When what is hidden is more consequential than what is reported.

Gradually piecing together a picture of Kamala Harris.

I first became aware of her perhaps five, possibly ten years ago, I think originally over some contretemps regarding withholding or suppressing evidence for a man wrongfully convicted.  It was probably about that time that I became aware of her affair as a young woman with the then powerful (and still married) Willie Brown, Speaker of the California Assembly and how he launched her political career with two positions, the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later the California Medical Assistance Commission.  

Eventually I learned that she was the daughter of two Berkeley Phds.  That her father was an emigre from Jamaica and her mother from India.  That she was from a broken home, her parents having divorced when she was seven.

Her failed run for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination threw up some additional information, much of it just a deepening of details.

I haven't spent much time studying her but certainly was, I thought, reasonably aware and reasonably informed.  

In the past three days I learned two additional items which are material and I would have thought I would have known by now but I either never learned or had forgotten.,  They certainly don't get mentioned often.  And the fact that I learn them from off-the-beaten track articles or in the comment sections rather than from the mainstream media is notable.

I have thought it a little peculiar for the Democrats to present Kamala Harris as an African-American woman.  She's not African-American.  Hardly even black.  She is Jamaican-Indian American.  Given the importance of racial identity within the Democratic Party I have understood why they have insisted on this categorization but it has always struck me as odd.  The disconnect to me is that a Jamaican-Indian American child of privileged cognitive elite Berkeley professors just can't have had much of the experience of an African-American.  She was no John Lewis.

I read some portion of a sycophantic puff piece in the New York Times last year when she was campaigning for the presidential nomination and it had pictures of her as a little girl in Berkeley and some stories presented as the experience of racism of Berkeley in the early seventies.  But reading them, it sure seemed like they were stories of low income and/or troubled home life and/or simply being an outsider.

Like Harris, I am also a third culture kid.  American but having been raised when I was younger in half a dozen different countries around the world where I was always an outsider by nationality or religion or race or class or language (or all of them).  There are a lot of rough edges to such a childhood which could be attributed to malice such as racism but which are usually a function of being an outsider.  

And it sure felt like the New York Times was trying to shoe-horn Harris's 3rd culture kid 1970s story into a 1960s Jim Crow racism story by dent of studious disregard of realities.

But what do I know?  That was just my impression.

But the third-culture kid aspect just got bolstered.  If I knew, I had forgotten that she had lived in Canada, in French-speaking Montreal from 12 till graduation.  And even when she lived in the US earlier, she had apparently spent a good deal of time in India, Jamaica and had at least visited Zimbabwe (where her father was on assignment.)  OK - she definitely is a third culture kid and not an African-American.

I am not denigrating that background.  It has huge benefits as well as costs.  I was an American third culture kid growing up around the world, and by doing so gained an insight and appreciation of just how exceptional and unique the US is in the world and what a treasure it is.  How privileged any of us are to be Americans, no matter our circumstance.

What I can never claim is that I fit into some sort of arbitrarily and parochially defined racial categorization made up out of whole cloth, political expediency and ideological necessity.  Third-culture kids are the product of cultures, and far less of racial circumstance.

Nothing wrong with being a third-culture kid but if you are trying to establish a Jamaican-Indian American politician as being black and having lived the true hardships of hardscrabble Jim Crow racism, then a childhood spent largely in Canada, Jamaica, India and Zimbabwe as the daughter of a middle class medical researcher at a Canadian University in French speaking Canada, then a degree of inauthenticity can't help but creep in.

Other things learned in the past couple of days which I had not focused on or did not know.  She went to Howard University for her undergrad degree.  With her prestigious cognitive heritage (medical doctor researcher mother at the most prestigious universities, father an economics professor at Stanford) I would have anticipated her attending a prestigious and rigorous university.  

Hers is an interesting contrast to the story Richard Nixon, another California native child.  Despite academic promise, he also attended a lesser known, lower reputation college.  He had been offered a grant to attend Harvard University but he declined the offer and attended a local college in order remain local, support his struggling family working at the family store, and be at home with his brother who was terminally ill with tuberculosis.  

Well, maybe her law degree was from somewhere prestigious?  Richard Nixon earned his on a full scholarship at Duke University.  Harris?  University of California - Hastings?  Hmm.  Not familiar with them.  Per the rankings, they are 59th among national law schools (Duke is 10th).  OK.  

Then I learned that Harris failed her first attempt at the California Bar exam.  That is by no means irredeemable but it seems at least marginally pertinent to a well-rounded picture of someone who is being touted for the next-in-line to the presidency position, particularly when the first in line is widely conceded to be in sharp decline.  

What else have I learned which I would have expected to learn when she was struggling in her primary nomination campaign.  Well, not learned so much as reminded.

Just how badly she did in the Democratic primaries.  Other than a brief spike at 15%, for much of her primary campaign, Harris was usually below 10%, both nationally and even in her own state.  And who ran her campaign?  Her sister.  Speaks to a certain failing insularity.

All of this is not directed at lambasting Harris as a candidate.  I have long been of the opinion that she is almost definitionally not ready for primetime.  Insular in California politics, not much of an executive track record, morally suspect (launching her political career in the old fashion way).  

The complete list of concerns include:

Checkered executive experience as California Attorney General.  And that is a generous description.

Product of the California Democratic Machine with little to no exposure or engagement culturally, commercially, or politically outside California.

Cognitively undistinguished despite her family heritage.  Undistinguished schools and failed bar exam.

Political career launched off of an extra-marital affair.

Much of her youth spent outside the US exacerbating her limited American experience.

Remarkably poor speaking performance.

Low polling among Democrats and among African-Americans, her supposed natural base.

Apparent disregard for those of lower class than she.

Even among friends she is a poor operator.  The other night a fawning Colbert tried to give her the opportunity to explain away her earlier primary position that Biden was a misogynistic groping racist who consorted with Klansmen.  He opened the door for her to explain why her charges then could be reconciled with her acceptance on his ticket as VP now.  Instead of addressing the problem, she attempted to laugh it away, repeatedly explaining it was just a debate.

She should have been prepped for this gift from Colbert.  Even if not prepped she should have had the wits to manufacture at least a plausible argument.  But to explain it away as she did, she effectively made the argument that she will say anything to get her way and that the accusations she made during the primary were simply a tactical necessity to win.  She essentially, at the beginning of her VP run, just declared that she cannot be trusted because anything she says is driven by expediency.  That is what not-ready-for-prime time looks like. 

What is striking is that the mainstream media has been reporting on Harris for all of 2019 and 2020 and yet there are some key attributes which are either not discussed or under-discussed.