The American dream of Karine Jean-Pierre, first black woman and lesbian spokesperson for the White House – 20 Minutes

“I am everything that Donald Trump hates,” said Karine Jean-Pierre in 2018. Appointed spokesperson for the White House on Thursday, she will become the first black and openly lesbian woman to hold this position as prestigious as it is fearfully exposed. She will replace Jen Psaki, whose deputy she was until now, from May 13, according to a statement from the White House in which Democratic President Joe Biden praises the “experience, talent and honesty” of her future “Press Secretary”. qualities of her assistant, whom she hugged on several occasions. “Historic moment” Karine Jean-Pierre “will be the first black woman, the first openly LGBTQ + person to hold this position, which is great, because representativeness is important and because it will give voice to so many people, and show so many people what is possible when you work hard and dream big,” said Jen Psaki. Also moved, the future “Press Secretary” declared: “It’s a historic moment and I realize it. I understand how important this is to so many people.” “This is a historic moment, and it’s not lost on me.” Karine Jean-Pierre will be the next White House press secretary. She is the first Black woman and openly LGBTQ person to serve in the role. https://t.co/oUnuae8pjY pic.twitter.com/5B8rbsFIun— The Associated Press (@AP) May 6, 2022

Access to this content has been blocked in order to respect your choice of consent By clicking on “I ACCEPT”, you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners I ACCEPT And for better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our “I accept for today” button in the banner below. More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.

Karine Jean-Pierre, who shares the life of a CNN journalist, with whom she has a daughter, has already taken her place several times, as number two, in front of the famous blue background of the “James S. Brady Press Briefing Room” . But in the future, it is no longer as a stand-in that she will lend herself to the highly perilous exercise of the daily White House press conference, broadcast live and analyzed ad infinitum. Before her, only one other black woman, Judy Smith, had already served as deputy spokeswoman for the White House, under President George HW Bush, in 1991. American dream Born in Martinique to Haitian parents who later emigrated to the United States , the forties worked on the two campaigns of Barack Obama (2008 and 2012) then on that of Joe Biden in 2020 before joining his team at the White House. Karine Jean-Pierre has often explained how much the journey of her family, emblematic of the “American dream”, had been decisive for her career. She grew up in New York, where her father worked as a taxi driver and her mother as a home caregiver. It was in this city that she graduated from the prestigious Columbia University before taking her first steps in politics and then becoming a figure in the associative world. The new spokesperson for the White House is also campaigning to bring down the prejudices in terms of mental health: she recounted having been the victim of sexual assault in her childhood, and having suffered from depression, until making a suicide attempt. Thursday, questioned on the message that she wanted to deliver to young girls Americans – and boys, she insisted on adding – she said: “If you work very hard for a goal, it will happen. Yes, you will suffer hard knocks, you will go through difficult times and it will not always be easy but the reward will be incredible, especially if you stay true to who you are. »