Local Voices: My Hope For Kamala And Her Dad

By Dennis Edwards
Columnist

Vice President Kamala Harris is uniting the Democratic Party, all of its constituencies as well as much of the nation, like nothing I’ve seen in a lifetime. Former President Barrack Obama did something similar when he ran and won the Presidency proving the nation is more than capable of living up to its declaration that “all men are created equal.”

Yet, Harris has another monumental opportunity here. With the help of the American people she can expand the tent of democracy by spreading that promise and opportunity to women of all races as well.

Yet, there’s still an even more subtle, nuanced perhaps equally important potential fortuity presenting itself in her candidacy. I hope she takes advantage of it. This one is personal and universal, private and public, packed with potential and some degree of risk. But the benefits for her and for millions of Americans across all walks of life could be more than life-changing.

She can help expand the circle of inclusion, so to speak, by bringing the estranged and ostracized back into the family. There are many men and women who fit into that category. But none so notable as Kamala’s father, the nationally and internationally respected Jamaican-American Stanford Economist Dr. Donald J. Harris. The Professor Emeritus is known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He is and has been a major mind in economic theory worldwide.

As we all know, different cultures can clash within the precincts of marriage and family in extreme ways. Dr. Harris is of Jamaican descent. His ex-wife and Kamala’s deceased mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris was a Biomedical Scientist of South East Asian descent. Both cultures can be direct and clear in their independence and self sufficiency.

When the marriage came undone, so did the relationship between Kamala’s maternal family culture and Dr. Harris’ Jamaican independence and self-determination. Details are not necessary here. But whatever caused an estrangement, there may still haunt and complicate the relationship between a father and his two daughters.

But are they so different from any American family upset by divorce. Not really. Maybe the estrangement has lasted too long. Maybe, on what could be the precipice of history being made, just maybe there’s an opportunity to change a key personal relationship and pave the way for something similar to happen in families all around the nation and world.

I’d like to see the Vice President reconcile with her Dad as she runs for President. As my grandmother would have said “Just Go See About Him”! Not to gloat, but to include him in her success. After all, without him, there is no Kamala.

A gesture like that could ripple through divergent cultures around the world. It would open doors long closed for urban families to rural families everywhere. It would be a delight to see a healing spirit sweep over her and into families still struggling with the remnants of divorce and its many rippling waves of discontent. Could also open the doors for some political healing as well. Sometimes it’s more important to forgive and embrace the moment than to keep making the same relationship mistakes over and over again through countless generations.

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But perhaps more importantly, imagine how that gesture would allow the inclusion of a group of men, who look like her as well as those who don’t, to see reconciliation is always possible. It might open the door that brings back estranged fathers into families, into the political mainstream while strengthening families in the way her Republican opponent could never understand or execute.

It would also remind us of the words Shakespeare gave to Portia in the Merchant of Venice. “The quality of mercy, she says, is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: it blesseth him/her that gives and him/her that takes.” In this case it might also open the door to major support from urban men who look like her, whose hearts would be warmed by the daughter who re-embraced a father whose brilliance also contributed to her getting to this time and place in history.

(Dennis Edwards is a Major Market Emmy and Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Award Winning T.V. and WRVA Radio News Anchor, Investigative Reporter, Columnist and Pastor. He is a graduate of Virginia Union University and its Samuel Dewitt Proctor School of Theology.)

(Copyright July 2024)