In the summer of 2020, during Kamala Harris ’ run alongside Joe Biden for the White House, I read an article about how her family in India “helped shape her values.” As I learned about her seaside walks with her grandfather in Chennai and her doting aunties, I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. As a displaced child of the motherland several generations removed, there was no one I could call to break a coconut on my behalf, as Harris’ aunt once did for good luck before a California attorney general election.
Now that she is officially running for president, her Indian relatives are no doubt breaking every coconut in sight. However, despite Harris’ clear connection to the subcontinent, not all South Asians have been willing to claim her. “Her name is Kamala, but she’s not really Indian,” a friend told me with a slight sneer.
The expression was a look I knew well. I had received it myself countless times from other South Asians when they found out I was not “really” Indian. Though you can’t tell at first glance, my family is from the former British colony of Guyana in South America.
In the 1830s, after the abolition of African slavery, my ancestors were brought across the ocean to work as indentured laborers. Generations later, my parents left Guyana for North America, where we were constantly asked the question, “Where are you from?” Or, as the kids on the playground put it, “Are you a red dot or a feather?” For years, I answered with all t.