What ‘Vice President Kamala Harris’ Means to Marginalized People
Madam Vice President Kamala Harris has a beautiful ring to it, and there’s a massive outpouring of admiration on social media for the woman who’s shattered the vice presidency’s glass ceiling with several firsts. She’s the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first person of South Asian heritage to be elected to either of the two highest offices in the country.
A U.S. senator from California, Harris is the daughter of two immigrants — her mother was born in India and her father in Jamaica. She became only the third Black woman to seek a major party’s presidential nomination when she ran in the Democratic primary opposite Joe Biden, now president-elect.
Not long after CNN called the election for Biden and Harris, she tweeted that she was ready to get to work.
Biden announced that Harris was his pick for the ticket in August when he said in a tweet that she is “a fearless fighter for the little guy and one of the country’s finest public servants.”
A graduate of one of the country’s preeminent historically Black colleges, Howard University, and University of California Hastings College of the Law, Harris was elected to the Senate in 2016. She served on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she was lauded for her tough questioning of Donald Trump’s cronies Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, and Brett Kavanaugh.
Harris began her career in the district attorney’s office in California’s Alameda County before becoming DA for the city and county of San Francisco and then California’s attorney general. Long an LGBTQ+ ally, Harris as AG refused to defend Proposition 8, the voter-approved ballot initiative that revoked marriage equality in California in 2008. She also led the charge to abolish gay and trans panic defenses in criminal trials.
While Harris has a long history with the LGBTQ+ community, often appearing at Pride events, her rise to the vice presidency has inspired so many, especially those people who feel represented by her identities.
Take a look at what Harris’s visibility means to so many.
Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Tracy E. Gilchrist
