Kamala Harris has made history on Saturday, November 7 by becoming the first Black woman elected as vice president of the United States.
She has broken through barriers that have kept men — almost all of them white — entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries.
The 56-year-old California senator is also the first person of South Asian descent elected vice president to US President-elect, Joe Biden, who snatched incumbent President, Donald Trump’s opportunity at a second term in office.
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This represents the multiculturalism that defines America but has been largely absent from Washington’s power centers.
Her Black identity has allowed her to speak in personal terms in a year of reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism.
As the highest-ranking woman ever elected in American government, her victory gives hope to women who were devastated by Hillary Clinton’s defeat four years ago.
Born in 1964 to two parents active in the civil rights movement, Harris has been a rising star in Democratic politics for much of the last two decades.
She once served as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator.
After Harris ended her own 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate. They will be sworn in as president and vice president on January 20.
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Biden’s running mate selection carried added significance because he will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, at 78, and hasn’t committed to seeking a second term in 2024.
