Harris makes history as first black female vice-president and will wield serious power
KAMALA HARRIS was yesterday sworn into office as the 49th vice-president of the US – the first woman to hold the office in the nation’s history, as well as the first black woman and first woman of South Asian descent to hold the title.
Fittingly, she was sworn in by Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Justice on the US Supreme Court.
The vice-presidency of Ms Harris – a former prosecutor, district attorney, state attorney general and US senator, and the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants – marks a critical milestone for political representation at an equally turbulent moment in American history.
Her election to the second-highest office in the executive branch arrives more than 50 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act that sought to enfranchise black Americans; nearly 50 years after Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and black American to seek a major party presidential nomination; and more than 100 years following the ratification of the 19th amendment of the US constitution.
But the inauguration of Ms Harris came just two weeks to the day a mob of insurrectionists – including white nationalists and far-right militants who ascribe to racist and antisemitic conspiracies – stormed into the chambers where she once sat.
Speaking from the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Tuesday night, Ms Harris invoked the incoming administration’s monthslong appeal for national unity, underscoring America’s deep divisions but seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
“For many months, we have grieved by ourselves,” she said. “Tonight, we grieve and begin healing together. Though we may be physically separated, we the American people are united in spirit.
“My abiding hope, my abid
ing prayer, is we emerge from this ordeal with a new wisdom.”
It’s a moment that will require President Biden to rely on Vice-President Harris to take an active, central role in the administration.
Mr Biden, looking to his formative relationship with former president Barack Obama, has said he wants his vice-president to “be the last voice in the room”.
Ms Harris developed a personal relationship with Mr Biden during her term as California’s attorney general, when she became close to then-Delaware attorney general Beau Biden, the president’s son.
He died following a brain cancer diagnosis in 2015.
Her ascendancy against the nation’s racial disparities and an uprising among white supremacists threads a needle through US history.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, opening yesterday’s inauguration ceremony, said: “When she takes the oath of office, little girls and boys across the world will know that anything is possible.”
Following the Biden-Harris victory in November’s general election, the Congressional Black Caucus said it was “confident that her zeal for improving the upward mobility of marginalised groups in America will continue to be a priority in this next phase”.
The Harris family reflects the nation’s growing diversity – continuing a series of firsts, she is married to the nation’s first-ever ‘second gentleman’, Doug Emhoff, who is white.
Vice-President Harris enters a White House familiar to Mr Biden and full of former Obama administration officials.
But the 56-year-old is set to build one of the most influential vice-presidencies in US history, with President Biden drawing on his experience in the role alongside Mr Obama, and hoping to elevate the office of the nation’s first black woman vice-president. (© Independent, London)