US vice president-elect Kamala Harris has paid tribute to the women, particularly women of colour, whose shoulders she stands on as she shatters barriers that have kept mostly white men entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries.
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"Tonight I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been," Harris said, wearing a white suit in tribute to women's suffrage.
President-elect Joe Biden had the character and audacity "to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country, and select a woman and his vice president." she added.
"While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last," Harris said in her first post-election address to the nation.
The 56-year-old California senator, also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, represents the multiculturalism that defines America but is largely absent from Washington's power centres.
Her black identity has allowed her to speak in personal terms in a year of reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism. As the highest-ranking woman ever elected in American government, her victory gives hope to women who were devastated by Hillary Clinton's defeat four years ago.
Harris told little children to "dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they're never seen it before."
After Biden's speech, she was joined on stage by her family, including her two grand-nieces who wore white dresses.
A rising star in Democratic politics for much of the last two decades, Harris served as San Francisco's district attorney and California's attorney general before becoming a US senator.
After she ended her own 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate. They will be sworn in as president and vice president on January 20.
Biden's running mate selection carried added significance because he will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, at 78, and hasn't committed to seeking a second term in 2024.
Harris often framed her candidacy as part of the legacy of pioneering Black women who came before her, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination, in 1972.
She paid tribute to Black women "who are too often overlooked but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy."
Despite the excitement surrounding Harris, she and Biden face steep challenges, including a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on people of colour, and a series of police killings of Black Americans that have deepened racial tensions.
Harris' past work as a prosecutor has prompted scepticism among progressives and young voters who are looking to her to back sweeping institutional change over incremental reforms in policing, drug policy and more.
Australian Associated Press
