Kamala Harris breaks another glass ceiling and becomes Vice President of the United States.
Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, is the woman who has reached the highest leadership in the country.
From the earliest days of her childhood, Kamala Harris was taught that the road to racial justice was long.
During the campaign, Harris often spoke of those who had gone before her, of her parents, immigrants drawn by the fight for civil rights in America, and of the ancestors who had paved the way.
When she took the stage in Texas days 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," she 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 rise to the vice-presidency, Harris will become the first woman and the first woman of color to hold that position, a milestone for a troubled nation grappling with a damaging history of racial injustice that, once again, was exposed in a divisive election. Harris, 56, embodies the future of a country that becomes more racially diverse, even if the person chosen by voters to lead the binomial is a 77-year-old white male.
The fact that she has risen higher in the country's leadership than any other 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 a United States senator in 2016, she became the second black woman in the history of the chamber.
Almost immediately, she made a name for herself in Washington with her withering flair at Senate hearings, questioning her adversaries at crucial moments that sometimes went viral.
However, what distinguished her was her personal biography: the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, she was immersed in issues 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 "seas of legs that moved" in the protests. She recalled listening to Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to organize a national campaign for the presidency, speak in 1971 at a black Berkeley cultural center she frequented as a child. "Tell me about strength!" He wrote.
After several years in Montreal, Harris attended Howard University, a historically black university and one of the most prestigious in the country, and later worked as a prosecutor in cases of domestic violence and child exploitation. She talks easily and often about the death of her mother, a breast cancer researcher; her white Jewish husband, Douglas Emhoff, who will make history in his own right by becoming the first second gentleman; and her stepchildren, who call her Momala.
It was a story she tried to tell on the election campaign during the Democratic primary with mixed success. By launching her candidacy with tributes to Chisholm, Harris drew a crowd in Oakland that her advisers estimated at more than 20,000 people, a tremendous show of strength that immediately established her as one of the leading candidates in the campaign. Yet, competing for the nomination against the most diverse field of candidates in history, she failed to garner a surge of support and withdrew weeks before the votes were cast.
Part of her challenge, especially with the progressive wing of the party she sought to win over, was the difficulty she had in reconciling her previous positions as California attorney general with current trends in her party. She struggled to define her political agenda, wavering over healthcare and even her own attack on Biden's race record, perhaps the toughest attack she 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 well suited for the vice presidency, a role that requires moderating personal views in deference to the boss. As a vice presidential nominee, 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 run, she continued to make a concerted effort as Biden's running mate to reach people of color, some of whom said. feel represented in national politics for the first time.
Many witnessed - and rejected - the persistent racist and sexist attacks by conservatives. President Donald Trump has refused to pronounce her name correctly and, after the vice-presidential debate, ridiculed her by calling her a "monster."
For some of her supporters, the virulence Harris endured was another aspect of her experience that seemed familiar.
“I know what I got into as the only African-American at the table,” said Clara Faulkner, acting mayor of Forest Hill, Texas, as she waited for Harris to address a socially estranged crowd in Fort Worth. "It's just seeing how the ways of the Lord are inscrutable."
While some members of the ruling political class voiced outrage at the insults, 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, it's almost like these things don't affect her spirit," Booker said. "She has endured this her entire career and does not give those people permission 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.
Representative 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 mine and those of 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 ”.
The defeat of the Democrats in minor electoral contests somewhat tempered the atmosphere of celebration, as well as the nostalgic feeling among some activists and leaders that this historic first time still leaves women in second place, closer than ever to the Oval Office. sure, but not on him.
The end of a presidency that inspired waves of opposition from women, many of them politically engaged for the first time, has left the "highest and hardest glass ceiling" intact. Voters in the Democratic primary, including a significant number of women, rallied in support of Biden and avoided women and people of color in the race because they believed Biden would be the most capable of defeating Trump. Marked by the defeat of Hillary Clinton four years ago, many believed the country was unprepared to elect a commander-in-chief.
Harris's presence on the ballot will always be tied to Biden's explicit promise to select a running mate in recognition that the future of the party will likely not look like him.
