“It took Harris a little while during her presidential run to open up about her Indian American heritage and Asian American identity,” Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy and political science professor at the University of California, Riverside, explained. “Part of that might have been due to the harsh treatment that Barack Obama had gotten about his father’s immigrant roots.”

During Obama’s historic run for president in 2008, he was targeted by the birther movement, in which some critics, including Donald Trump, perpetuated the conspiracy theory that he was born in Kenya, where his father is from. And despite him being open about his Christian faith, Obama was also accused of being Muslim, oftentimes by Islamophobic groups.

Ramakrishnan added that Harris appeared to be warming up to talking more about her heritage last fall, and expects her to continue as the country moves toward the November election.

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