Stateside Stories: A biography of Kamala Harris, US Vice-President
Harris’s personality has caused her popularity to go down but there is no doubt that
she is only a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States.
by Mary Foran
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice-president of the United States. She is the first female vice-president and is the daughter of immigrants. Her father was born in Jamaica and her mother was born in India.
After her parents divorced, Harris and her younger sister Maya were raised by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, as a single parent.
Kamala says, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters…she knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”
After high school, Harris went to Howard University in Washington, DC. Her law degree came from the University of California at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. She then began working at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
Kamala and husband Douglas Emhoff in 2017
In 2003, Harris was elected as the District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco. She was the first woman and first African-American to serve as California’s Attorney General. While Attorney General, Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff and became stepmother to his two children.
In 2016, Harris was elected as a Senator for California, the second African-American woman ever to be elected to the US Senate in history. While in the Senate, Harris served on two powerful committees: the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. Harris became known as a sharp, aggressive questioner who could unnerve opposing witnesses.
Harris ran for President of the United States in 2019, although she did not win the Democratic Primary. Some say it was her commitment to fighting injustice, her eloquence and her capabilities for leadership and governance which determined Joe Biden to select her for his running mate, besides the fact that she was a woman, who he promised to pick, and a minority.
On November 7, 2020, Harris spoke to a crowd in Wilmington, Delaware and said: “While I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris with their respective spouses flank U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Omar Jones of the Joint Task Force-National Capital Region, during the pass in review ceremony at the 59th Presidential Inauguration, the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., January 20, 2021
The Biden-Harris team was sworn into office on January 20, 2021.
Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California on October 20, 1964, making her 58 although she looks much younger.
Polls have shown that Biden’s age and confusion have left him with plummeting popularity. And Harris’s personality has caused her staff to quit and her popularity polls to go down.
But there is no doubt about it: she is only a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States.
Source: Wikipedia
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Images
>Featured image (Kamala Harris)/Gage Skidmore, via Flickr, CC BY-SA2.0
>Quote mark/Oakus 53, CC BY-SA4.0
> Kamala and Douglas Emhoff/Kamala Harris, PD
>Pass in review ceremony, 59th Presidential inauguration 2021/DoD photo, US Army Sgt. Gabriel Silva, PD
