Before Newsguard and the other censors starting their shit with “birtherism”, I know Kamala Harris was born in Alameda County, California… That still doesn’t change the fact that Kamala Harris didn’t really grow up in California, instead she grew up in one of the richest parts of Montreal, Canada back in the 1970s. Kamala always likes to try and claim credit for being in the “streets” of Oakland and San Francisco as a kid, but that’s a complete and total lie. She moved to Montreal in the 1970s when her mother was hired by McGill University to do breast cancer research.
I know that because I grew up on the exact same “streets” she grew up on. I actually lived up the street from where she went to school, and she lived down the street from where I went to school, during the seldom discussed childhood and adolescence she actually spent living in an upperclass enclave in Montreal, Canada.
When Harris was 12, she left Berkeley after her mother got hired to work with McGill University, doing breast cancer research at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital — the hospital I was born in. Her mother is described by local doctors as a “pioneer.”
The neighborhood Harris grew up in is called Westmount, a majority English neighborhood in the French province of Quebec.
She would have definitely experienced segregation living there — but not the kind she has claimed in the last few years to have lived through .
There is no racial hostility in Montreal. Some racial political discourse has been imported from America in more recent years, but that would not really be a part of the cultural awareness or experience of someone who stopped living there before 2020.
Canada does have history of tension with Natives. However, this story isn’t about Elizabeth Warren, so I won’t go there.
Montreal is actually a “melting pot” in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, and has always had a unique ability to accept immigrants of all backgrounds, races and religions, while still maintaining its French culture, due to a series of language and culture laws it began implementing in the 1970’s, until today.
In a story about Kamala Harris’ roots and personal experience, the only segregation she would have experienced would be economic segregation, as Montreal is the most economically segregated city in Canada, according to a study by the University of Toronto.
And in that city, Kamala Harris grew up in the most upscale neighborhood, which, at the time she lived there, was not only the nicest neighborhood in Montreal, but was the richest one in all of Canada. Far from the struggle of “the streets” Harris now purports to have been down with.