highest position in office. The Biden-Harris administration had achieved victory with approximately 51.3% of the popular vote. From the moment the race was called, hundreds of supporters took to X to express their pride, excitement, and hope. They were confident in the country’s evolvement within the next four years, and what this presidency, overall, would mean for all minorities who have been struggling, for centuries, to be seen and heard.
“When Kamala Harris was first elected I was excited,” said Aliha Zaidi, a South Asian and Muslim woman. “I think the combination of Trump being defeated and a woman finally being in a significant position in the office was a super historic event and it just so happened to be my first election I was old enough to vote in. Her representation was a win for women and minorities everywhere in this country whether they were Kamala supporters or not.”
“Crying and holding my daughter, ‘look baby, she looks like us,’”; “I’ve been telling my daughters they can be whatever they want when they grow up. Today, I believe it!”; “How amazing it is that we have a Black Desi woman as VP? To all the Black and South Asian girls out there: YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!” These were some of the tweets that emerged on that historic day. Communities breathed a sigh of relief as they were confident Harris would make this country stronger for future generations. Women of color across the nation finally felt that Harris as Vice President would change the course of history because of her background, upbringing, and determination to pave the way for more women to assume leadership.
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,” said Harris during her victory speech. She also highlighted that her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was only 19, “could not have imagined this moment.”
Four years later, Harris was determined to take U.S. History by storm once again as she raced against president-elect Donald Trump, however the outcome was one that changed the nation altogether. After a day of vote tallying, high anticipation, and shaky support, Trump became the 47th president of the United States: Harris lost the election. Passionate supporters who were seated, waiting for hours to see the results of the election and hoping for a dazzling victory speech, were instead left in tears, frustration, anger, and disbelief as the realization of what would happen within the next four years dawned on them. Democrats returned home with heavy hearts, dejected and sorrowful that they had failed their candidate and lost the chance to see a qualified woman lead the country.
Some South Asian and Muslim women like Noor Shirazi, have made the decision to not support Harris if she ever runs for re-election in 2028. “I do not plan on supporting Harris,” Shirazi said. “I already do not support her, and since 2020, I’ve learned that most of her policy is hollow. She presents an encompassing Democratic agenda, but there is no meat to her policy and that makes her ingenuine to me.”
According to AAPI Data, “Well over a third of Asian American voters (38%) [said] that Harris’s identity as a woman [was] ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ to them, with significantly smaller proportions indicating the same about her racial identities as Indian/South Asian (25%) and as an African American (24%) or about her age (25%).” The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also highlighted that, “Sixty-one percent of registered Indian American voter respondents [planned] to vote for Harris while 32 percent [intended] to vote for Trump.” During the 2020 presidential election, the percentage of voters for the Biden-Harris administration were higher with 68 percent of voters intending to vote for this campaign, and 22 percent of voters intending to vote for Donald Trump’s campaign.
According to Shirazi, however, Harris’s South Asian identity had no impact on whether or not she voted for this candidate in the 2020 and 2024 election. “I spent my college career learning about realpolitik and have a clear understanding of the fact that when it comes to power, people in general rarely make moves based on their ethnicity,” Shirazi explained. “I was more interested in her platform and what her history in policymaking has been like.”
Despite the expected votes from these communities, one night completely redefined what representation and identity meant to voters.
“Representation to me means advocacy,” Zaidi said. “If I am looking to someone to lead, they should listen to what their followers are saying and they should fight for them.”
For others, representation meant understanding.
“To me, representation means understanding,” Shirazi said. “To be represented is to be understood and to represent is to understand. Truly figure out what the belief system and the values are of those being represented.”
In just one night, the American people pointed out the importance of showcasing your representation through actions and decisions that align with the values of their communities is what makes this country worthy of pride and patriotism. On the night Harris became vice president to the night she lost the presidential election, the pride and joy people felt quickly turned into “you got exactly what you deserved” as their disdain and disillusionment grew from Harris’s true intentions.
“Goodbye Kamala Harris and Fuck you. Sincerely, Children of Gaza”; “Kamala Harris whenever she was asked about the ongoing Gaza genocide she vowed to unconventionally fund: ‘Israel has the right to defend itself. October 7 was horrific. Women were RAPED. RAPE. RAPE. RAPE. RAPE RAPE RAPE. Oh yeah and Palestinians are human too I guess. Bye scumbag’”; “Harris wanted to continue the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon more than she wanted to help America. It’s her fault, and the Democrats, for losing.” These were some of the tweets that emerged as Harris spent election night without uttering a single word to her supporters.
“I am not surprised by Harris’s stance. It is almost impossible in America in this time to be supported by players in national politics without having the stance that she does,” Shirazi said. “I am disgusted by the fact that she cares about getting that support, and am appalled that a candidate from a party who claims to care about “humanity” on some issues draws the line at genocide. It doesn’t, however, change my view of her as a representative because I never viewed her as an advocate of the [South Asian and Muslim] communities in the first place.”
Yet, while this election may be more historic than the last, and while many feel empowered that their ethnicity is being represented in politics, some South Asians disagree, chose not to cast their votes for Harris on their ballots. Over time, the excitement over representation has slowly faded into distrust and skepticism as South Asian women have closely observed Harris since 2020, and within the last year. They hoped that she would establish policies that would benefit future generations domestically and internationally; however, as her policies and views have unfolded, some supporters feel deeply disappointed.
“Today, she is the same realpolitik centered candidate to me as she was four years ago. She will say and do whatever she needs in order to achieve her goal,” Shirazi said.
Discussions that once focused on pride in her identity now have hints of criticism, especially surrounding one of the most important current events — the genocide in Palestine. This shift poses a serious question: does representation even matter if a candidate’s actions don’t truly support the people?
“I do not think representation alone is enough,” Zaidi emphasized. “Representation runs deeper than your identity as a minority. To be able to represent a group means that you can understand the issues or at least attempt to listen and communicate with that community.”
The Rise of Kamala Harris into the World of Politics
Harris was raised in Oakland, California, with her younger sister Maya. Her mother was a breast cancer scientist who obtained her PhD the same year that Harris was born. Although her parents split at an early age, Harris’s mother made sure that her daughters remained firm in their South Asian roots, frequently taking them to visit their home in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. While sharing a photo of her grandparents on X, Harris tweeted, “As a young girl visiting my grandparents in India, my grandfather took me on his morning walks, where he would discuss the importance of fighting for equality and fighting corruption. He was a retired civil servant who had been part of the movement to win India’s independence.” On the other hand, Harris’ maternal grandmother was also a woman of great impact in public service. “My grandmother traveled across India-bullhorn in hand-to speak with women about accessing birth control.” She fondly reminisced about them on National Grandparents Day in September. They were her models of resilience and determination.
This influence of public service led Harris to pursue higher education at Howard University, where she earned her degree in political science and economics. At Howard University, Harris was involved in several extracurricular activities, including the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., a student group part of the “Divine Nine” group of fraternities and sororities founded by Black students. These academic strides she made led her to pursue a law degree from the University of California, kicking Harris’s career off to a strong start.
Her journey in law began as the District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco. After two terms, she became California’s first woman and Black/South Asian Attorney General. It is during her time as California’s Attorney General that Harris would face scrutiny and a series of challenging cases that would showcase where she stands on some of the nation’s most pressing issues. According to The Marshall Project, one of the first cases Harris had to work on was after a “man shot and killed police officer Isaac Espinoza in 2004.” The man was to face a death sentence; however, Harris “had campaigned against capital punishment and rejected calls by police groups, the officer’s family and prominent Democratic officials.” Because of this, tension began to grow between Harris and police groups, but she quickly repaired those relationships during her reelection campaign. Harris argued that the death penalty was unconstitutional, which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
According to a CNN report, however, just four years after becoming the state’s district attorney, “Harris pushed aside her long-held opposition to capital punishment when she announced plans to run for attorney general of California. She vowed that, if elected, she would ‘enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.’” During her tenure as attorney general, here is where her more controversial policies surfaced after Harris gave instructions to charge the parents of students in San Francisco schools after their children would repeatedly miss elementary classes. “We owe every child an education and we owe ourselves the additional inoculation against violence and crime that fighting truancy can bring,” Harris defended her stance in her book, Smart on Crime. In July, a campaign aide applauded Harris’ efforts because it dropped truancy by 33%, “and it also helped people in the community-this wasn’t one or two days; this was kids missing 60 to 80 days out of a 180-day school year.”
But to some parents, this excessive force seemed like they were convicted of a crime far more sinister than it was. In April 2013, a Black woman, Cheree Peoples, was arrested after her daughter, Shayla, missed several days of school. Shayla was suffering from sickle cell anemia, an illness bringing immense and chronic pain, making her normal daily routine nearly impossible. As a result, Shayla was not able to attend school, and the school was in a dispute on how to provide accommodations for Shayla. On the day of her arrest, police showed up at Peoples’s apartment in Orange County where she was put into handcuffs and brought outside where cameras were already waiting. “You’d swear I’d killed somebody,” recalled Peoples of the horrifying day. Although Harris admitted to regretting the outcome of a few cases, she emphasized that she is aware the decisions of prosecutors can change a person’s life for better or for worse.
After her term as Attorney General, Harris spent four years as a senator. According to NPR, “She doesn’t have a long list of passed legislation, but she’s known for aggressive questioning of witnesses.” In contrast to her controversial policies and tough approaches to dealing with crime, Harris spent most of her time in the Senate attempting to reform the justice system. Upon entry into her role, she spoke on the DREAM Act which would allow citizenship to those undocumented immigrants who entered this country as children. Harris also advocated strongly for the underrepresented and oppressed Black communities by becoming the main sponsor of a bill that would make lynching a federal crime. Harris was known to remain updated on current issues faced by communities, she had a passion for understanding policy and asking hard-hitting questions on major issues such as abortion. However, a major criticism that her colleagues have pointed out has been that “[Harris] doesn’t have much of a track of actually passing laws.” It is important to note that passing legislation was difficult during that time due to a majority Republican-led chamber. In addition to criminal justice reform and immigration, an area that Harris greatly advocated for was health care. Maternal health, mental health, and drug pricing were some of the core struggles she worked to improve.
After years in public service, Harris gained national attention when Joe Biden selected her as his vice-presidential running mate in 2020. Her candidacy marked a milestone in American politics, making her the first Black, South Asian, and female nominee for this office.
On this year’s campaign trail, she once again commits herself to addressing issues like criminal justice reform and foreign policy, which brought supporters from overshadowed communities to her. Yet as the nation waited with bated breath to see who would emerge as the 47th President of the United States, Harris’s stance on international issues, especially on Palestine, had left many supporters questioning her alignment with their values. Could representation alone fulfill the deeper needs of those she ought to serve, or does the leadership require a commitment to the people’s beliefs?
“No, I do not,” Zaidi said. “I think that someone who doesn’t seem at all representative by ethnicity or at first glance can create policies that align with the interests of minorities, and there can be someone who is the picture perfect representative candidate can betray that confidence that others have put in them through vote in one instant.”
But while representation was a powerful force in galvanizing support for Harris, over time, many found that her policies — particularly her stance on international issues — didn’t align with the values of the communities that had once backed her.
When Did the Tide Begin to Shift?
Harris’s identity as a Black and South Asian woman brought new voices into the conversation, yet her views on the ongoing genocide in Palestine tested the limits of that support. As the genocide continues to affect millions, many South Asian and Muslim voters now question if her representation alone is enough when her stance seems to clash with their ideals of justice and equity. For over a year, the world bore witness to the harrowing events that occurred in occupied Palestine. Bodies were pulled from piles of rubble, some with their heads severed, limbs missing, or bodies torn apart with their organs on full display. Fathers wandered the streets in rage, shock, and devastation as they carried the remains of their children’s lifeless bodies in plastic bags. People watched with horror as the bodies of young men were flattened into the rubble and earth after an IDF military tank ran them over. Bizarre images of IDF soldiers posing gleefully with the lingerie of martyred women began to circulate the internet. A series of unfathomable war crimes led the majority of the world to rise in a unified effort to become the voice of the Palestinian people.
After extensive protests, petitions, boycotts, and encampments, thousands of pro-Palestine supporters pushed for the Biden-Harris administration to hear the Palestinian outcry and push for an immediate ceasefire, a solution that even Hamas has been aiming for since Nov. 22, 2023; however, “Netenyahu does not want a permanent ceasefire, insisting that Israel’s aim is to ‘dismantle’ Hamas completely — a goal U.S. and Israeli officials have since declared impossible.” For the past year, no ceasefire solution has been enforced under the Biden-Harris administration as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to push the narrative that Hamas is withholding Israel’s citizens as hostages.
In an interview with Complex in July, President Joe Biden was asked why his and the U.S.’s support towards Israel was so strong, to which Biden replied, “If there weren’t an Israel, every Jew in the world would be at risk, and so there’s a need for it to be strong, and a need for Israel to be able to have after World War Two, the ability for Jews to have a place that was their own. But you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and a Zionist is about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how they’ve been persecuted.”
While Biden speaks on this history of “persecution,” only a day later did Netenyahu give the order for schools, humanitarian zones, and evacuation zones in the Gaza Strip to be attacked with airstrikes. The reason? Netanyahu claimed that Hamas was hiding inside them. Without any hesitation, Biden claimed that he is, “the guy who did more for the Palestinian community than anybody.” He is, “the guy that opened up all the assets.” He is, “the guy that made sure [he] got the Egyptians [to] open the border to let goods through — medicine, and food.”
Despite these robust claims, 43,508 Palestinians, including 16,765 innocent Palestinian children have been killed under Biden’s presidency (as of Nov. 9th). When Harris announced her campaign to run for president on July 21, people became more critical of her views on the genocide. Undoubtedly, she has shown unwavering loyalty to Israel throughout the years, as seen when she said in an AIPAC Conference on March 28, 2017, “As long as I am a United States Senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defense.”
Seven years later, Harris still believes that Israel has full rights to defend itself. During the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August, Harris said, “Let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” With the lack of sympathy and solidarity for the plight of Palestinians, voters grew repulsed and disheartened with the Biden-Harris administration.
“I am ashamed of America and of being an American citizen and I am disappointed with her stance on the genocide,” Zaidi said. “I no longer think she should be honored as a South Asian representative because she has proven with this genocide that she actually does not care for these communities that put so much hope in her.”
As the race came to an end and Harris’s campaign supporters began to leave her alma mater’s campus, many reporters concocted various reasons why Harris lost this election: some reporters attribute her heavy focus on Trump or the lack of a prolonging momentum for her campaign that was lost over time. However, the public has made this answer very simple — her inattentive response to the genocide in Gaza. Despite her background as a woman of color from an immigrant family, Harris repeatedly supported policies that directly contradicted justice and empathy for underrepresented groups, an ideal she fought for while senator and expected to continue if she was to be elected president. Her refusal to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza or to consider an arms embargo on Israel revealed her loyalty to political alliances rather than the denouncing and abolishing of deliberately committed war crimes. This unwavering stance left many in her own communities feeling betrayed, as they saw her representation fall short of the solidarity they had hoped would come with her identity.
Shirazi said, “If I could say anything to her right now, I’d tell her to figure out what her values and beliefs actually are instead of figureheading hollow policy to tout in front of the party elite.”
When Accountability Becomes More Critical Than a Candidate’s Identity
Harris’s political career has been nothing short of an interesting and eye-opening journey: her time between being elected as first female vice president to running as a presidential candidate has brought several critical discussions and questions to the table. In modern politics, a critical lesson has been brought forward concerning identity and politics, and how identity alone cannot stand as a strong foundation for any type of leadership. The policies Harris staunchly advocates for reveal that, despite one’s background, without a foundation of genuine advocacy and ethics, one cannot truly become a voice for the people they tirelessly aim to support.
Harris’s candidacy is an important case study for anyone wanting to pursue a position in power to be aware of what not to do. In 2020, her presence in the White House broke many barriers and many women saw the impossible suddenly become possible; however, in 2024, her repeated failure to express solidarity with oppressed communities, particularly those being massacred in Palestine, separated the same voters who were confident that with the experiences and upbringing she has had, Harris would become a championing force in justice and equity. This reveals a resonating truth: communities closely observe the individual who claims to be a symbol of their representation is one that will indeed keep the welfare of all minority communities at the forefront of any critical decision.
This election has taught us to take a step back and educate ourselves beyond a person’s background as to whether or not we can assess this person as a leader who will better the future for generations to come. Leaders representing marginalized communities have an even larger role to ensure that social justice is the core of every policy and action. How is it fair that a woman who is a wife, a mother, and an older sister, has no problem if women overseas lose their entire family in mere seconds to missile strikes? How is it fair that a woman in crisp suits, thousands cheering her on, and with the brightest smile on her face is indifferent to supporting billions of dollars in funds to a nation that wants to annihilate land that doesn’t even belong to them? How is it fair that she gets to hold her family members close, but isn’t moved by the anguish of innocent people as they hold dead newborns in their arms with nowhere to go? This is a wake up call for voters, now and future voters, to understand how necessary it is to have a leader who is not only responsible for the people within the nation they are leading but for every single individual globally.
After all, doesn’t the pledge of allegiance of the U.S. proudly state that we are, “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
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