Former senator Kamala Harris became the first woman to reach the Vice Presidency of the United States on Wednesday, after being sworn in before the Capitol in a ceremony marked by sanitary restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and security measures.
Harris has recited the protocol text before Magistrate Sonia Sotomayor, the Hispanic first judge of the Supreme Court, and accompanied by her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who becomes the ‘second gentleman’ of the United States for her part.
She has used two Bibles, one that belonged to a friend and neighbor of her family, Regina Shelton, and one that was owned by the first African-American to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall.
At the ceremony, she wore designs by Christopher John Rogers and Sergio Hudson, black designers. She was dressed in purple as a nod to Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to run for President of the United States.
The 56-year-old vice president rises a new step in a political career in which she has also been California’s first black woman attorney general and the second black senator in the United States. The daughter of immigrants – a Jamaican father and an Indian mother – her figure is opposed to that of Joe Biden – a man, white and older -, more in line with the traditional ‘establishment’ of Washington.
Harris tried in the last Democratic primaries to be the party’s candidate for the White House, but it is not ruled out that her final opportunity may come in the future, even in 2024 if advanced age leads Biden to resign for a second term. Until that happens, she will have a prominent role in which she aspires to be the government with the most women in the history of the United States.
Harris succeeds Mike Pence, who has been present at the ceremony this Wednesday, unlike the outgoing president, Donald Trump.
