CHICAGO (AP) — Two words summed up Tamani Jayasinghe’s exuberance for the first Indian American and Black woman to run for vice president: “Kamala Aunty.”.

Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, often focuses on her identity as a Black woman.

Gopalan took the sisters to India to visit relatives and gave both, Kamala Devi Harris and Maya Lakshmi Harris, names rooted in Indian culture.

She took them to civil rights protests, and wanted them to become “confident, proud Black women,” Harris wrote in her 2019 book, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.”.

A graduate of Howard University, Harris has made clear that she is both confident and proud of her Black identity.

In a March 2019 radio interview, she answered a question about her identity by saying: “I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black.

In her speech Wednesday, Harris noted her parents’ heritages but ended with saying Biden is the only person “who’s served alongside the first Black president and has chosen the first Black woman as his running mate.”.

The first Indian American congresswoman, she and Asians also celebrated Harris as a Black woman.

She really is representative, this biracial piece is representative of the experiences that so many immigrant communities have had, learning from the leadership of Black communities,” she said.

Despite skepticism about her foreign policy if elected, he said seeing a woman from the Indian subcontinent as a possible vice president was inspiring