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Matthew Yglesias: Kamala Harris's family story is the real portrait of American greatness
Kamala Harris’s family story is the real portrait of American greatness
From India and Jamaica to the doors of the White House in one generation.
By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com Aug 13, 2020, 8:30am EDT
snip//
Her parents were surely not blind to America’s racial problems in the 1960s when they decided to pursue graduate studies at the University of California Berkeley, and they certainly were not indifferent to them upon arrival. Indeed, her parents met through their involvement in civil rights activism in Berkeley. Nonetheless, they wanted to come to the US, and they did well for themselves — both earning PhDs, and one eventually landing as a scientist at the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the other as an economics professor at the equally prestigious Stanford University. Their daughter is now an odds-on favorite to become the next vice president of the United States and is reasonably likely to be president herself someday.
Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris may have found unusual success, but the story of arrival, education, and intergenerational mobility is a familiar one. And in a profound way, stories like theirs are the greatness of America. It’s a country that people have flocked to from all around the world for hundreds of years, enhancing their own lives and the nation.
It’s this dimension of America that Donald Trump most purely rejects and denies. His success in politics has both diminished America’s greatness on its own terms and raised awareness of the darker corners of American life. It is tempting to accept that Trump’s dark and twisted vision of America is the authentic one.
Yet Harris’s story and the story of her family is real. Great people come to this country, and great things happen here. And her candidacy is an opportunity to tell the stories of the people and policies that have made America great.
more...
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/13/21364392/kamala-harris-immigration