Joe Biden’s selection of California Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate has been hailed by many black and female voters. But as TC alumna Sayu Bhojwani points out in a recent article in USA Today written by Mariel Padilla, the choice of Harris, who has a multiracial background, is playing well with many other Americans, too.
TC alumna Sayu Bhojwani (Photo: TC Archives)
People are seeing the part of her they want to see. Black women are focused on her Blackness. Jamaicans and people from Caribbean countries are focused on that, and Indian Americans are much more focused on her Indian background.
—Sayu Bhojwani
“People are seeing the part of her they want to see,” says Bhojwani (Ph.D. ’14), who is the founding director of New American Leaders (NAL), which recruits and prepares first- and second-generation Americans to run for elective office. “Black women are focused on her Blackness. Jamaicans and people from Caribbean countries are focused on that, and Indian Americans are much more focused on her Indian background.” Bhojwani, who served as New York City’s first Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, added that “the nomination of Kamala is a signal, an opening to the possibility that any of us who consider ourselves American can run for the highest office of the land.”
[Read a story in TC Today magazine about Bhojwani and NAL. Also read about Bhojwani’s 2018 book, People Like Us: The New Wave of Candidates Knocking at Democracy’s Door, and watch her TED Talk, “Immigrant Voices Make Democracy Stronger.”]