Michigan Asian-American leaders say a Harris presidency could be gamechanger

(Michigan Advance) Since her daughter was in middle school, Canton Township Trustee Tania Ganguly said she’s been hearing her daughter say that she’s going to be the first president of the United States of Indian descent.

“You hear that, but when I saw Kamala Harris, that was a possibility right?… That was something that was happening much earlier than I expected,” Ganguly said, remembering the excitement in her Indian-American household in 2019 when now-Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrant parents, announced her candidacy for the 2020 election.

About 20% of Canton’s population, the metro Detroit township where Ganguly lives, is Asian American, and around 400,000 Michiganders checked Asian as at least one of their identities in the 2020 U.S. census.

Ganguly emigrated from India more than two decades ago. And when one of the Democratic presidential primary debates in 2019 was in Detroit, Ganguly was thrilled that her daughter, then in high school, could see a presidential candidate like Harris who also came from immigrant parents.

“That made me very excited that we had someone from our community. … I could totally identify with her mother,” Ganguly said. ...............(more)

https://michiganadvance.com/2024/08/05/michigan-asian-american-leaders-say-a-harris-presidency-could-be-gamechanger/