When society thinks of jobs and career paths, we think self consciously most of them as male dominated roles and jobs while the women are stay-at-home moms. A certain woman just made history to break
down that wall of stereotypes about race and gender. Her name is Kamala Harris. She went from a student in the middle class to the first woman Vice President and Presidential nominee. She has received a lot of hate for doing her job and making little mistakes along the way. This is her story and her journey to the top and the struggles she had to get there.
One of our editors at the newspaper interviewed students about their opinions on her. Emily McNicholas shares her thoughts by saying “She is such a queen [and] she stands up for me and for my choices.” McNicholas also thinks she did a good job “fighting for women’s rights to choose.” Another student who is in the middle of the political spect
rum shared their thoughts on Harris. They opened up with the idea that they thought Harris “[contradicted] her words [during the election]” and Harris “could have been a good president but [wasn’t] given the time to represent herself.” On the far right side of the political spectrum, Fox News gave some comments on Harris, saying that “also went beyond political exaggeration. ‘He tried to cut Medicare and Social Security every year he was president,’ she said. That is simply not true. But she gets very little fact-checking.” Everyone has different opinions on her and her values, but this story will give the full truth, and represent the good, the bad, and the ugly of her career.
Kamala Harris was born in the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center in California. She had parents named Shyamala and Donald. Shyamala was from Indian heritage and worked as a biomedical scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National; Laboratory. Shyamala moved to the states at the age of 19 to study at California University in 1964. Donald, who was from Jamaican descent, moved to the states just a year earlier to graduate study to receive a PHD in economics at Berkeley University. The couple met in 1962 and got married a year later. When Harris was a baby, the Harris family lived in a “L” shaped apartment that was in Berkeley. Four years later, they moved to Illinois where her sister was then born. The Harris family moved a lot from one state to another in the Midwest, they finally moved back to California but Donald stayed in the Midwest for his job. They briefly stayed on Molia Street back at Berkeley called the “flatlands” which had a huge portion of black population. After everything became desegregated, the population became roughly 40%. Years go by and Kamala Harris’s parents filed for a divorce when she was at the age of seven when her mom got custody.
When Shyamala worked in her labs, Harris was in the care of a woman who ran a daycare down stairs under Harris’s apartment named Regina Shelton. In an interview in the past, Harris brought up that Regina was “determined to make sure we would grow, co-
nfident, proud women.” When Harris was twelve years old, Shyamala moved the family to the country Canada for her job. In Canada, she was first introduced to the faith of Hinduism among other cultural things by their neighbor. There, she went to a French speaking primary school for a while until she transferred to F.A.C.E then finally to West Quebec. At West Quebec she had a friend who confessed that she had been sexually assaulted in her own home, there Harris made it a point to start her career as a prosecutor to put those types of people in jail.
Harris attended two universities, Vanier in Montreal, then later transferred to Howard University in D.C (Howard University was a “historically black university.”) During the summer of her sophomore year, she worked at a McDonald’s franchise in California (this was brought up many times by President Elect Donald Trump in the 2024 election, stating that she never worked there.) She then graduated with a degree of political science and economics in the year 1986. Harris returned to California to attend Hasting College of Law to become a lawyer. While she studied there, she was also president of the black student law association. Three years later, she graduated with a Juric doctor and passed the bar exam in 1990.
In the 90’s Harris was hired to be deputy district attorney in Amanda County. In a later interview she then described this opportunity as “an able prosecutor on the way up,” Through this tough journey, she faced a lot of challenges with varieties of court cases. One court case that a lot of people had a problem with was that an officer named Assacc Espinoza went undercover with his partner. He was then shot by the criminal (David Hill) they were looking for and passed away. Harris didn’t give Hill the death penalty. This decision made her the first mixed Black/Asian American to be “against” the police.
In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown (who dated Harris briefly ) appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. (this made some people mad that she “broke up” a marriage that had already been broken up legally 3 years before they started dating.) In 1998, San Francisco district attorney Terrance Halli hired Harris as an assistant D.A. However, soon after, she became the chief of the C.C.D (Career, Criminal, Division) who watched over five other attorneys where she then prosecuted people for burglary, thrifted and sexual assault under Louise Renne. At the same place she then was head of the Family and Children’s Service Division, where she defended children who had been emotionally and physically abused. In 2002, Harris won the election for D.A in San Francisco by 56% and became the first person of color to be elected D.A in this town. While she was D.A her first term she created the San Francisco Reentry Division in 2004. In 2006 she organized to combat truancy for elementary school kid
s who were at risk.
Harris was then elected Attorney General of California in 2010, which made her the first Black and South Asian woman to have this job in the state of California. During her second term as A.G, she collaborated with major companies such as Google and Apple to make sure that they were using safe and legal sharing data practices. Harris also created the Division of Recidivism Reduction and Reentry to keep the L.A. program on track. This will help provide education and career training for the non violent offenders. Harris received a lot of hate for choosing states in types where she created incorrect convictions. For the last couple of moments of her final term, she focused on banning the “gay panic defense” and “opposing the states same sex marriage ban.” She continued to fight for the LGBTQ+ community and their national rights to get married to the same gender.
She retired from being an A.G. then she got elected to California’s senator in 2017. She spent most of her time focusing on mental health and telemedicine and drug pricing. Harris was the first senator to support Bernie Sanders in the Medicine act of
2017. This established the “government-run single prayer system to help everyone who was a C.A resident to get the support and the help that they needed. However the push for healthcare improvement didn’t go as planned while she was senator.
In 2020 Harris was elected to be the first B
lack and Asian Vice President of the United States. When she was VP she fought for women’s health-care and the right to choose to get an abortion. She also fought for school safety from gun violence and regulation from gun laws. Harris focused on climate change with President Biden to restore the ecosystem. While she was VP she traveled to over 19 other countries to strengthen connections with other world leaders around the world. Harris also worked with Biden to strengthen the economy and create more job opportunities and help support small businesses.
Her final accomplishment was running for president of the United States in 2024 when Biden dropped out of the race against Trump for the oval office. Harris had 5 months to plan, campaign, go to rallies, debate Trump in the presidential debate, and create a new public image of her and her beliefs and intelligence. Harris lost by 5% of the voters. This isn’t stopping her from telling her story and sharing her beliefs with the entire world.
