Why is everyone talking about Kamala Harris and coconut trees?
It started with a coconut tree. Sorry — actually it starts with the context of what came before.
If you’re an active internet denizen, you might already know what I’m referencing: a viral clip of Vice President Kamala Harris delivering a speech while repeating a question that she says her mother often posed to her: “‘You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’”
But if you’re fortunate enough not to live online, this is your guide to catching up on all the Kamala Harris memes. Many have been percolating for months (or even longer). Now, after Biden’s disastrous debate has prompted speculation he’ll drop out of the race, the memes are everywhere.
The coconut line is more than a year old: from a swearing-in ceremony that Harris led in May 2023 in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. But it’s also a stand-in for how the vice president is often perceived in pop culture, in mainstream media, and online: as a bit of a punchline, someone lacking serious power and with a perplexing political track record, and as the closest we’ll get to recreating Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character in HBO’s Veep.
Call it ironic or unironic #KHive posting, being “Kamalapilled” or “coconutpilled,” or simply feeling “unburdened” (I’ll get to that in a second). The resurgence in Harris memes is a symptom of the angst and uncertainty many Americans are feeling as the country and the Democratic Party navigate yet another crisis.
So, to guide you through this discourse, I’ve rounded up a few of the most popular memes, starting with the foundational one.
“Coconut trees” and the context of what came before
When the vice president referred to her mom’s question about falling out of a coconut tree, she was recounting a lesson about the importance of history. Speaking to government appointees who would work on economic and education equity for Hispanic Americans, she emphasized that their task would be to aid not only young people, but also their parents, grandparents, teachers, and communities, “because none of us just live in a silo. Everything is in context.”
And she continued:
“My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’
You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
Now, the takeaway is clear enough, something that’s been said for centuries: No person is an island.
But it was her delivery that turned it into a meme: in a joking voice, with exaggerated hand and arm gestures, and with a signature Kamala Harris laugh.
At the time, social media users and right-wing accounts accused her of behaving strangely: “Obviously drunk,” one viral tweet said, while others used clips of the speech to describe being intoxicated or inebriated (which itself is another Harris meme).
Being “unburdened by what has been”
Around the time of the most recent return of the coconut tree clip, another of Harris’s quotes began to circulate: not a memorable one-off, but a catchphrase she uses over and over.
It was a go-to line during her 2020 presidential primary campaign and into the general election as Biden’s running mate: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
And thanks to a Republican Party supercut of all the times Harris has used the phrase in speeches, interviews, and appearances, the phrase went viral again. “Four straight minutes of ‘what can be, unburdened by what has been.’ It’s incredible. I had no idea she used it this much,” one Republican staffer said as he reshared the clip in the aftermath of the first presidential debate.
The literal meaning of this catchphrase varies from speech to speech, but it’s often used in the context of Harris’s trailblazing career, marking historic firsts as a woman of color in elected office and carrying the weight of history, or as a call to arms to dream bigger and leave the past behind.
In a way, this quote contradicts Harris’s coconut tree line. As one X user put it: “How are you supposed to exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you AND be, unburdened by what has been at the same time? Waiting for her 3rd great revelation that synthesizes these two.”
The “significance of the passage of time”
Speaking at an event in Louisiana to announce millions of dollars in funding for broadband access, Harris referenced touring a library and reflected on historical inequities.
“We were talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. When you think about it, there is a great significance in the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires.”
She repeated the phrase a few more times, as noted in a clip widely shared online, and especially by right-wing users in the last few days.
The wheels on the bus do go round and round
When seeing her campaign tour bus for the first time in 2019 during the Democratic presidential primaries, another video of Harris being a little awkward was shared on social media.
As the camera pans 180 degrees around her, she walks across a lawn and onto the bus as she giggles and sings “the wheels on the bus go round and round,” slightly off-key.
The vice president does impressions
More recently, clips of Harris showing another kind of less polished persona have also reappeared online: one from the ceremonial swearing-in of senators in January 2023, when Harris imitates Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet’s deep booming voice, and another from 2019, when she imitates her husband’s parents’ voices during an interview at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
There are plenty more
You might remember other classic Harris deliveries — or you might be encountering them for the first time:
How she seasons a turkey
Harris’s stint as vice president has often been pretty unremarkable, but it has provided a rich vein of memes, in part because she can be an awkward communicator.
It’s part of what fueled critical media coverage of her during the first year of her tenure, and which led the White House to largely sideline her during the first half of the Biden presidency.
Other Kamala memes are rooted in the hokey nature of a lot of modern political speech: derived from aphorisms and pseudo-philosophical diction in the hope of echoing something like former President Barack Obama’s oratory.
As the first female, Black, and South Asian vice president, Harris was always doomed to receive an extraordinary amount of scrutiny and bias — and emphasized her persona as a “joyful warrior” in part to combat some of those stereotypes. The joyful warrior, it seems, is sometimes a goofy one too. Harris delivers many of these lines in a genuinely funny way, with an affect unlike many politicians (described sometimes as just vibing along).
Still, all this talk about being KHive pilled, or coconutpilled, especially from people who were skeptical or critical of the vice president just a few weeks ago speaks to the uncertainty of this moment. Plenty of people are wondering whether Biden will still be the Democratic nominee by the end of the summer. They’re meme-ing their way to a new celebration of Harris — unburdened by what has been.