Taking time for Harris’ big moment
Historic moments that expand possibilities and celebrate the breaking of barriers should be appreciated and neither rushed, taken for granted nor overlooked.
Such is the moment that Vice President Kamala Harris inhabits and that will always be hers — and this nation’s.
During a Democratic presidential debate in June 2019, Harris criticized Joe Biden’s opposition, during the 1970s, to busing as a means of desegregating public schools. Citing the experience of a little Black girl in California who had to be bused to integrate a school, Harris said, “That little girl was me.”
It was the most riveting sentence spoken during the Democratic debates and the high-water mark of Harris’ campaign, which ended a few months later. But Biden and Harris made amends, embodying the unity their campaign has pledged.
With Harris being sworn in as our nation’s first woman, Black woman and Asian American vice president, we have witnessed another historic moment. One that will resonate for generations through the lives of little girls who can look at Harris and say, “That vice president could be me” or, as we have seen on T-shirts worn by girls of color, “My VP looks like me.”
But let’s not be so limited in our thinking about gender. It’s also important that little boys look to Harris and see a woman as their vice president. It’s not as if Harris’ historic nomination has flown under the radar since Biden chose her as his running mate in August or, especially, since their election in November. But it also hasn’t received the attention such history deserves. The Jan. 6 insurrection by Trump supporters and two weeks of ensuing fears about Inauguration Day violence in some ways distracted from Harris’ ascension.
But on Wednesday, when she placed her left hand on Thurgood Marshall’s Bible, raised her right hand and took the oath of office from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, history had arrived. For the first time in America, a woman is vice president. This is an American moment. Political partisanship shouldn’t be so hardened that such a long denied, but finally achieved, milestone isn’t acknowledged with national pride.
Harris’ first official act as president of the U.S. Senate was to swear in the first Jewish and African American senators from Georgia and the first Mexican American senator from California. A trailblazer welcoming trailblazers.
Harris has said she won’t be the last woman and woman of color to serve as vice president. Across this land are countless little girls who believe her.