Kamala Harris becomes first Black woman, South Asian elected VP

Kamala Harris made history today as the first Black woman elected as vice president of the US.

Kamala Harris is shattering 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, also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, represents the multiculturalism that defines America but is largely absent from Washington’s power centers, The Associated Press reported.

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.

Harris has been a rising star in Democratic politics for much of the last two decades, serving as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general before becoming a US 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 Jan. 20.

Biden’s running mate selection carried added significance because he will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, at 78, and has not committed to seeking a second term in 2024.

Harris often framed her candidacy as part of the legacy — often undervalued — of pioneering Black women who came before her, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s presidential nomination, in 1972.

“We’re not often taught their stories,” Harris said in August as she accepted her party’s vice presidential nomination.

“But as Americans, we all stand on their shoulders.”