What's really behind Tucker Carlson's comments about VP Kamala Harris?

Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson of Fox News has a large captive audience.  Unfortunately, his audience is influenced by his bigoted views.  Recently, Carlson made an outrageous comment about Vice President Kamala Harris.  He said that the vice president is "is not from this country" because she went to school in Canada.  Here are his exact words: "There's a lot we don't know about Kamala Harris.  Most people probably don't know she really grew up in Canada.  It's where she went to high school.  She's not from this country in that sense, or she's certainly also from Canada."

That's a real head scratcher.  Carlson's words sound nonsensical because many people are educated in other countries, including Carlson himself.  He told a Swiss magazine that he briefly attended attended a boarding school in school in Switzerland before he "got kicked out."

So, what 's the big deal about Kamala attending school in Canada?  If you scratch beneath the surface, there's a method to Tucker's madness.  Carlson's remarks were simply a dog whistle to his far right audience.  He knows very well that it doesn't matter one iota that Kamala spent some of her high school years in Montreal.  His only intention is to paint Harris as some kind of foreigner or "illegal alien."  Why?.  He can't come right out and say that she isn't a real American because she is of Black and Indian descent.  That would be showing his true racist colours.

Here are some background facts.  Kamala Harris is an American by birth.  She was born in Oakland California on October 20, 1964.     When she was 12, Kamala and her sister moved to Montreal, Quebec.  Kamala spent her middle school and high school years in Montreal because her mother, a biologist and cancer researcher, obtained a job at a hospital in that city.  In 1982, after high school, Kamala returned to the United States to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C..  After graduating from Howard, she returned to her roots in California to attend law school.  In 1990, she was admitted to the California Bar.  From 2004 to 2011, she served as District Attorney of San Francisco.  From 2011 to 2017, she served as Attorney General of California.  She was a U.S. Senator from California from 2017 until 2021.

Vice President Kamala Harris has spent a great deal more than the constitutionally required 14 years of her life in the United States.  The truth is that it's the colour of Kamala's skin, not her palace of birth or where she went to school, that matters more to Carlson and others on the far right of the political spectrum.  Donald Trump tried to use the same tactic to discredit former President Barack Obama.  His claims that Obama was not really born in Hawaii were proven to be completely false.  Trump initiated his "birther" theory because he couldn't say that Obama was a foreigner because he was Black.  He had to make his followers believe that Obama was really from Africa or Indonesia.  

A president or prime minister's place of birth should not be an issue anyway, as long as he or she is a citizen and resident of the country he or she wishes to serve.  Vice President Harris, like any politician, is fair game for reasonable criticism.  She should not have to take flack for where she attended high school.  That is sheer bigotry.

Tucker Carlson has unfairly attacked Kamala Harris in the past.  He has criticized her for her dating history and has repeatedly mispronounced her first name.  Would he have done any of those things if she were a white male?  Somehow, I don't think so.  Senator Ted Cruz, a white Republican, was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  Has Tucker questioned his Americanism?

- Joanne