Kamala Haris’s father, Donald J. Harris, is a Jamaican-American economist and emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University.
Kamala has been the United States vice president under President Joe Biden since 2021 and is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for the 2024 presidential election.
Highlights
- Donald J. Harris’s parents were Irish & African Jamaicans, and he served as an assistant in the Anglican Church.
- His ancestors were enthusiastic enslavers, and the British government gave him almost €11 million in modern money to compensate his slaves.
- He married Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who is of Indian descent, and they have two children.
Donald J. Harris is famous for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics, and his philosophy questioned orthodox assumptions.
He became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and Northwestern University.
Likewise, he became the first Black scholar to be granted tenure in Stanford’s Department of Economics in 1972 and retired in 1998.
Afterward, he pursued his interest in advancing public policies to promote economic growth and social equity.
Donald contributed to economics with his book Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution, published in 1978.
Donald J. Harris’s Ancestors Were An Enthusiastic Enslaver
86 years old Donald J. Harris was born in Brown’s Town, St. Ann Parish, Colony of Jamaica, on August 23, 1938.
His parents, Oscar Joseph Harris and Beryl Christie Harris, named him Donald Jasper Harris. They were Irish & African Jamaicans.
Fun fact: Did you know that Kamala Harris' father, Donald J Harris, was a post-Keynesian & Marxian economist?
— Maxine Fowé (@maxinefowe) July 21, 2024
His research focused on economic inequality, uneven development & how the growth rate of an economy is fundamentally dependent on the class structure of society. pic.twitter.com/490r3uJXWi
Donald was baptized and served as an assistant in the Anglican Church, which, according to his grandmother’s statement, was founded by Irish-born Hamilton Brown.
He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in May 2015, but his children often visited their ancestors in Jamaica as they grew up.
Northern Irish historian Stephen McCracken‘s genealogical research reveals that Donald’s three-time paternal great-grandfather, Hamilton Brown, was born in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1776.
Hamilton emigrated to Jamaica, which was then a British colony. He was an enthusiastic enslaver on the sugar plantations who opposed the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1832.
Moreover, University College London’s record showed that the British government gave him almost €11 million in modern money to compensate his slaves.
My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me).
Donald J. Harris wrote.
Harris’s name comes from his paternal grandfather, Joseph Alexander Harris. He was a landowner and agricultural product exporter who died in 1939.
Nonetheless, Donald married Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who is of Indian descent. They married in July 1963 but divorced when their first daughter, Kamala Harris, was around 6.
Additional Information
- Donald J. Harris was honored for his outstanding contribution to national development with Jamaica’s National Honor Award, an appointment to the Order of Merit.
- He arrived at the University of California, Berkeley, on the Issa Scholarship in the fall of 1961.
- He worked on economic analysis and policy regarding his native country’s economy. Later, the Government of Jamaica promoted the National Industrial Policy and the Growth Inducement Strategy of 2011.
