The imbroglio began when Senator Kamala Harris tweeted that, “Two decades after Brown v. Board, I was only the second class to integrate at Berkeley public schools. Without that decision, I likely would not have become a lawyer and eventually be elected a Senator from California.”
Harris appeared to have actually grown up in Montreal. She certainly attended high school there. According to this Canadian article, she had been living there since the mid-70s. (Harris was born in 1964.)
And, as many have pointed out, Berkeley schools had been desegregated long before.
The media quickly jumped in to protect their candidate by insisting that until busing began, Berkeley schools were segregated. Or as FactCheck put it, “effectively segregated”.
This is dishonest goalpost shifting. And if we utilize that measure, then we still have segregation in America today. (That is actually what the left claims.) But it’s not how people understand segregation. If we view non-racially diverse areas as segregated, then we still have segregation.
However, most people read Harris’ claim as referring to an official policy of racial segregation. Her claim appears to be false. And the media’s defenses of it misleading and dishonest.
Kamala Harris attended high school in Canada. Berkeley schools were not racially segregated when she attended them. Her attempts to self-dramatize her own half-black racial background for political gain are cynical.
Harris grew up in a middle-class black neighborhood and in Canada, being raised by a non-black mother. She’s not oppressed, but very privileged. And it’s time she admitted that.
Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield
