China Cochran met Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Detroit last year and was swept away by the California senator’s ambition, charisma and leadership.
So when the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate on Tuesday – making her the first Black woman on a major US party’s presidential ticket – Cochran wasn’t just struck by the history.
It represented a full-circle moment for Black women, who the Democratic party often refer to as its backbone of support, yet who for generations have fought for their voices to be heard and political aspirations recognized.
“It tells Black girls that they can be president,” Cochran, who recently ran for state representative in Michigan, told the Associated Press. “I think it’s important for us to look at that and see other young women of color realize that they can go after their dreams and really make change in our world.”
Harris’ selection also marks the first time a person of Asian descent is on the presidential ticket. Born to a Jamaican father, Donald Harris, and Indian mother, she often speaks of her deep bond with her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, whom she has called her single biggest influence.
“My mother understood very well she was raising two Black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya [Harris’s younger sister] and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident Black women,” Harris wrote in her 2018 autobiography, The Truths We Hold.
As they appeared together for the first time as running mates at a high school in Biden’s home town of Wilmington on Wednesday, Biden and Harris reflected on the significance of the moment.
“This morning, all across the nation, little girls woke up – especially little Black and brown girls, who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities. But today, today, just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way,” Biden said.
Paying tribute to the many women that paved the way for her, Harris said she was mindful of all of the “heroic and ambitious women before me, whose sacrifice, determination and resilience make my presence here today even possible”.
Harris joins the ticket during a national reckoning on racism in the US. The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Black Americans and other people of color. Protests against systemic racism and police brutality are prominent in the minds of potential voters.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
