so happy for all the young women and POC in our country who can see someone who looks like them on the presidential ticket." a whole generation of us felt like outsiders in our country growing up. Television director Kabir Akhtar wrote Tuesday on Twitter that it was "incredible to see an Indian American on the ticket. That was not the case in the 1990s when I was growing up." We have Aziz Ansari - people everyone knows. "It wasn't that long ago when Indian Americans were not at all part of the American mainstream," said Naik, who has worked in Georgia Democratic politics. But Naik was one of many who saw Biden's choice of Harris as a watershed cultural moment for the nation's 4.5 million Indian Americans. Less remarked upon has been Harris' distinction as the first Indian American to reach all of those positions. With the United States in the midst of a historic reckoning with systemic racism after George Floyd died when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, her status as the first Black woman tapped as a major vice presidential nominee has generated enormous media attention. She was the first Black woman to hold every office she has won - San Francisco district attorney, state attorney general and U.S. Historic breakthroughs have been a constant in Harris' 17 years in politics. "You're going to see a lot of that being uncorked in the next few months," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a UC Riverside public policy professor. They could reward Biden and Harris with crucial votes in the handful of states that will decide the election, along with a surge of campaign donations. The California senator's ascent to the top tier of American politics drew an outpouring of pride among Indian Americans, a growing force in Democratic politics.