As the highest-ranking woman ever elected in the US government, Harris’s victory gives hope to the women who were devastated by the defeat of Hillary Clinton four years ago.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Saturday paid tribute to women, particularly black women, on whose shoulders she leans as she breaks through the barriers that have kept mostly white men entrenched at the highest echelons of American politics for more than Two centuries.
“Tonight I reflect on her struggle, her determination and the strength of her vision to see what can be alleviated by what has been,” said Harris, wearing a white suit in tribute to women’s suffrage. President-elect Joe Biden had the character and audacity to “break through one of the most substantial barriers in our country and select a woman and her vice president.” she added.
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Harris said in her first post-election speech in the nation.
The 56-year-old senator from California, also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, represents the multiculturalism that defines America, but is largely absent from Washington’s centers of power. His black identity has allowed him to speak in personal terms in a year of reckoning about police brutality and systemic racism. As the highest-ranking woman ever elected in the US government, her victory gives hope to the women who were devastated by the defeat of Hillary Clinton four years ago.
Rising Star
A rising star in Democratic politics for much of the past two decades, Harris served as a San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general before becoming a United States senator. After he ended his own 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Joe Biden chose her as his running mate. They will be sworn in as president and vice president on January 20.
Biden’s choice of running mate had added significance because he will be the oldest president ever to take office, at 78, and he has not pledged to seek a second term in 2024.
Ms. Harris paid tribute to black women “who are too often overlooked but often shown to be the backbone of our democracy.”
Challenges galore
Despite the excitement surrounding Harris, she and Biden face great challenges, including a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll among people of color and a series of police killings of African Americans that have deepened racial tensions. Harris’s previous work as a prosecutor has sparked skepticism among progressive and young voters who expect her to endorse radical institutional change over gradual reforms in police, drug policy and more.
Jessica Byrd, who leads the Black Lives Movement Election Justice Project and The Frontline, a multiracial coalition effort to push voters forward, said she plans to participate in the rigorous organizing work necessary to propel Harris and Biden into policy. more progressive. .
“I deeply believe in the power of black women’s leadership, even when all of our policies don’t align,” Byrd said. “I want us to be committed to the idea that the performance is exciting and worthy of celebration and also that we have millions of black women who deserve a fair chance.”
Speaking of her late mother Shyamala Gopalan, Ms Harris said: “When you came here from India at the age of 19, you might not have imagined this moment. But she deeply believed in an America where a moment like this is possible. ”
Kamala means “lotus flower” in Sanskrit and Ms. Harris nodded to her Indian heritage throughout the campaign, including calling out her “chitthis”, a Tamil word for a maternal aunt, in her first speech as candidate of Mr. partner. When Georgia Senator David Perdue mocked her name at a rally in October, the hashtag #MyNameIs took off on Twitter, with South Asians sharing the meaning of their names.
Fighting racism, sexism
The mockery of his name by Republicans, including Trump, was just one of the attacks Harris faced. Trump and his allies sought to brand her a radical and a socialist despite her more centrist record, an effort intended to make people uncomfortable with the prospect of a black woman in leadership. She was the target of online disinformation laced with racism and sexism about her qualifications to serve as president.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington said Ms. Harris’s power comes not just from her life experience, but also from the people she already represents. California is the most populous and most diverse state in the nation; almost 40% of the people are Latino and 15% are Asian. In Congress, Harris and Jayapal have teamed up on bills to ensure legal representation for Muslims targeted by Trump’s 2017 travel ban and to extend rights to domestic workers.
“That’s the kind of politics that also happens when there are voices like ours at the table,” said Ms. Jayapal, who in 2016 was the first South Asian woman elected to the US House of Representatives.
Ms. Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s historically black universities, and became engaged to Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority created by and for black women. He campaigned regularly in the HBCUs and tried to address the concerns of young black men and women eager to go to great lengths to dismantle systemic racism.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who considers Ms. Harris a mentor, views Ms. Harris’s success through the lens of her own identity as the granddaughter of a sharecropper.
“African Americans are not too far from slavery and the horrors of racism in this country, and we are still feeling the impacts of that with the way they treat us and what is happening around this racial uprising,” he said. Ms. Harris’s candidacy “instills a lot of pride and a lot of hope and a lot of excitement in what is possible.”
Friends Sarah Lane and Kelli Hodge, each with three daughters, brought the six girls to a Harris rally in Phoenix in the final days of the race. “This car is full of girls who dream big. Come on Kamala! read a poster taped to the trunk of the car.
Ms. Lane, a 41-year-old attorney of Hispanic and Asian descent, volunteered for Ms. Biden and Ms. Harris, her first time working for a political campaign. When asked why she brought her daughters, ages 6, 9 and 11, to see Ms. Harris, she replied, “I want my girls to see what women can do.”
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