Vice President Kamala D. Harris. Writing and saying those words will never get old.

On Wednesday, January 20, 2021, the United States of America swore in former Senator Kamala Harris as the 49th Vice President. For the first time in its 245 year history, the nation known as the world’s greatest democracy has its first woman seated just a heartbeat away from the presidency. And not just any woman: a Black and Asian woman!

This. Is. HUGE!

First of all, Vice President Harris had to resign her position as U.S. Senator to step into her new role. Remember, she’s only the 2nd Black woman in history to be elected to the Senate. With her ascension to the vice presidency, there are now ZERO Black women serving in the United States Senate.

But here’s the thing: as Vice President, she’s now the president of the Senate. That’s right. She will now PRESIDE over that body’s daily proceedings. And all the Senators now have to call her “Madam President” while she does! Even that cruel seditionist Mitch McConnell has to address her as such. In other words, Sis got a double promotion: 2nd in command of the country and president over her former Senate colleagues. #BossMove

Of course that Vice President Kamala Harris is the first WOMAN to hold so high an elected office is also a VERY BIG DEAL. It’s been over 100 years since the 19th Amendment gave (some) women the right to vote in this country.  Over 100 years and we FINALLY have a female Vice President. It’s kind of wild to consider that, in the Great American Melting Pot that is the United States of America, every single one of the previous 48 VEEPs were white men. That’s because the framers of our republic never envisioned an America where women would have a say in our government, much less hold public office. Back then, women couldn’t vote, own property, or do much of anything without the consent of men.

Nor did the framers imagine an America where Black people would have equal rights under the law. After all, these were the men who, after much argument, decided that Black people weren’t even whole humans! Back then we were only considered 3/5 of a person for the census. Not to mention most of us were enslaved.

So when we fast forward from our nation’s founding to January 2021, the fact that our Vice President is a Black and Asian woman is a VERY BIG DEAL, indeed. Because not only is our VEEP a Black and Asian woman, she’s also an HBCU graduate (Howard University), a Divine Nine member (Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.), a former president of UC Hastings’ Black Law Students Association, and an honorary member of The Links, Inc. In other words, she’s Black af.

She’s our sister.

She’s us.

And she’s Asian, too. Specifically, her late mother was born in Tamil Nadu in India, though she came to the US when she was 19 years old. In fact, both of Vice President Harris’ parents emigrated to the United States, her father having come from Jamaica. Completing the near-perfect picture, America’s first Latina Supreme Court Justice (Justice Sotomayor) just swore this Black and Asian daughter of immigrants into the Vice Presidency, y’all! Talk about breaking barriers! Talk about HERstory!

Listen. No matter how you felt about then-Candidate Harris before the General Election, you’d have to be dead inside not to feel the immense gravity of her inauguration as Vice President. I’ll admit I voted for another candidate during the primaries. In fact, I didn’t vote for Biden, either back then.

But today, watching my sister place her hand on Thurgood Marshall’s Bible to take the oath of office, my heart filled and my tears flowed freely. No, really. I ugly cried. And I called out for my late mother, who never could have imagined that someone who looked like her could ascend to such heights in this country.

I thought about my Delta Sigma Theta soror, the late, great Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman elected to Congress. Shirley Chisolm was the first Black woman to run for President in 1972. Her courageous run paved the way for a Kamala Harris Vice Presidency nearly half a century later. I know Soror Chisolm and all our mothers and grandmothers who fought for fairness and dignity are smiling after today.

Most significantly, I thought about my precocious four year old grand Goddaughter and what this all means for her. For one thing, it means that despite living in a country where nearly half of her neighbors consider her “less than” simply because of her race and gender, she can still aspire to and attain the loftiest of goals. Because there are more people in this country who understand that experience, knowledge, facts, decency, fairness, and honesty aren’t corny characteristics to be mocked, but are the basic tenets upon which any democracy must rest.

The road from our nation’s founding to today was a long and arduous one. Our republic has withstood foreign invasion, civil war, civil unrest, and presidential assassinations. We’ve survived Reconstruction, Jim Crow, two World Wars, and a long Cold War. Together, we’ve faced down foreign and domestic terrorism, endless wars, and recessions. Somehow we even managed to survive the most corrupt and dangerous president in our nation’s history. Actually, 400,000 of our fellow Americans didn’t survive, thanks to our former president’s gross mishandling of the global pandemic that still threatens us.

Even after everything that could and should have broken us, our republic still stands. Thanks to the boundless efforts of so many, Americans have shown the world that our democracy still works. The American people have spoken, and a new era has begun. Vice President Kamala D. Harris is a Black and Asian woman who now sits a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world.

And that is a VERY BIG DEAL, y’all.

#BidenHarris #VicePresidentKamalaHaris #KamalaHarris #VEEP