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Tuesday, July 30, 2024

What's Up With The Recurrence Of People Of South Asian (Indian) Ancestry In The 2024 United States Presidential Campaign?

WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? (Post #3, by Azizi Powell, July 30, 2024)

"What's Up With That?" is a periodic pancocojams series.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/07/whats-up-with-recurrence-of-name-donald.html "What's Up With The Recurrence Of the Name "Donald" With The Initial "Donald J" In Association With The United States 2024 Presidential Election?" for Part I  of this series and click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/07/whats-up-with-recurrence-of-jamaica-in.html "What's Up With The Recurrence Of "Jamaica" In The 2024 United States Presidential Election?" for Part II of this series. 

These brief "What's Up With That?" posts insist of my editorial note/s along with some other information, comments, and/or pancocojams blog link/s or other internet link/s. 

So here goes: 

What's up with the recurrence of people of South Asian (Indian) ancestry in the 2024 Presidential campaign?

A. Vice President Kamala Harris is of Afro-Jamaican and South Asian (Indian) descent. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
..."Kamala Devi Harris[a] was born in Oakland, California,[14] on October 20, 1964.[15] Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biologist whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research.[16] Shyamala had moved to the United States from India as a 19-year-old graduate student in 1958. After studying nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley,[17][18] she received her PhD in 1964.[19] Kamala Harris's father, Donald J. Harris,[20] is a Stanford University professor of economics (emeritus) who arrived in the United States from Jamaica in 1961, for graduate study at UC Berkeley, and received a PhD in economics in 1966.[21] Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan met in 1962 and were married in 1963

[...] 

Harris's parents divorced when she was seven.

African-American intellectuals and rights advocates constituted Harris's formative surroundings; Mary Lewis, who helped start the field of African-American studies at San Francisco State University, and taught there for many years, was one of Shyamala Gopalan's most trusted friends.[31] When Shyamala worked late at her lab, Kamala was cared for by Regina Shelton, a Black woman whose day-care center in the apartment below was decorated with pictures of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.[32] Harris has written that Shyamala "knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women."[33] A neighbor regularly took the Harris girls to an African American church in Oakland where they sang in the children's choir,[34][35] and the girls and their mother also frequently visited a nearby African American cultural center.[36] Their mother introduced them to Hinduism and took them to a nearby Hindu temple, where Shyamala occasionally sang.[37] As children, she and her sister visited their mother's family in Madras (now Chennai) on occasion.[38] Kamala Harris says she was impressed by her maternal grandfather's progressive views. Harris has remained in touch with her Indian aunts and uncles.[37] The two Harris sisters spent summers with their father in Palo Alto and now and then traveled to Jamaica with him.[39]"...

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B. Former South Carolina governor and Republican 2024 former Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is of South Asian (Indian) descent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Haley
"Nimarata Nikki Haley (née Randhawa; born January 20, 1972)[1][2][3] is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 116th governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and as the 29th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018.[4] A Republican, Haley is the first Indian American to serve in a presidential cabinet.[5] She was a candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. Her victory in the Washington, D.C. primary on March 3, 2024 made her the first woman ever to win a Republican Party presidential primary contest.[6]

[...]

Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa at Bamberg County Hospital in Bamberg, South Carolina,[1][2][16] to immigrant Sikh parents from Amritsar, Punjab, India.[17][18] Her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa (1933–2024),[19] was a professor at Punjab Agricultural University,[20] and her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, received her law degree from the University of Delhi.[21]

Her parents emigrated from India to Canada in 1964 after Ajit received a scholarship offer from the University of British Columbia.[22] After he received his PhD in 1969, he moved with his family to South Carolina, where he was a professor of biology at Voorhees College, a historically black institution in Denmark, South Carolina. He retired from teaching in 1998.[23]"...

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C. Former candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination Vivek Ramaswamy is of South Asian (Indian) descent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Ramaswamy

"Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy  born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur. He founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, in 2014. In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States presidential election. He suspended his campaign in January 2024, after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses.[3]

Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrant parents. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in biology and later earned a law degree from Yale Law School. Ramaswamy worked as an investment partner at a hedge fund before founding Roivant Sciences. He also co-founded an investment firm, Strive Asset Management.

[...]

Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy was born on August 9, 1985, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Indian Hindu immigrant parents.[8][9][10][11][12] His parents are Tamil-speaking Brahmins from Kerala.[8][13][14] His father, V. Ganapathy Ramaswamy, a graduate of the National Institute of Technology Calicut, worked as an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, while his mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, a graduate of the Mysore Medical College & Research Institute, worked as a geriatric psychiatrist.[8][15] His parents immigrated from Palakkad district in Kerala,[16][17] where the family had an ancestral home in a traditional agraharam in the town of Vadakkencherry.[16][18][19]."...

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Also, it should be noted that Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of JD Vance, the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States, is South Asian (Indian).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usha_Vance
"Usha Chilukuri Vance (née Chilukuri; born January 6, 1986) is an American lawyer.[1] She is the wife of JD Vance, Ohio's junior United States Senator[2] and Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election.

After graduating from Yale Law School, Vance was a law clerk for multiple federal judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and Judge Amul Thapar.[3]

Early life and education

Usha Chilukuri was born in a suburb of San Diego, California,[1] to Indian Hindu immigrants.[4][5] Her father is a mechanical engineer from IIT Madras and a lecturer at San Diego State University,[6][7] and her mother is a molecular biologist and provost at the University of California, San Diego.[8] Her family belongs to the Telugu community and migrated from Andhra Pradesh, India, in the 1980s.[9] She was raised in San Diego's upper-middle-class Rancho Peñasquitos suburb.[10][11]"...

**** 
On a related topic, here's information about United District Court Judge Tanya Chutkin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Chutkan
"
Tanya Sue Chutkan (born July 5, 1962) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a U.S. district judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

She is the presiding judge over the criminal trial of former U.S. president Donald Trump over his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, including the events leading up to the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Early life and education

Chutkan was born on July 5, 1962, in Kingston, Jamaica.[1] Chutkan has a younger brother, Norman, and a younger sister, Robynne, both of whom are physicians. Her father Winston Chutkan is an Indo-Jamaican doctor, and her mother Noelle is an Afro-Jamaican who was one of the leading dancers at the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica.[2][3][4]"...

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The fact that Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and JD Vance's wife are of whole South Asian (Indian) descent and the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris and Judge Tanya Chutkin are  part South Asian (Indian) descent probably reflects the census report about the rise in numbers in the United States of people of South Asian (Indian) descent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Americans
"Indian Americans are people with ancestry from India who are citizens of the United States. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "American Indians". With a population of more than 4.9 million, Indian Americans make up approximately 1.35% of the U.S. population and are the largest group of South Asian Americans, the largest Asian-alone group,[10] and the largest group of Asian Americans after Chinese Americans. Indian Americans are the highest-earning ethnic group in the United States.[11]"...

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Unlike previous "What's Up With That" posts, given the racism and xenophobia that is quite active in the United States, I want to make it clear that I don't have any problem whatsoever with the fact that some United States citizens who have all or some South  Asian (Indian) ancestry were/are part of the 2024 United States Presidential campaign. 

Furthermore, given the history and culture of the United States, it should surprise me but doesn't really that anyone believes that Kamala Harris isn't Black- given the way that the "Black" racial population was and still is defined in the United States. I'm looking at you folks that call yourself "Foundational Black Americans (FBA)" who have issues with Black folks in the United States (like me) who can't trace some or all of their their ancestry to people who were enslaved in this nation.

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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/06/article-excerpts-about-population.html for the pancocojams post entitled "Article Excerpts About The Population Referents "ADOS" (American Descendants Of Slaves) And "FBA" (Foundational Black Americans)".

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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-rise-of-indian-south-asian.html for the pancocojams post entitled "
The Rise Of Indian (South Asian) Americans In United States Politics In 2024 (YouTube video & article excerpts)."

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1 comment:

  1. In the context of this pancocojams "What's Up With That" series, the question "What's up with that?" should be interpreted as calling attention to some coincidences, or something else that is note worthy and saying "Check this out. "What does that mean?"

    For instance, what, if anything, does it mean that Donald J Trump, JD Vance, and Kamala Harris's father Donald J Harris all have the name "Donald". Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but if it's not weird, isn't it kinda spooky?

    Sometimes some things, like these first names as mentioned above or like the last name that some people in the news have make me feel that the universe is playing games with us, hopefully for a good reason or good reasons

    You get what I mean?

    ReplyDelete