In 2021, Kim Parker and Amanda Barroso from the Pew Research Center wrote:

The swearing-in of Kamala Harris as the vice president of the United States marked several important “firsts”: She became the first female vice president, as well as the first Black person and first Asian American to hold that office. But her ascendance to the second-highest office in the land represented so much more. It held up a mirror to America, revealing how key demographic trends have reshaped the country.

Kamala Harris embodies several trends that have been unfolding gradually over recent decades. As a result, many Americans – not just women of color – can see themselves in her story.

The rise in multiracial Americans: Harris has a multiracial background. Her mother was South Asian and her father is Black. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans who identify as two or more races are one of the fastest growing racial or ethnic groups in the country, along with Asians. Roughly 6.3 million American adults – 2.5% of the adult population – identified as being more than one race in 2019. The number has grown significantly since the census first allowed people to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves in 2000. Among adults who identify as more than one race, relatively few (2.1%) are Black and Asian.

Racial identity is complex, and estimates of the multiracial population may underrepresent the share of people who identify with multiple racial groups based on their family history. In addition, racial identity can be fluid and may change over the course of one’s lifetime. In a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, about three-in-ten adults with a multiracial background said the way they describe their race has changed over the years – either from seeing themselves as multiracial at one point and single race at another, or vice versa.

Growing waves of immigrants are from Asia and the Caribbean: Harris is the daughter of two immigrants, one from India and one from Jamaica. The share of immigrants from Asia living in the U.S. has been on the rise in recent decades, following the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In 2018, Asians made up 28% of the U.S. foreign-born population, up from 4% in 1960. And starting as early as 2010, Asian immigrants outnumbered Hispanic immigrants among new arrivals.

Harris’ father immigrated to the U.S. in 1961 from Jamaica. There were roughly 125,000 Black immigrants in the U.S. at that time, but their numbers have grown steadily, particularly in the last two decades. By 2019, one-in-ten Black people living in the U.S. were foreign born. That same year, Jamaica was the top birthplace for Black immigrants.

As a second-generation American, Harris is among the roughly 25 million U.S. adults who are children of immigrants. This group represents about 10% of the adult population. [Continue reading…]