rooster, As America reckons with racism, Kamala Harris puts her identity as the first Black VP front and center
Maureen Groppe and Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY Published 8:02 PM AEST Apr. 30, 2021 Updated 11:01 PM AEST Apr. 30, 2021
Shagara Bradshaw wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary last month when she dropped into a vaccination site in Jacksonville, Florida, for her second COVID-19 shot.
Bradshaw hadn’t heard that Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting the tented facility to encourage people to get vaccinated. But when she was pulled out of the registration line to meet Harris, Bradshaw knew how she wanted to introduce herself.
Shagara Bradshaw, left, met Vice President Kamala Harris at a vaccination site in Jacksonville, Fla., on March 22. Provided by Shagara Bradshaw
“Good afternoon, soror,” Bradshaw, 38, said to her delighted fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister and fellow graduate of a historically Black university.
As Navy troops wearing military fatigues prepared doses, Bradshaw and Harris chatted about being a role model by getting vaccinated and about Bradshaw’s job at a Jacksonville school where she is teacher of the year – an honor that was the highlight of her year until she met Harris.
“I felt like I was speaking to someone that understood me,” Bradshaw said. “She knows what it’s like, the struggles of African American women, what we have to go through.”
Identity front and center
Harris, the first woman – and first woman of color – to hold the second-highest national office, has embraced that identity at a time when the country is facing a racial reckoning – and when race remains a deeply sensitive and politically volatile issue.
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