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From the earliest days of her childhood, Kamala Harris was taught that the road to racial justice was long.
She spoke often during the campaign of those who had preceded her, of her parents, immigrants drawn by the civil rights struggle in America, and of the ancestors who had paved the way.
When she took the stage in Texas shortly before the election, Harris spoke of being unique in her role, but not lonely.
“Yes, sister, sometimes we can be the only ones who look like us walking in that room,” he told a mostly black audience in Fort Worth. “But what we all know is that we never walk alone in those rooms, we are all in that room together.”
With her promotion to the vice presidency, Ms. Harris will become the first woman and the first woman of color to hold that position, a milestone for a nation in turmoil, grappling with a damaging history of racial injustice exposed once again, in a division. choice. Harris, 56, embodies the future of a country that is becoming more racially diverse, even if the person chosen by voters to the top of the list is a 77-year-old white male.
The fact that she has risen higher in the country’s leadership than any woman underscores the extraordinary arc of her political career. A former San Francisco district attorney, she was chosen as the first black woman to serve as California’s attorney general. When she was elected to the United States Senator in 2016, she became the second black woman in chamber history.
Almost immediately, he made a name for himself in Washington with his withering prosecutorial style at Senate hearings, questioning his adversaries at times of high risk that sometimes went viral.
However, what also distinguished her was her personal biography: Daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, she was immersed in questions of racial justice from her early years in Oakland and Berkeley, California, and wrote in her memoirs of the memories of the songs. : screams and “sea of legs moving” at the protests. She recalled hearing Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to mount a national campaign for president, speak in 1971 at a black cultural center in Berkeley that she frequented as a child. “Talk about strength!” she wrote.
After several years in Montreal, Ms. Harris attended Howard University, a historically African-American university and one of the most prestigious in the country, and later worked as a prosecutor on domestic violence and child exploitation cases. He talks easily and frequently about his mother, a breast cancer researcher who died in 2009; of her white Jewish husband, Douglas Emhoff, who will make history in his own right as the First Second Knight; and her stepchildren, who call her Momala.
It was a story he tried to tell on the election campaign during the Democratic primary with mixed success. Beginning her candidacy with tributes to Ms. Chisholm, Ms. Harris drew a crowd in Oakland that her advisers estimated at more than 20,000, a tremendous show of force that immediately established her as one of the first in the race. But competing for the nomination against the most diverse field of candidates in history, he failed to garner widespread support and withdrew weeks before the votes were cast.
Part of his challenge, especially with the progressive wing of the party seeking to win, was the difficulty he had in reconciling his past positions as California attorney general with the current mores of his party. He struggled to define his political agenda, talking about health care and even his own attack on Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s racial background, perhaps the toughest attack he faced during the primary campaign.
“Politics has to be relevant,” Harris said in an interview with The New York Times in July 2019. “That’s my guiding principle: Is it relevant? No, ‘Is it a beautiful sonnet?’ “
But it is also this lack of ideological rigidity that makes her ideal for the vice presidency, a role that requires moderating personal opinions in deference to the man above. As a vice presidential candidate, Harris has gone to great lengths to make it clear that she supports Biden’s positions, even if some differ from those she supported during the primaries.
As she struggled to attract the same black women and voters she hoped would connect with her personal history during her primary candidacy, she continued to make a concerted effort as Mr. Biden’s running mate to reach people of color, some of whom they have done. he said he felt represented in national politics for the first time.
Many witnessed – and backed off – the persistent racist and sexist attacks by conservatives. President Trump has refused to pronounce her name correctly and, following the vice presidential debate, mocked her as a “monster.”
For some of her supporters, the vitriol that Ms. Harris had to endure was another aspect of her experience that they found identifiable.
“I know what I was put into as the only African American at the table,” said Clara Faulkner, interim mayor of Forest Hill, Texas, as she waited for Harris to address a socially estranged crowd in Fort Worth. “It’s just seeing God move in a powerful way.”
While some members of the political establishment expressed outrage at the insults, Ms. Harris’s friends knew that her pragmatism extended to her understanding of how the political world treats women of color.
Senator Cory Booker, Harris’ colleague and friend who has known her for decades, said in an interview that part of her caution was a form of self-protection in a world that hasn’t always embraced a black woman who breaks barriers.
“She still has that grace in her that it’s almost like these things don’t affect her spirit,” Booker said. “She has endured this her entire career and does not give people a license to enter her heart.”
After waiting days for results, Democrats rejoiced in a victory that offered a bright spot in a loss-making election for many of their candidates, including several high-profile women.
Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, who became involved in politics through Chisholm’s presidential campaign, said she always believed she would see the first black woman on the steps of the White House.
“Here you now have this remarkable, bright, and prepared African-American woman, a woman from South Asia, ready to fulfill the dreams and aspirations of Shirley Chisholm and myself and so many women of color,” she said. “This is exciting and it is finally a breakthrough that many of us have been waiting for. And it wasn’t easy. “
Defeats by Democrats in negative voting somewhat tempered the celebratory mood, as did the nostalgic feeling among some activists and leaders that this historic first still leaves women in second place, closer than ever to the Oval Office. sure, but not on her.
The end of a presidency that inspired waves of opposition by women, many of them politically engaged for the first time, has left the “highest and hardest glass ceiling” intact. Voters in the Democratic primaries, including a significant number of women, had joined Biden, avoiding women and people of color in the race because they believed Biden would be better able to beat Trump. Marked by the defeat of Hillary Clinton four years ago, many believed the country was not quite ready to elect a commander-in-chief.
Harris’s presence on the ballot will forever be linked to Biden’s explicit promise to select a running mate in recognition that the future of the party probably doesn’t look like him.
Ms. Harris now finds herself the heir to the White House with the clearest position. Perhaps more than any other vice president in recent memory, he will be scrutinized for his ambitions, a level of attention that is perhaps inevitable for No. 2 of the oldest incoming No. 1 in history.
Mr. Biden understands this, Mr. Booker said, “He’s really leading us to the next election.”
The Allies say Harris is keenly aware of his place in history. She sees her work as connected to both the civil rights leaders who came before her (the “ancestors,” as she calls them) and the generations she hopes to empower.
Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, a rising figure on the party’s left wing, said Harris’s rise was a deep source of pride among South Asians, expanding the imagination of how high they can climb in public life. American. Ms. Jayapal has spoken proudly of her own connection to the new vice president, writing an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times in August describing her intertwined family history in South India.
“She understands what it means to be the daughter of immigrants, what it means to be a person of color who seeks racial justice,” she said, pointing to Ms. Harris’ work on domestic worker rights and helping Muslim immigrants obtain access to a lawyer. “There are so many things that you don’t have to explain to a Vice President Harris and I think she will fight for many of the issues that are important to our South Asian community.”
The Little Sisterhood of Black Women in Federal Politics also sees Ms. Harris as a mentor and ally, praising her advocacy on issues like Black maternal mortality and anti-lynching legislation that have typically not received the spotlight that you can follow a high voltage policy. brand.
When Rep. Lauren Underwood was riding her first run for Congress, trying to become the first black woman to win her predominantly white suburban Chicago district, Harris stopped by for coffee.
“There are not so many Black women who have been at the highest level of politics in this country. There are not that many black women who have participated in very competitive careers, “said Ms. Underwood, who became the youngest black woman elected to Congress in 2018.” Have the opportunity to learn, coach and meet someone who has done that. it’s something that I find incredibly valuable. “
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a prominent black progressive scholar, praised Ms. Harris’s rise to the vice presidency, describing her as “well positioned to weather the storms that will definitely come now that she has passed through the glass ceiling.”
But amid the joy and sense of empowerment to see a woman of color as the nation’s second-highest elected official, she also cautioned that the historic moment should not distract progressives from continuing to push their agenda.
“This is still the Biden administration, what Kamala Harris thinks or does has to be recognized as part of that administration,” he said. “So we cannot allow the pedal to the metal to slow down in any way because we are celebrating the fact that we have had this great moment.”
For others, that moment has been a long time coming.
Opal Lee, 94, paid a poll tax when she went to vote for the first time, choosing between voting for the Democratic candidate or buying food for her four young children. Decades later, Ms. Lee, a former teacher and activist from Fort Worth, Texas, celebrated the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Despite the health risks of the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Lee has no intention of missing Biden’s inauguration in Washington this January, to witness Ms. Harris.
“I want to be able to tell my great-great-grandchildren how a woman feels to be vice president,” she said. “I just have to go.”
