Investiture of Joe Biden. Who is Kamala Harris, its long-established vice president?
She represents the diversity of America, but also the grip Joe Biden needed to accompany her to the White House. This Wednesday, January 20, Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be sworn in as Vice President of the United States, but also the first person of color and the first to be of an immigrant background. Here's why Kamala Harris has already made history.
Kamala Harris paid two tributes on November 7 in her first speech as Vice President-Elect. On stage at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, she stepped forward dressed in white. An outfit reminiscent of that of the suffragists, those activists who paved the way for women's suffrage in the United States.
She also took the words of her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who died in 2009: “Although I am the first woman in this post, I will not be the last, because all the little girls who look at me tonight find that everything is possible in this country. "
This Wednesday, January 20, Kamala Harris, sometimes nicknamed "the feminine Obama", becomes the first woman to be sworn in as vice-president of the first world power, but also the first person of color and the first to be born immigration.
Daughter of an Indian researcher and a Jamaican professor
Her first name means "lotus flower" in Sanskrit, a classical language of the Brahmanic civilization of India. This is where her mother was born, before she went to study in the United States and became a renowned breast cancer researcher. His father, a professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, was born in Jamaica. Joe Biden has opted for complementarity with a 56-year-old running mate who reflects the diversity of America and who, with her energy, grip and determination, compensates for the oratorical weaknesses of the septuagenarian.
During the campaign, she crisscrossed the country in Converse shoes. She has often been filmed laughing out loud with her interlocutors or sharing a cooking recipe. And she's shown time and time again that she won't let herself be walked on. “Excuse me, I'm talking! She said to Republican Vice President Mike Pence during the debate between them on October 7.
During the Democratic primaries, even Joe Biden paid the price for his repartee. Kamala Harris, then a candidate, criticized her for having opposed “busing”, a racially mixed effort in the 1970s which consisted in transporting black children by bus to schools in white neighborhoods: “There was a small girl in California, who was part of the second class to be integrated into a public school [outside the sector, editor's note], and she took the bus every day. That little girl was me. "
Change the system
A California senator since 2017, Kamala Harris has spent the past four years fighting the Trump administration. She has served on various committees, including Judicial Affairs, where she has shone through the grill of the President's Supreme Court nominees: Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Her political commitment comes from her childhood and her career as a prosecutor. From an early age, she participated with her parents in demonstrations for civil rights. After their divorce, when she was 7, she was raised by her mother in a black neighborhood in Oakland, California, with her little sister Maya.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black children. She knew her adopted country would see us, Maya and me, as black girls, and she was determined to make us proud and confident black women, ”she wrote in her autobiography.
After a stint in Montreal, where her mother landed a job, Kamala Harris returned to study in the United States. She attended Howard University in Washington, an institution that trains the African-American elite. The young woman chose to pursue a career in law, in order, she says, to change the system from within. This is how she rose through the ranks as a prosecutor.
She worked with Beau Biden
She first worked in the San Francisco district attorney's office before being elected as its head in 2004 against her ex-boss. It is particularly illustrated with a reintegration program for petty offenders which will serve as a model elsewhere in the country. She is also challenging law enforcement unions by refusing to call for the death penalty for a gang member who murdered a police officer in 2009.
That didn't stop her in 2010 from becoming the first woman and person of color to be elected attorney general of California, a very political post. Among her feats of arms, Kamala Harris likes to recall that she negotiated a better deal with banking institutions for the victims of the subprime crisis. She had worked hand in hand with Beau Biden, then the Delaware attorney general.
Joe Biden's oldest son died of cancer in 2015, and Kamala Harris speaks fondly of him today. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Joe Biden chose her as his lieutenant. He has already warned that he would have the same working relationship with her, as he did with Barack Obama: when it comes to making an important decision, Kamala Harris will be "the last person in the room."
