Vice President Harris: A new chapter opens in US politics

For more than two centuries, top ranks of American power have been dominated by men — almost all of m white. That ends on Wednesday. Kamala Harris will become first female vice president — and first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold role.

Her rise is historic in any context, ar moment when a stubborn boundary will fall away, expanding idea of what's possible in American politics. But it's particularly meaningful because Harris will be taking office at a moment of deep consequence, with Americans grappling over role of institutional racism and confronting a pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black and brown communities.

Those close to Harris say she'll bring an important — and often missing — perspective in debates on how to overcome many hurdles facing incoming administration.

“In many folks' lifetimes, we experienced a segregated United States," said Lateefah Simon, a civil rights advocate and longtime Harris friend and mentee. “You will w have a Black woman who will walk into White House t as a guest but as a second in command of free world."

Harris — child of immigrants, a stepmor of two and wife of a Jewish man — “carries an intersectional story of so many Americans who are never seen and heard."

Harris, 56, moves into vice presidency just four years after she first went to Washington as a senator from California, where she'd previously served as attorney general and as San Francisco's district attorney. She had expected to work with a White House run by Hillary Clinton, but President Donald Trump's victory quickly scrambled nation's capital and set st for rise of a new class of Democratic stars.

Her swearing-in comes almost two years to day after Harris launched her own presidential bid on Martin Lur King Jr. Day in 2019. Her campaign fizzled before primary voting began, but Harris' rise continued when Joe Biden chose her as his running mate last August. Harris had been a close friend of Beau Biden, elder son of Joe Biden and a former Delaware attorney general who died in 2015 of cancer.

inauguration activities will include ds to her history-making role and her personal story.

She'll be sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, first woman of color to serve on high court. She'll use two Bibles, one that belonged to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, late civil rights icon whom Harris often cites as inspiration, and Regina Shelton, a longtime family friend who helped raise Harris during her childhood in San Francisco Bay Area. drumline from Harris' alma mater, Howard University, will join presidential escort.

She'll address nation late Wednesday in front of Lincoln Memorial, a symbolic choice as nation endures one of its most divided stretches since Civil War and two weeks after a largely white mob stormed U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn election results.

“We’re turning p off a really dark period in our history,” said Long Beach, California, Mayor Robert Garcia, a Harris ally. As Democrats celebrate end to Trump's presidency, Garcia said he hopes significance of swearing in nation's first female vice president isn't overlooked.

“That is a huge historical moment that should also be uplifted,” he said. Harris has often reflected on her rise through politics by recalling lessons of her mor, who taught her to take on a larger cause and push through adversity.

“I was raised to t hear ‘.’ Let me be clear about it. So it wasn’t like, “Oh, possibilities are immense. Whatever you want to do, you can do,'" she recalled during a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview that aired Sunday. “, I was raised to understand many people will tell you, ‘It is impossible,’ but don’t listen.'"

While Biden is main focus of Wednesday's inaugural events, Harris' swearing-in will hold more symbolic weight than that of any vice president in modern times.

She will expand definition of who gets to hold power in American politics, said Martha S. Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All."

People who want to understand Harris and connect with her will have to learn about what it means to graduate from a historically Black college and university rar than an Ivy League school. y will have to understand Harris' traditions, like Hindu celebration of Diwali, Jones said.

“Folks are going to have to adapt to her rar than her adapting to m,” Jones said.

Her election to vice presidency should be just beginning of putting Black women in leadership positions, Jones said, particularly after role Black women played in organizing and turning out voters in vember election.

“We will all learn what happens to kind of capacities and insights of Black women in politics when those capacities and insights are permitted to lead,” Jones said.

Im Credits: Associated Press