It isn’t just the United States watching the election with bated breath — the world watched closely as the results came in. Now many people around the globe are chiming in on Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ historic nomination.
Much has already been written on the nominee’s background as a Black woman, and her identity as the daughter of immigrants — with a mother from India and a father from Jamaica.
The international community reacted to the news of Oakland-born and Berkeley-raised Harris as the vice president-elect with messages of hope from different parts of the world.
“I’m happy to see that she is someone who has a long career, has the experience, has the qualifications,” said Pacinthe Mattar, an Egyptian woman who immigrated to Canada in the 1980s, “But at the same time, sometimes I think our obsession over representation when we don’t see ourselves often in news or media or politics can make us blind to … what kind of work they’re going to be doing and what systems they’re going to uphold.”
Mattar said she’s cheering Harris while also hoping “that her politics and her policies and the way that she helps lead the U.S. is going to be, not just a win for representation, but for the impact that it’s going to have on Black women and the lives of peoples of color in the work that she does.”