AUSTIN, Texas — On Inauguration Day, former Texas Longhorn and media personality Emmanuel Acho posted a video online expressing "why is Kamala Harris becoming vice president such a big deal?"
Kamala Harris became the first female vice president – and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the role, breaking historic gender and racial barriers in American politics.
Harris, 56, moves into the vice presidency just four years after she first went to Washington as a senator from California, where she'd previously served as attorney general and as San Francisco's district attorney.
Her swearing-in comes almost two years to the day after Harris launched her own presidential bid on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2019.
In Acho's video, he spoke on Harris becoming the role model for young girls of color to look up to and aspire to be, something we have not yet seen in American history: a vice president who is a woman, a vice president who is a Black woman and a vice president who is of South Asian descent.
Acho said Harris has the opportunity to mean to young girls what Emmitt Smith – a Hall of Fame running back who is a Black man – meant to him.
"[Smith] looked like me and so I said, 'Wait, because I see him, I can be him.' I chased that journey until I finally caught it," Acho said.
Acho said if you asked him when he was a kid what he wanted to be when he grew up, answering president or vice president would have seemed an unrealistic expectation.
But now, with the likes of Barack Obama taking office in 2009, Acho said Harris taking office will empower and inspire young Black Americans to grow up and accomplish what she has.
"Remember. It's hard to be something if you don't see something," Acho concluded.
Harris was sworn into office on Wednesday morning to a roar and applause of the crowd as history was made.
PEOPLE ARE ALSO READING: