When Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party's nomination back in August,

she began her speech by paying tribute to her parents.

So my mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an

unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer.

When she finished school, she was supposed to return home to a traditional

arranged marriage. But as fate would have it, she met my father,

Donald Harris, a student from Jamaica. They fell in love and got married and that act of self-determination made my sister

Maya and me.

Harris's multiracial identity has not been a major focal point during her short

campaign, but it has made headlines involving her opponent. This summer

former President Donald Trump was interviewed at a National Association of Black

Journalists Convention and said this about Harris.

She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number

of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black.

So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black? Harris's black and South Asian roots are a first for the top of a presidential ticket,

but she's certainly not the only person to embody that heritage.

The relationship between black and South Asian communities in the United States goes back

over a hundred years to the late 1800s when immigrants from British colonial India arrived in America.

Many of these young men took on jobs as peddlers or ship workers,

settling in New Orleans or New York.

But the US was not a very hospitable place for these new immigrants.

Both the peddlers and the ship workers were coming to the United States at a time

...