Vice President Kamala Harris' historic achievement

The first female vice president of the USA and the first colored person to occupy such a lofty executive leadership position has just made a landmark in US history. Kamala Harris is just a heartbeat away from the American presidency under a 78-year-old President Joe Biden, who may be too old to run, at 82, for a second term in 2024.

While Joe Biden represents unity, Kamala Harris is a symbol of diversity. Their team was and is the strongest call for unity in diversity, truly reflective of the American nation's rainbow union of different peoples, of immigrants and of aliens, of asylum seekers, of former slaves from Africa, of Mexicans and other Latinos, who crossed the borders in Texas and California, and other southern border territories,  who were all dreaming the American dream in the land of the brave and the home of the free. Black lives, Latinos lives and Asian lives all matter. This victory of the Biden-Harris team is a powerful message that there is no white supremacy, that all lives do matter.

The mother of Kamala was a young student from British India who dreamt of a better life by studying medicine in California, struggling against racial prejudices and discrimination, joining rallies and demonstration, asserting the universal rights of all peoples. Her father was also a student from Puerto Rico who crossed the border and also dreamt for a brighter future. The two aliens met in student rallies, they fell in love and got married. Kamala and her sister were born but the marriage somehow soured and the parents divorced. The mother was a solo parent but she worked hard and struggled and sent the two girls to good schools and they got decent education. Kamala became a lawyer and became a prosecutor, a crime buster and a graft buster.

Kamala was elected attorney general of the most pro-immigrant state in the US, perhaps next to Hawaii, the great state of California. This is the state that welcomed the first batch of Filipinos at the turn of the nineteenth century. Today, the biggest congregation of Fil-Ams reside in LA, San Francisco, Sacramento, Stockton and other suburbs and rural areas, living peacefully and working hard, paying honest  taxes and sending their children to decent schools. Someday, the Fil-Ams may also produce our own version of a Kamala. They did it in Hawaii when the Fil-Ams united and elected a Filipino governor. They can do it someday in the US federal government.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have made almost all things possible. Kamala sent a strong message to all the girls and women in the US and in the world that the best man for the job may be a woman. She has demonstrated that a colored woman of foreign ancestry can have an equal chance to achieve her dreams. Her victory has proven many people wrong. Those who look at women with condescension and sense of superiority, and those who look at colored people with contempt, telling them to home where they came from, those who have no basic respect for the dignity of women, can now start eating their words and biting the dust of indubitable reality of defeat.

Kamala Harris will help Joe Biden bring back the soul of the American nation, help the president-elect restore decency and honor, hope and integrity in a country that has been deeply wounded in the last four years. Kamala Harris may yet be the next president of the USA. She can achieve what Hillary Clinton failed to get. And when that happens, then at long last, America will join all other nations in the world with strong women taking on the mantle of leadership with grit and grace, with competence, compassion and care. Long live America.