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Misleading claims about Kamala Harris' childhood, ethnicity | Fact check

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The claims: Kamala Harris was raised in Canada, is not African-American and held Black prisoners past release dates

A July 21 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows an image of Vice President Kamala Harris alongside a series of claims about her. They include:

  • “Raised in Canada. Not California.
  • “Not African American – Indian & Jamaican"
  • “Imprisoned over 2000 black (sic) for minor drug charges and held them past their release date for free country labor resource. In some respect, slave labor.”

The post received more than 1,000 likes in less than a day. A similar image also was shared widely on Facebook.

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Our rating: Partly false

These claims exaggerate or misstate reality. Harris spent most of her childhood in the U.S. before moving to Quebec at age 12 and staying through high school. While her mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican, she has long identified as Black, and the federal government counts people of Jamaican ancestry as Black or African American. The claim about prisoners mischaracterizes an argument made by attorneys for her California Attorney General’s office about the need for nonviolent offenders to help fight wildfires.

Harris born in US, moved to Canada at age 12

While Harris spent some of her teen years in Canada, most of her childhood was spent in the U.S.

She was born in Oakland, California, and was 12 when she moved to Quebec with her mother and younger sister after her parents divorced, The Washington Post reported. Harris graduated from a Montreal-area high school in 1981, according to a Canadian Press story published by The Gazette of Montreal.

She returned to the U.S. to attend Howard University, then earned her law degree at the University of California.

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Federal standard of African American race includes Jamaican heritage

Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, has long identified as Black, and her self-identification aligns with federal guidelines.

In gathering and analyzing ethnicity data, the Office of Management and Budget defines the terms “Black” or “African American” as people with origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. Tacked onto that definition is a list of groups, one of which is Jamaican.

A 2020 Michigan State University study found more than 90% of the people in Jamaica identify as Black. Its population predominantly consists of the descendants of African slaves brought to work on its sugar estates.

Claim mischaracterizes argument from lawyers for Harris’ office as California AG

The reference to holding prisoners past their release date refers to – but misrepresents– a legal argument made by attorneys for her office.

While Harris was California's attorney general in 2014, attorneys representing California inmates argued the state was slow to comply with a court order, which said non-violent repeat offenders were to be eligible for parole after serving half their sentence to reduce overcrowding.

Attorneys for Harris’ office countered that allowing some offenders out of prison so quickly would hurt their labor programs – specifically, one that allowed certain prisoners to fight wildfires. In a November 2014 interview with Buzzfeed News, Harris said she was “shocked" by the lawyers' argument. Spokesman Ian Sams told The Daily Beast that she “looked into it and directed the department's attorneys not to make that argument again.”

The Daily Beast article does not indicate how many, if any, inmates may have been held longer in violation of the court order. But the issue was about whether they would be released early, not whether they would be held past the length of their original sentence.

It is unclear what the claim that 2,000 Black prisoners were affected refers to. While a California Department of Corrections spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019 that 1,974 people were sent to state prisons for hashish and marijuana convictions between 2011 and 2016, he did not say how many were Black.

USA TODAY reached out to Instagram and Facebook users who shared the post but did not immediately receive responses.

Reuters also debunked the claims in 2020.

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