Kamala Harris marked her historic inauguration Wednesday as the first woman, first Black and South Asian American vice president with a tribute to her mother and the women who have fought for equality for 100 years.
The new documentary Kamala Harris: To Be The First details her journey of hope from Berkeley to Washington, where she will soon begin a new chapter as the first Black and Asian woman elected vice president of the United States. When I first went to court, and I would go into the Superior Court in Los Angeles downtown and I was shocked to see just lining the halls, just people . just tugging at my at the time, double-breasted jacket to say you know, Help. Help. It was just so impactful, he said in September. So for 30 years this has been sticking with me, how some are able to hire these amazing lawyers and many aren t, he added.
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Harris became a stepmother of two when she wed Douglas Emhoff.
• 17 min read
Kamala Harris breaks barriers with her multicultural, blended family
Vice President Harris became a stepmother of two when she wed Douglas Emhoff in 2014.Rob Carr/Getty Images
When Kamala Harris took the oath of office Wednesday to become vice president, she became the first woman and first woman of color to serve in that elected position.
Harris also made history as the first stepmother to be America s vice president, a moment that blended families across the country said they were planning to watch with joy.
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In the lead-up to the 2016 election, former president (and, at that moment, aspiring first gentleman) Bill Clinton trotted out a stump speech line at an event for his wife, telling reporters, “I am tired of the stranglehold that women have had on the job of presidential spouse.” Four years later, when presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to pick a woman as his vice president and to bean-count his cabinet to ensure that it met a level of racial and gender diversity that reflected America itself he perhaps did not think of the trailblazing first he might be furnishing by proxy: a male vice presidential spouse. With his appointment of Kamala Harris as running mate, a Magritte-style defamiliarization of the familiar took place, as the most traditional image in American politics a blue-suited, brown-haired white man suddenly reconstituted itself as a radical one, and Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer in his mid-fifties, whom she