President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris have been named as 2020 Time Person of the Year. Biden and Harris’s historic defeat of President Donald Trump has been widely celebrated in different quarters. The result of the November 3 election puts Trump among the small number of presidents of the United States that did not get re-elected.
The vice president-elect also made history as the first female Black-Asian vice-president of the United States. Though many other presidents of the United States have been named as Time’s Person of the Year, Harris is the first vice-president to be named in the category. The magazine unveiled the shortlist on Thursday.
“They changed the American story, demonstrated that empathy always wins over the furies of division, shared a vision that will begin the healing process of a grieving world; for these things, we present Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as TIMES’s 2020 person of the year,” Edward Felsenthal, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, stated.
The magazine also recognized notable people in other categories. Eric Yuan of Zoom is TIME’s Businessperson of the Year for the massive success of the video chat platform during the pandemic, as people from all over the world were forced to hold meetings and classes from their homes, Yahoo News reports.
Assa Traoré, an activist; Porche Bennett-Bey, a Black woman who addressed Biden in the wake of Jacob Blake’s shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin; organizers and activists behind racial justice movements; Frontline health workers working to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top immunologist were named as Time’s Guardians of the year.
Biden and Harris are not the first people to receive the honor. The tradition started in 1927 when Time magazine started designating a special person as the Man of the Year. The honor was given to a man who influenced the news more than any other person in that year. The Man of the Year category later became Person of the Year. Individuals, groups, and abstract entities such as ideas and movements have since then been named in the category.
In 2006, the honor went to everyone who helped grow data on the internet through their articles and videos. The recipient of the honor in that year was titled “You”. Some people who have been in the news for the wrong reasons have also been named in the Person of the Year category. In 1938, Time picked Adolf Hitler as the most notable personality of that year.
In 2019, a 16-year-old climate activist, Greta Thunberg, was named in the Person of the Year category becoming the first person to ever be named as the Person of the Year. For 2020, a year which has been marked by a pandemic, social unrest following the bias treatments of Blacks by law enforcement officers, and an election that is still being challenged in many quarters, Time magazine has recognized the efforts of all major players.
LeBron James and Korean all-boy pop band, BTS, were named as the Athlete of the Year and the Entertainer of the Year, respectively. The magazine introduced a new category this year, the Kid of the Year category. Gitanjali Rao was awarded for her efforts in creating devices that can detect lead in drinking water, among other things.
Source: cnn.com
