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AAJA & SAJA Issue Guidance on Coverage of

VP Nominee Sen. Kamala Harris and Her Racial Identity

August 19, 2020

The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) and the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) urge contextualized and comprehensive news coverage around the racial identity of Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris.

The proper way of characterizing someone’s racial or ethnic background, particularly when that background is of national interest, is a complex matter of identity and culture. The question has emerged again with the selection of Harris.

AAJA and SAJA urge newsrooms to be mindful in their language of Harris’ multifaceted racial identity and the ways she has described her own upbringing and background.

• Her mother was from India and her father was from Jamaica. Harris was born in California.
  
  
• In her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” Harris wrote that she identified as Black while growing up: “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.” 
  
  
• Harris has also publicly embraced her Indian descent, identified as an Indian American, and described herself as being of South Asian descent. In her Senate bio, she also describes herself as “South Asian-American”, a less common term.
  
  
• “Asian American” is an accurate and encompassing term to describe Harris, as it applies to those from the continent of Asia, including the subcontinent of India. 
  
  
• Harris is the first woman of color nominated for a presidential ticket by a major party. That includes being the first Black woman, first Asian American woman, first South Asian American woman and first Indian American woman to be nominated for a presidential ticket by a major party. She is the fourth woman in U.S. history to be a nominee for the presidential ticket of a major party. 

We advise news organizations to consider the point of the story as well as the target audience when writing headlines and articles about the groundbreaking nature of Harris’ candidacy. 

Over the coming weeks, AAJA and SAJA will work to provide more guidance and conversation on this subject. In the meantime, here is some background reading to help inform the reporting and writing about her:

• The Other Kamala: Kamala Harris and the History of South Asian America, South Asian American Digital Archive

• Kamala Harris’s 2009 interview with Aziz Haniffa and her 2018 speech at Pratham New York Gala

-- South Asian Journalists Association and Asian American Journalists Association  

Contacts:

Mihir Zaveri, President

South Asian Journalists Association

president@saja.org 

Michelle Ye Hee Lee, President

Asian American Journalists Association

michellel@aaja.org

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We had a great time speaking with our members and friends at our last happy hour.  We hope it was as valuable for you as it was for us. We're going to have many more of these in the coming months. So, stay tuned, subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on facebook and twitter to find out more about SAJA's programs and events through this quarantine period.  

STAY SAFE! 

South Asian Journalists Association will be hosting its 25th anniversary gala on Saturday, October 5, 2019 at the grand ballroom of WeWork, Bryant Park. We're celebrating 25 years of SAJA and the ever growing and ever achieving world of journalism relating to South Asians and South Asian. We will be honoring journalists with awards in 8 categories. There will be wine, food, shop talk, nostalgia and a whole lot of great people to meet - basically, every reason you should be there. 

SAJA invites you to join in celebrating 25 wonderful years of the South Asian journalists' community.

REGISTER HERE  

KEYNOTE PANEL 

WRITING ON ETHNICITIES, STATE AND CITIZENSHIP IN OUR TIMES  

Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction and two novels. Kumar’s most recent novel is Immigrant, Montana, included in the list of most “notable books of the year” at the New York Times and also the “best books of the year” at The New Yorker. (Former President Barack Obama also named Immigrant, Montana among his favorite books of the year.) In Spring 2020, Duke University Press will publish Kumar’s book on writing and style, Every Day I Write the Book. In 2016, Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for nonfiction and also a Ford Fellowship from US Artists. His writing has been published in Granta, Harper’s, The New Yorker, the Guardian, Brick, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times. Kumar has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, the Lannan Foundation, the Norman Mailer Writing Colony, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. He is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College.
@amitavakumar

Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, the Telegraph, and Buzzfeed, and she has a drawn column on Shondaland. She currently teaches at The New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College.
@mirajacob

Dr. Neeraj Kaushal is an economist and journalist by training, and an expert on comparative immigration policy and the author of a new book on this topic, Blaming Immigrants. She is professor of Social Policy and chair of the doctoral program at Columbia School of Social Work. In Blaming Immigrants: Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement she investigates the core causes of rising disaffection towards immigrants globally and tests common complaints against immigration. She has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters on immigrants and other vulnerable populations. She writes a monthly column in the Economic Times, India’s largest financial daily.

Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto (2019) and Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2005), which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. He has won the O. Henry Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction, a Whiting Award in Fiction and Nonfiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has also written original screenplays for films, including New York, I Love You (2008) and Mission Kashmir (2000). His work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s, Time, and Newsweek, and has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered. He is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University.
@suketumehta

EVENT PROGRAM 

6-7 PM
Registration & Cocktail Hour  

7 PM
SAJA Over The Years : A panel of SAJA board members promise to everyone down the memory lane.
Panelists: Sree Sreenivasan, Anusha Shrivastava, Vikas Bajaj, Sharaf Mowjood, Jyoti Thottam.
Moderator: Prerana Thakurdesai  

7.45 PM
SAJA Journalism Awards presentation

8.10 PM
Keynote Panel: Writing on Ethnicities, State & Citizenship in our times with Amitava Kumar & Suketu Mehta 

9PM
Networking Hour