“The disrespect that I think a lot of people accorded to her as a black woman, as a South Asian American woman, was something that I certainly feel every day,” said Jayapal, who was born in India.

Asked during a recent Harvard University conference with students, Jayapal was asked, “Did Kamala and her loss set back the cause of getting a woman elected?”

The former head of the House Progressive Caucus answered, “Yes, because I think that there are so many women who watch that and are just so furious about what she had to endure, and by extension, what we have to endure, right? And I think particularly for black women, this was really, really, really painful, because this country has been saved so many times by black women.”

While Harris was celebrated in most venues for her race and sex “firsts,” Jayapal suggested without examples that she was discriminated against during the election.

And she shamed the country for not embracing the minority candidate, though her failure came after the nation had a black president — Barack Obama — for eight years.

“How can we still be in a country where a qualified woman, and certainly a qualified woman of color, can’t win?” she said at the session organized by Harvard’s Institute for Politics.

Harris was the second female nominee for the Democratic Party, following Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. Both were beaten by President Donald Trump.

Jayapal said that she, too, has faced the type of criticism she said Harris did during her campaign, which ended with Trump winning a second term despite most media predictions of a different outcome.

“I do know, as a woman of color, as the first South Asian American woman, as one of only two dozen naturalized citizens to serve in Congress, what we have to endure is awful. It’s disgusting, it’s gross. It takes a toll on you emotionally,” said the influential four-term lawmaker.

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She said that the pressure to look “patriotic” as a liberal minority to win votes can be hard.

“You’re kind of in this place where, and I saw it with Barack Obama too, where you have additional pressures on you as a woman of color, as a man of color, as a black man, black woman in particular. And I think that the tendency can be to try to compensate for that by going too far in a different direction, right? You have to prove that you’re patriotic. You have to prove that you’re not a crazy left-wing radical. You have to prove all these things. And it’s just a hard, you know, just a hard thing,” she said.