The United States of Aunties: The culture powering the Harris campaign

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For Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, it was “grandmother” — the label she frequently turned to when defining herself to voters, attempting to show them who she was apart from her work in politics.

For Kamala Harris, it might be “auntie.”

Harris’s presidential nomination has made history several times over. She is the second woman,  the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman ever nominated for president by a major party. Now, as she pushes to break the nation’s highest glass ceiling, women — and especially Black and South Asian women, who already lean Democratic — have mobilized, donating to her campaign in record-breaking numbers, including the $1.6 million raised by Win With Black Women only hours after Harris declared her candidacy.

For those who, like Harris, claim the label of “auntie” — a term rich with meaning, particularly in the South Asian and Black communities in which Harris grew up — the moment is particularly resonant. “Auntie” is an honorific with a flexible definition, a word that’s used to define not just blood relatives, but older women in the community who help shoulder caregiving responsibilities, in a role that’s a lot like that of a surrogate or extra parent.

Harris claims that identity proudly in her social media bios, calling herself “Wife, Momala, Auntie.” Friends and family have been known to use the “auntie” label in addressing her. References to aunties — including “Auntie Kamala” herself — pepper Harris’ 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold.”

“In cultures where it’s not just the nuclear family, but more an extended family or even neighborhood kinds of community relationships, aunts play a really important role,” said Patricia Sotirin, a professor emerita at Michigan Technological University, who has written several books on the role of aunts in America. “In terms of the vice president, it’s a really interesting identity to claim. When you claim the role of auntie, it’s a very empowered role.”

An “auntie” has a role less defined than a mother, Sotirin noted. An auntie can have a career, be childless, be the keeper of family lore — or none of the above. But critically, she said, “aunts are makers of community. They hold the bonds of community together.”

Now Harris, in claiming that identity, is energizing voters who do the same.

Padma Lakshmi, the Indian-American writer and model, posted a photo to Instagram of herself with Harris soon after the vice president announced her campaign, using the hashtag “#auntiepower.” In a Zoom call targeted at South Asian women, Mini Timmaraju, president of the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All, characterized Harris’ laugh — one her opponent Donald Trump has singled out in his efforts to criticize her — as “an auntie’s laugh.” In the same call, Pramila Jayapal, the first South Asian American woman elected to the House of Representatives, said she had received repeated texts from her own aunties about Harris’ ascent.

“She is many things to many people,” Timmaraju, who, like Harris, is of South Indian descent, told The 19th. “She’s the first Gen X, she’s the first multiracial, she’s the first Black woman, she’s the first person of South Asian descent. Kamala Harris throughout her career has embodied these different entities.”

The term “auntie” is, to be sure, a complex label, in part because of the widespread cultural stigma against older women. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance attempted to weaponize this stigma when he mocked “childless cat ladies,” directing the barb at Harris and other Democratic party leaders. His point was that people without biological children don’t have a “direct stake” in the nation’s future. (Harris has two stepchildren and has talked about helping raise her niece.)

Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay have both expressed their distaste for being addressed as aunties. Harris has also had her moments of reticence: In a 2019 video, she instructed actress and writer Mindy Kaling, who is 14 years younger, not to call her “auntie.”

“I think of [Harris] as a big cousin, because I refuse to say that we are aunties at this point,” said Melissa Murray, a legal scholar at New York University who is a Black Gen X woman. (Harris was born after the end of the baby boom but during the baby boomer years, so she probably misses Gen X, but just barely.)

Still, numerous women who identify as aunties — particularly South Asian American and Black women — said they are newly energized by Harris’ ascent. She feels like one of their own, many said, someone who will listen to and understand their concerns.

“There’s a different kind of euphoria,” said Deepali Gulati, 59, who lives just outside of Boston and works at a support organization for South Asian and Arab survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. “I had stopped watching the news because it’s the same thing over and over again. I’m interested now.”

When Ardeana Scott-Yon, a P.E. teacher and athletic department administrator, attended a recent Harris rally in Atlanta, she brought her 6-year-old niece with her. “I want my baby to see this,” said Scott-Yon, who is Black. She hoped that letting her see the vice president speak would teach her “that she’s able to do whatever she wants to do. Nothing is off limits.”

The latest polling shows the election remains a virtual coin-flip; Black women and South Asian women both were already more likely to vote for Democrats, even without Harris on the ticket. Women across all racial groups, but especially Black women, are more likely to say they prioritize protecting abortion and reproductive rights, an issue Harris has emphasized in her campaign.

Some self-described “aunties,” like Sarbani Hazra, a 41-year-old woman of Bengali origin from Philadelphia, had already planned to campaign for Democrats. But watching Harris’ candidacy, she said, has encouraged her to do more: She’s considering applying for jobs with the campaign, or even running for local office herself.

Then there are women like Iram Khan, 44, a first-time voter who recently moved from California to Raleigh, North Carolina, where she will be casting her ballot. Because California is solidly Democratic, Khan didn’t feel as if voting there would carry a lot of weight. That’s not the case in North Carolina, a battleground state. She planned to vote for President Joe Biden, though half-heartedly. “I would have had to drag myself to the polls,” she said.

But when Khan, who is of Pakistani descent, learned that Biden would not run for a second term and that Harris would take his place in the race, her stance changed. Within 24 hours, she said, she went from fearing that voters would not support Harris to being excited in ways she hadn’t felt since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign.

Khan is already trying to get more involved by sharing voting resources on social media to help mobilize other Asian American voters in her state, especially those who are also South Asian.

To her, it’s moving to see a woman close to her age and background be touted as possibly presidential. “For Kamala, if she’s the president? I have two daughters. They’ll be looking at that, saying, ‘The president looks like me.’”

Jennifer Gerson contributed to this report.