Although she passed away in 2009, Vice President Kamala Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan, is a constant presence in the 2024 Presidential race. The Democratic Presidential nominee references the sacrifices her mother – a biomedical scientist who emigrated to the United States from India – made to raiser her and younger sister Maya as a single mother when speaking to the concerns of middle class voters. However, less is known about Vice President Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican immigrant and well-known economist – even though the 86-year-old lives less than two miles from the official residence of the Vice President in Washington, D.C.
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Goapalan and Harris met in the early 1960s when they were students at UC Berkeley separated when the Vice President was just five-years-old. For his part, Harris says he did his best to maintain close ties with his girls after splitting with their mom, even though the courts weren’t on his side.
In a 2018 essay titled “Reflections of a Jamaican Father,” Donald Harris writes:
“This early phase of interaction with my children came to an abrupt halt in 1972 when, after a hard fought custody battle in the family court of Oakland, California, the context of the relationship was placed within arbitrary limits imposed by a court-ordered divorce settlement based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting (especially in the case of this father, “a neegroe from da eyelans” was the Yankee stereotype, who might just end up eating his children for breakfast!). Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father.”
Friends of the family told The New York Times that much of what keeps the Vice President and her dad apart are the qualities they have in common, including being focused, loyal and stubborn.
VP Harris and her father don’t talk much about their estranged relationship in public these days. But they do their best to keep it classy. Donald Harris sent congratulatory notes to his daughter after she was elected to represent the state of California in the United States Senate in 2016 and when she was announced as President Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential running mate in 2020.
But when it comes to appearing at family functions, the elder Harris has mostly decided to fall back. He didn’t attend Shyamala’s funeral in 2009. He also turned down an invitation to the Vice President’s wedding to Doug Emhoff in 2014.
The Vice President and her father may not be close. But it’s clear that she inherited his spirit of hard work and determination. In his 2018 essay, Harris wrote:
“My message to them, from the lessons I had learned along the way, was that the sky is the limit on what one can achieve with effort and determination and that, in this process, it is important not to lose sight of those who get left behind by social neglect or abuse and lack of access to resources or ‘privilege,’ he wrote.
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