The Lesser-Known Truth Of Kamala Harris

It's hardly an exaggeration to suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris is the living, breathing embodiment of the American dream. The child of immigrants, she excelled in school and earned a law degree. She then became a prosecutor, and was eventually elected district attorney of San Francisco. That led her to an even bigger job, as attorney general of California, and then, in 2016, becoming a U.S senator.

She wouldn't stay in the Senate for long, though. In 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden tapped her to be his running mate when he campaigned against the incumbent president, Donald Trump. Biden won the hard-fought election, and Harris was sworn in as vice-president. Up until July 2024, Harris was expected to campaign alongside Biden as he ran against Trump. When he ultimately stepped down, it was Harris who became candidate for president, setting up a nail-biter of an election as she and her veep pick — Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz — strive to get her elected as America's 47th president.

She's been in the public eye for decades, and on the national stage for some time now, but how much do people really know about this prosecutor-turned-politician and the fascinating trajectory that's brought her to this point? To find out more, keep on reading to discover some fascinating facts by delving into the untold truth of Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris' ethnic background is as eclectic as the melting pot that is America. Her father, Donald J. Harris, was born and raised in Jamaica, while her late mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, came to the U.S. from India. From an early age, Kamala Harris was exposed to the various strands of her cultural heritage, which included her father's Christianity and her mother's Hinduism.

As Harris recalled during a 2017 speech, as reported by AP, she attended a Baptist church, where she sang in the choir, while her mother took her to a Hindu temple. She recalled how her mother wanted to foster an understanding that the pursuit of justice is something that underlies many faiths. These days, Harris identifies as a Baptist; When living in San Francisco, she regularly attended the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. "She came to this church because she knew our ways, she knew our history," the church's pastor, renowned civil rights leader Reverend Amos C. Brown, told Sojourners of how Harris' faith has also informed her desire for social justice. "This church has always had a balanced spirituality: social justice and personal fulfillment and salvation."

When Harris married husband Doug Emhoff, a third religion entered the mix. "She comes to synagogue with me for high holiday day services, and I go to church with her for Easter," Emhoff said in his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Kamala Harris has always been proud of her Indian heritage, and it's right there in her name: Kamala, in fact, is a Sanskrit word. "It means 'lotus flower,' which is a symbol of significance in Indian culture," Harris wrote in her memoir, "The Truths We Hold," via an excerpt shared by Penguin Random House. "A lotus grows underwater, its flower rising above the surface while its roots are planted firmly in the river bottom."

In addition, Kamala is also a name for an incarnation of the Hindu goddess, Lakshmi. Harris' middle name, Devi, is also taken from that of a Hindu deity, a goddess known for representing the embodiment of femininity.

Her mother saw to it that both Harris and her sister, Maya, bore names inspired by Hinduism. The reason, Shyamala told the Los Angeles Times, was so that the Indian side of their heritage would remain a part of their respective identities. "A culture that worships goddesses produces strong women," she explained. Perhaps the most adorable add-on about Harris' unique moniker is the nickname that her stepchildren have bestowed upon her: Momala.

When Kamala Harris was on the cusp of her teen years, her mother got a job teaching at Canada's McGill University, which led she and her daughters to live in Montreal for a time. It was there that 13-year-old Harris predicted her political future by leading a demonstration at the apartment complex where they lived, protesting a rule that forbade children from playing on the lawn. The protest succeeded, and the lawn was hers!

Activism is something that had been ingrained in her from childhood. "She's always been a fighter, even from those early days," Wanda Kagan, a high school classmate, told The Mercury News. "She always was sticking up for other people."

CNN analyst and lawyer Areva Martin met Harris when they were college students, and the two have remained friends over the years. "If you hear her talking about growing up with her parents, who were very active in the civil rights movement, it's in her DNA. She was at marches in a stroller," Martin told The Guardian. That now-legendary family story took place at a civil rights march that her parents attended when she was a toddler, pushing her in a stroller. When her mother asked her what she wanted, recalled the Los Angeles Times, little Harris declared, "FEE-DOM!"

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Kamala Harris appeared on the radio show, "The Breakfast Club," where she was asked to clarify her position on the legalization of marijuana. "Half my family's from Jamaica — are you kidding me?" she joked, and was subsequently asked whether she'd ever sampled weed herself. "I have," she replied. "And I did inhale."

But that response wasn't exactly funny to her Jamaican father. As The New Yorker reported, Donald J. Harris issued a statement via a website serving Jamaican diaspora throughout the world. "My deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family's name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics," he wrote. "Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty." 

When asked by The New Yorker to reveal her feelings about being dressed-down in public by her dad, Harris was coolly circumspect. "He's entitled to his opinion," she responded.

Back in the 1990s, Kamala Harris was an on-the-rise San Francisco prosecutor when she began dating Willie Brown, legendary California political power broker who served as mayor of San Francisco from 1996 until 2004. In 1995, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, reported that his "long affair" with Harris — which had begun the previous year – had come to an end. The news, Caen observed, was greeted with shock by those who'd found the charming and razor-smart Harris to be an ideal match for the rakish mayor — despite an age difference of nearly three decades between them. "Willie has finally graduated from girls to a woman," Caen wrote, quoting a "mutual friend" of theirs.

The relationship resurfaced in 2019, when Harris threw her hat in into the presidential race in a bid to become the Democratic nominee. Brown responded with a brief op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. "Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago," he wrote, admitting that, sure, he may have helped her career by appointing her to state commissions when he was speaker of the assembly, and assisted in her campaign to become D.A. — just as he'd helped several other California Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom. However, he pointed out, Harris was the only politician who, after he helped her get elected, let him know that she'd indict him if he "so much as jaywalked."

If Kamala Harris is elected president, she'll become the first Black woman — not to mention simply the first woman — to be elected to America's highest office. Harris, of course, is no stranger to being a trailblazer and can actually boast of several prior firsts throughout her career.

For example, she was the first Black woman to be San Francisco's district attorney. Then, when she was elected as the attorney general of California, she set another record as the first Black person and the first woman to serve as the state's A.G. before becoming a senator, and then launching a failed presidential bid during her first term in the Senate. "Many people didn't think she had the discipline and focus to ascend to a position in the White House so quickly ... although people knew she had ambition and star potential," her former communications director, Gil Duran, told BBC News of Harris harboring presidential ambitions after just a few years as a senator.

Of course, she made history all over again when Joe Biden invited her to be his vice-presidential running mate, the first time a Black woman had ever been a candidate for that office. Then, when she and Biden were victorious in 2020, she placed a few more firsts on her résumé by becoming the first Black and South Asian vice president, the first female veep, and, ultimately, the Democrats' first-ever Black female nominee for president.

For Kamala Harris, becoming attorney general of California back in 2010 was a hard-fought race. As Roll Call reported, conventional wisdom held that she had little hope of being elected to a role that had always, without exception, gone to a white male.

Yet the race proved to be closer than anyone had predicted. When the votes were initially tallied, it appeared that she and her Republican opponent, Los Angeles' district attorney, Steve Cooley, were neck and neck. Cooley, however, declared victory after 99% of the precincts had reported their results, even though Harris was ahead of him by 22,000 votes. Reports of her demise, however, were premature. When all the precincts had finally reported and the dust settled, it was Harris who was declared victor, albeit by the slimmest of margins and three weeks after election night. She won by less than one percentage point; of the 9.6 million or so votes that had been cast, she received just 74,000 more than Cooley did.

According to her former campaign manager, Brian Brokaw, there was one key factor that pushed Harris over the top. "She just simply out-worked him," Brokaw told Roll Call. "History was against her. The electoral dynamic was against her. Everybody just assumed that the Democrats [were] going to win all the statewide races, except for that one. That was the conventional wisdom, and she defied it."

Elected to the Senate in 2016, Kamala Harris wasted little time distinguishing herself within that august institution. When Trump-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions was called to testify before the Senate during the Russia investigation, Harris' skills as a prosecutor came to the forefront while she interrogated him during her five minutes of allotted time.

Sessions repeatedly responded to Harris' simple questions with long-winded and evasive responses, and eventually insisted that he wanted to qualify all his responses with the disclaimer that he probably couldn't remember all the details. "If you don't let me qualify it you will accuse me of lying, so I need to be correct as best I can," Sessions said (via KQED), to which Harris responded, "I do want you to be honest." Sessions replied, "I am not able to be rushed this fast, it makes me nervous."

That exchange went viral, but that proved to be a mere warmup for her subsequent grilling of prospective Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing. Trying to ascertain his view on Roe v. Wade, she pinned him down and made her point when she asked, "Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?" As The Washington Post reported, Kavanaugh nervously stammered that he could not, with the exchange also going viral.

When Kamala Harris has some time on her hands — an increasingly rare occurrence these days — she loves to spend it in the kitchen. As she told The Atlantic, cooking is something of a hobby, a way to unwind while also trying out new recipes she discovers in The New York Times' food section. A curious foodie, she's cooked nearly every dish in Alice Waters' cookbook, "The Art of Simple Food." Her tried-and-true dinner, in fact, is a simple roast chicken. "Salt, olive oil, a lemon, garlic, pepper, some good mustard — you can do almost anything with those ingredients," Harris explained.

Harris inherited her love of cooking from her mother, who, as a busy professional, prepped the coming week's meals on the weekend. "As a child, I remember hearing the pots and smelling the food, and kind of like someone in a trance, I would walk into the kitchen to see all this incredible stuff happening," Harris recalled in an interview with Glamour. "My mother used to tell me, 'Kamala, you clearly like to eat good food. You better learn how to cook.'" Harris is also happy to share her culinary secrets, such as when she tweeted the recipe for her signature cornbread dressing ahead of Thanksgiving.

As busy as she is, however, she's insistent about gathering her family together for a Sunday dinner whenever possible. "It's a tradition I really care about," she added, "just having a really good home-cooked meal on a Sunday."

Anyone who's been following Kamala Harris as she's been hitting the campaign trail should have noticed that she truly loves her kicks, preferring to adorn her feet in sneakers, not pumps. Her shoes of choice are Converse Chuck Taylors, and she can almost always be seen wearing a pair. In fact, when she posed for Vogue, it wasn't wearing Louboutins or Jimmy Choos she stepped into, but a pair of Chucks.

In fact, she's amassed quite an impressive array of her favorite shoe brand, with different models to accommodate various outfits and climate conditions. "I have a whole collection of Chuck Taylors: a black leather pair, a white pair, I have the kind that don't lace, the kind that do lace, the kind I wear in the hot weather, the kind I wear in the cold weather, and the platform kind for when I'm wearing a pantsuit," she explained during an interview with The Cut.

Meanwhile, it shouldn't surprise that there's a political element underlying her choice of footwear, given that the iconic Converse sneakers tend to transcend social, cultural, and economic divides. "Whatever your background, whatever language your grandmother spoke, we all at some point or another had our Chucks, right?" Harris said when interviewed by Complex.

When Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, leaving veep Kamala Harris as the heir apparent, she received some social media encouragement from British pop star Charli XCX. "Kamala IS brat," she tweeted. Her fans agreed, sharing a similar belief that Harris is an integral part of Charli XCX's much-ballyhooed "brat summer." For those who are unfamiliar with her specific definition of "brat," the singer broke it down in a TikTok interview. "You are just that girl who is a little messy and likes to party, and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it," she explained. "It's very honest, it's very blunt and a little bit volatile ... That's brat."

Harris — or, to be fair, her PR team — responded in kind. On Harris' official Kamala HQ X, formerly knows as Twitter, account, the background color was changed to the same "brat" green used by Charli XCX, with the vice-president's name appearing in the same font used on the cover of her "Brat" album. Harris and her campaign took the association a step beyond when her campaign sponsored Spotify's official "This is Charli XCX" playlist.

Kamala Harris' cred as a foodie has been well established, but she's not immune to the occasional foray into junk food. When a craving for salty snacks rears its hungry head, Harris will inevitably be found with one hand plunged into a bag of Doritos. The Frito-Lay chips are her guilty pleasure, which she revealed during an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe," when asked to divulge her favorite treat. "Doritos, nachos," she declared.

Doritos are also one way in which she'll drown her sorrows. Such was the case when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. While watching the election results pour in with her husband, Doug Emhoff, she took comfort in the chips. "I sat down on the couch with Doug and ate an entire family-size bag of classic Doritos," she wrote in her memoir, "The Truths We Hold," via a Penguin Random House excerpt. "Didn't share a single chip."

She recounted that same story in a campaign email, reported Salon, writing, "I just watched the TV with utter shock and dismay. Two things are true eight years later: I still love Doritos and we still have not stopped fighting."