Vice President Kamala Harris is facing "bizarre" attacks over where she's from — with right-wing pundits even holding up her birth certificate to viewers — and an MSNBC writer believes that while Harris may be "fudging things slightly" on the topic, the question is also one that Black candidates wrongly find themselves on the receiving end of far too often.
Harris' hometown is Berkeley, California. According to The New York Times, she downplayed her Berkeley roots "years ago" as she prepped to run for statewide office in California. And nowadays, she describes herself as a "daughter of Oakland."
Fox News host Jesse Watters tried to capitalize on the moment, even holding up a birth certificate to prove she lied about growing up in Oakland.
“Did you know that Kamala Harris didn’t grow up in Oakland as she always said she did?” he said on his eponymous show "Jesse Watters Primetime." “Kamala Harris grew up in Berkeley, the ‘People’s Republic of Berkeley,’ ‘Berserkeley’, the most insanely liberal precinct in America. Her birth certificate lists an apartment right next to Berkeley’s campus. It’s a half block south of People’s Park, which is basically ground zero for every single radical protest movement. Kamala attended Berkeley public schools and was even bussed to Berkeley public schools."
On Monday, Robyn Autry, sociology professor and director of the Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University, took to MSNBC.com to blast such attacks.
"As awful as that was, Watters using Harris’ birth certificate as some kind of gotcha was not only a reminder of the 'birther' attacks on President Barack Obama, but it also revealed what this inquisition is really about: portraying Harris as sneaky, inauthentic and unworthy of trust," said Autry.
Autry pointed out that President Joe Biden has said he's from Scranton, Pennsylvania — including at his Labor Day speech in Pittsburgh — even though he moved in elementary school to Wilmington, Delaware.
George W. Bush and his brother Jeb ditched their Maine ties to become governors of Texas and Florida, respectively. Barack Obama touted his Kansas roots, his birthplace of Hawaii and Chicago as his home.
Donald Trump, whose brand is to be seen as the "king of Manhattan" is from Queens, and J.D. Vance has claimed to be from Appalachia, when in reality he was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio.
ALSO READ: Why Trump’s Arlington controversy is actually a crime
"All politicians, Harris included, are aware that the question of where they’re from is more about identity, or at least the identity we want to project, than geography," noted Autry. "Home isn’t just a matter of where we say we’re from, it’s also about where others decide it makes the most sense for us to be from."
Oakland, said Autry, "reminds us of the underdog Harris says she is."
And while she "may be fudging things slightly" by dubbing herself "the daughter of Oakland," she "shouldn’t be singled out for it," argued Autry. Many people who grew up near a major city eventually say they're from that city.
"Instead of asking whether it’s technically true that she’s from Oakland and whether she ought to be corrected for slighting Berkeley, we ought to be asking whether we put more demands on Black candidates to authenticate who they say they are, and whether their answers are more closely scrutinized," wrote Autry.
