Vice President Kamala Harris is being criticized for “rewriting” her story about where she really grew up in Northern California, claiming she comes from a more moderate background.
The presidential candidate speaks fondly of her upbringing in Oakland, California, but she spent most of her childhood and early school years in Berkeley, a city with more left-wing connotations.
During her presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, Harris talked about her mother renting an apartment in “the East Bay.”
“In the Bay, you either live in the hills or the plains,” she said. “We lived in the plains, a beautiful working-class neighborhood with firefighters and nurses and construction workers who all took pride in tending their lawns.”
According to the New York Times, Harris didn’t officially move into the Oakland apartments until she was in her 20s.
Although she was born in an Oakland hospital, her birth certificate lists an apartment building near the University of California, Berkeley, where her parents received their doctorates.
Harris occasionally speaks vaguely about her upbringing, probably in an attempt to identify with the modest middle-class life, rather than the privileged life as the child of Berkeley academics.