Kamala Harris: Minority Roots to Majority Vote, Part 2

09/18/20 • 26 min

We’re back for Part 2 on Kamala Harris! Last time, we sat down with Ohio State Senator Tina Maharath and two college-graduated South Asian women involved in politics to better understand Kamala Harris's Indian-American identity with complexities around caste, power, and anti-blackness.

Today, we turn to Morgan Harper, a Black woman in politics and a former grassroots candidate for Congress, to help unpack Kamala’s Black identity. After attending Tufts (BA), Princeton (MA), and Stanford (JD), she spent three years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) protecting consumers against predatory lenders and most recently at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) which invests in communities that have been systematically under-resourced. Morgan evaluates the viewpoints of those who might feel conflicted voting for Kamala given her past as a prosecutor, and instills passion in our audience to become less complacent in civic engagement!

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Previous Episode

Kamala Harris: Minority Roots to Majority Vote

Kamala Harris is the new Democratic VP nominee - she’s multiracial as a half Black and half Indian woman! Can we be excited that someone who “looks like us” is up there in the political hierarchy, and perhaps we’re finally seeing the representation we need?
Our Indian American friends and families are celebrating. But young people are also left wondering if we can automatically “claim” Kamala just because she has Indian heritage. We hope to better contextualize and understand the nuances behind Kamala Harris’s half Black and half Indian identity.
In this episode, #FOTV’s Swathi Vudatala sits down with the first Asian American woman elected to the Ohio State Senate, Tina Maharath, and two recently college-graduated South Asian women involved in politics. Swathi enlists their help in processing Kamala's significance by dissecting caste, power, and anti-blackness in the South Asian community.
Lalitha Pamidigantam is a fresh graduate of the Ohio State University in public policy currently working for the Columbus Women’s Commission. Tanvi Kohli of the Washington University in St. Louis introduces her recent senior thesis on her Indian heritage and ancestry. They discuss Kamala's nuanced identity while answering the questions “Does representation even matter?” and “Is representation real activism?”

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Next Episode

Slacking or Acting?

In this episode, #FOTV hosts Jessica and Grace invite an Asian American illustrator Ji Sub Jeong (@geesubay) to chat about the virality of slacktivism. Jessica dives into the design of social justice slideshows on Instagram while Grace dissects the need to perform an identity or virtue signal for capital gain.
As both consumers and creators, they discuss the rise of boba liberalism in tandem with Subtle Asian Traits. Ji Sub reveals his feelings about being called a boba liberal more than once. Finally, the #FOTV hosts invite the audience to take their activism off social media including conscious spending and exploring longer forms of media and new topics.

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