'We've got a Black woman vice president': Kamala Harris victory proves voters open to women leaders: scholar
Harris is the first Black, South Asian woman to be named vice president
The announcement that Kamala Harris would become the United States' next vice president was welcome news for Catherine Squires.
"It's spectacular. It's wonderful. It's almost hard to believe, but I am ecstatic," said Squires, associate dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
"I'm a little bit gobsmacked because after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, the question was raised: will it happen in my lifetime?"
The question that Squires was grappling with was whether the United States would ever elect a woman to the country's highest political office, and now she has an answer.
Kamala Harris has become the first woman — and the first Black, South Asian woman — to be elected U.S. vice president.
Harris, 56, is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, and spoke personally about her identity throughout the 2020 campaign.
"My mother instilled in my sister, Maya, and me the values that would chart the course of our lives," Harris said during her nomination acceptance speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. "She raised us to be proud, strong Black women — and she raised us to know, and be proud of, our Indian heritage."
WATCH | Harris supporters share what her win means to them
Winning in the presidential race isn't the first history-making victory for the California senator. Following her tenure as San Francisco's attorney general, Harris was elected as the first Black woman to be named attorney general in California in 2010.
Though Squires says she doesn't agree with all of the vice president-elect's policy positions, she believes Harris's win is an exciting outcome in an election that, for days, was too close to call — and that it could have significant ripple effects for women in the White House.
"The only political T-shirt I bought this year was a T-shirt that has a picture of a young Kamala Harris ... and it says 'the first, but not the last,'" Squires told Cross Country Checkup.
"We've got a Black woman vice president. To me that shows that voters were not only willing to back Kamala Harris, but that they didn't buy the argument that it was too soon."
Landmark moment for women in White House
Harris is a graduate of Howard University — a historically Black institution — and for Niambi Carter, having an alumna named vice president-elect is a source of pride.
"We are certainly very heartened by this moment, not only for what it means for Kamala Harris, but what it means for our students at Howard University and other students at [historically Black colleges and universities] and minority-serving institutions across this country," said Carter, an associate professor of political science at Howard University.
When it comes to a candidate's alma mater, the significance of schools like Howard are often overlooked in favour of Ivy League and other well-known institutions, Carter says.
"They don't ever think about the institutions that Black communities, Latino communities and Indigenous communities have supported, and that have nurtured our communities and really made it possible to have this cadre of leadership in this country."
Carter agrees that Harris's victory is a landmark moment for women in politics, telling Checkup that with her as second in command, "we'll have a sense of what that could look like for our country who, unlike many of our peer nations, has yet to have a woman be chief executive."
"It makes people get used to the idea of voting for a woman," she said.
Harris is expected to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, alongside president-elect Joe Biden, though President Donald Trump has signalled that he will take legal action to challenge the election's outcome.
Asked what she would like to hear from Harris ahead of the swearing in, Carter says the pair must acknowledge the role of their supporter's efforts — many women and people of colour, she says — on the road to the White House.
"I want, at least, from this White House, to not just acknowledge, but to also talk about the ways in which they are going to incorporate these voices into the leadership of the party."
Written by Jason Vermes with files from The Associated Press. Produced by Kirthana Sasitharan.