Kamala Harris tells Asians how to break barriers with an F bomb

Vice President Kamala Harris, daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, both immigrants, offered advice to young Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders about how to break through barriers with an F bomb.

Harris was participating in a conversation moderated by actor and comedian Jimmy O. Yang when he asked her what it means to be the first vice president of Asian descent and how that heritage has informed her views and roles as a leader.

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“So, here’s the thing about breaking barriers.  Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier and you end up on the other side,” said the first woman vice president. There’s breaking involved.  And when you break things, you get cut and you may bleed.  And it is worth it every time.  Every time.”

“And so, to especially the young people here, I say to you: When you walk in those rooms being the only one that looks like you, the only one with your background, you walk in those rooms chin up, shoulders back.

“Be it a meeting room, a boardroom, a courtroom, a hearing room, you walk in those rooms knowing that we are all in that room with you, applauding you on and expecting certain things from you, including that you will not be silent in those rooms and that we expect that from you because we also expect that you will internalize and know we’re there with you.  And so, your voice can be strong.”

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Harris recalled what “my mother would say to me, ‘Don’t you ever let anybody tell you who you are.  You tell them who you are.’  Don’t ever carry as a personal burden your capacity to do whatever you dream and aspire to do based on other people’s limited ability to see who can do what.”

“This is part of what’s involved is that we have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open.  Sometimes they won’t.  And then you need to kick that f***ing door down,” she said amid laughter and applause.

“Excuse my language,” she said amid more laughter and applause with Yang exclaiming, “We got to make T-shirts with that saying, ‘Kick the fucking door down.’”

Harris also recalled her mother’s advice that has had a lasting impact on her, “Kamala, you may be the first to do many things.  Make sure you’re not the last.”

“My mother was 19 years old when she arrived in the United States by herself,” Harris recalled.  “She was the eldest of my grandparents’ four kids. She was part of one of the first waves of Indians to come in relative modern history to the United States in the ‘50s.

“Right?  So, anybody with a South Asian background, you’ll know that this was early, early, early.  There were not many Indian Americans or Indians who had come in at that point.

“And my mother said to her father when she was 19 years old, ‘I want to cure cancer.’  And I want — and so, what I learned later is she secretly applied to UC Berkeley.  And she got accepted.

“And so, she went to my grandfather and said, ‘I want to go.’  And my grandfather was very progressive.  His eldest child — we know, in Asian culture, what birth order means,” Harris said. “Right?  I am the first grandchild too, I’ll say.  And my grandfather said, ‘Go.’”

“And so, she arrived in the United States by herself because she had a passion and she had a goal.  And she — basically, her life was committed to two things: raising her two daughters and ending breast cancer,” she said.

“My mother — when she arrived in the United States, she automatically, given who my grandfather was and about the fight for independence in India, my mother, then, of course — you might know this in retrospect took to the streets to march for civil rights in her sari,” Harris said with a laugh.

“And that’s how she met my father.  And — and all of that has had a profound influence,” she recalled.

Harris spoke later Monday, along with President Joe Biden and actor Lucy Liu, at a White House Rose Garden reception celebrating May as Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Liu said Harris’ election as the first female Black and Asian vice president was a “testament to the limitless possibilities of the American dream.”

Biden said Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders make up the fastest-growing demographic in the US. He said they represent immigrants, dreamers and a nation of freedom.

The president opened his remarks with: “My name’s Joe Biden. I work for Kamala Harris.”