Vice President Kamala Harris tried to portray herself as “middle-class” or even “working class”. She cited a McDonald’s summer job and claimed to be from Oakland, an Oakland with a high black population.

Harris, for example, said in a recent Oprah Winfrey interview, “I was raised by a mother who had worked hard. She saved money and raised me and my younger sister. By the time I reached my teenage years, she had saved enough to buy a house.

She wrote on X that “Let’s be clear, I will always place the middle class and families working first.” I know where my roots are.”

She replied, “I was brought up as a middle class kid.” When asked if Americans are better off today than they were in 2004, she said.

A closer look at Harris’ childhood reveals that she and her younger sibling had many advantages that “middle-class” children don’t have. For example, they were able to live abroad, receive a private education and grow up in some the richest places in the world.

Harris has been adamant about her lack of privileges throughout her career.

On August 31, she identified herself as a “daughter of Oakland, California who was raised by working mothers and had a Summer Job at McDonald’s.”

Her parents were graduate students at the time and lived in Berkeley in California, a predominantly-white, liberal elite enclave of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to UC Berkeley – one of the best public universities in world.

It was there that her “working mom” — a daughter of an Indian diplomatic — and father first met as graduate student. Harris’s father wrote that Kamala Harris was “born” at Berkeley.

A New York Times article stated that Harris “de-emphasized her Berkeley roots” when she was first preparing to run for California’s statewide office.

She often refers to herself as a ‘daughter from Oakland’, which is a vague term that connects her with a city of working-class people with a less stigmatizing image, and contrasts Donald J. Trumps preferred branding ‘San Francisco Liberal’

Report added: “She was born in an Oakland Hospital in 1964. However, she didn’t settle in the city till she was in her 20s, when she worked as a prosecutor at the county district attorneys office.”

Harris, however, has attempted to link herself to Oakland by claiming that she lived as a young girl on the “boundary between Oakland and Berkeley.” But, The Oaklandside reported that her Bancroft apartment was “nowhere near the border, it is directly west of downtown.”

Harris also mentioned that she was bused into an elementary school in North Berkeley, California as part of a program for racial inclusion. This is evidence of Harris’ alleged disadvantageous background. She has not mentioned that she attended a private high school prior to the busing program.

Kamala’s Early Childhood

Harris was born in Berkeley on October 20, 1964. At that time, Berkeley was a hotbed of civil rights activism and anti-war activism.

According to the Times, her parents were both active members of the Afro American Association – a group of black student activists that would eventually become the Black Panther Party.

According to The Berkeleyside, when she was born her parents lived at 2531 Regent Street. This is only a few short blocks from the UC Berkeley Campus. This apartment was further away from the “border” of Oakland than her later residence on Bancroft Way. The family moved into an apartment at 1945 Milvia Street, which was also close to the campus but not near the border of Oakland.

In 1966, Harris’ family moved from the east coast to the Midwest when she was two years old. According to USA Today, after her father was hired as a professor at the University of Illinois they settled in Urbana. In 1967 they moved to Evanston where her father was a professor at Northwestern University. In 1968, the family moved to Madison Wisconsin where her father was a professor and her mother worked in cancer research at University of Wisconsin. Her father said that between Illinois and Wisconsin, he taught at Cambridge University (United Kingdom) as well.

Harris’ parents divorced when she was five years old, while living in Wisconsin. Harris, her sister, and mother moved back to Berkeley in California where Harris’s mother continued her cancer research at UC Berkeley. Her father taught at Yale University, Connecticut until 1972. He then moved back to California and began teaching at Stanford University. Yale and Stanford are among the most elite private colleges in the United States.

In this period, Harris’s mom moved into the 1227 Bancroft Way yellow apartment building that featured prominently in her political campaigns. The Oaklandside reported that while it was closer than the apartments Harris’s parents had lived in before, it wasn’t near the border with Oakland.

In her memoirs, Harris described the neighborhood as “a close-knit community of working families that were focused on paying their bills, doing a great job and being there for each other.”

She would describe how her “single mom” struggled with raising her and her sister relying on neighbors’ help. Harris stated in a recent interview that:

You know that my mother worked long hours, and our neighbor raised us. She was our second mother.

Harris does not usually mention that her neighbor ran a daycare facility where she and sister went after school. This is a luxury that many working moms do not enjoy.

Harris attended a private school before being expelled

Harris was also bused during this period to the Thousand Oaks elementary school in the more wealthy North Berkeley area. In her memoir, she writes:

Later, I learned that we were part a national desegregation experiment. Working-class black kids from the flatlands were bussed in one direction while wealthier white kids from Berkeley Hills were bussed in the opposite. All I knew at the time was that I would be going to school on the big yellow buses.

Harris, however, was not like the other “working class black children” of her neighborhood.

According to The Berkeleyside, Harris attended kindergarten at the Berkwood School before she was bussed. According to its website, the tuition for 2023-2024 was $29800.

Around this time, Harris began taking ballet classes from Madame Bovie in her 1805 Grove Street North Berkeley studio. According to The Berkeleyside, the studio was located only a mile from Harris’s mom’s apartment.

According to USA Today and The Berkeleyside Harris and her sister spent weekends and summer together.