October 4, 2024

This is the article I've been wanting to see but — at this point — thought I'd never see.

"Kamala Harris and the Influence of an Estranged Father Just Two Miles Away/Donald J. Harris rarely speaks to his famous daughter, who lives nearby. But he helped shape who she became."

That's the NYT, and I'm giving you a free-access link.
Dr. Harris’s spectral presence in Ms. Harris’s life began when he and her mother separated in 1969, when Ms. Harris was 5. The couple divorced in 1972 after he lost a bitter custody battle that brought his closeness to Ms. Harris and her younger sister “to an abrupt halt,” Dr. Harris wrote in a 2018 essay. The sealed divorce settlement, he said, was “based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting.”

He added that it was “especially in the case of this father, ‘a neegroe from da eyelans’” who “might just end up eating his children for breakfast! Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children.”...

They're eating the.... 

The question is why Kamala Harris never found a way to connect to him. Did she not want to understand what happened in that momentous court case? Was her father discriminated against by the U.S. authorities? She is forefronting her genetic inheritance from her father (and making that her dominant racial identity over that of her mother), so shouldn't she want to make that connection to her father? Compare Barack Obama, who made an elaborate search for his father — recorded in "Dreams From My Father." And his father had not been there in his young life or fought to preserve the relationship the way Harris's father (apparently) did.

He hailed from a well-off family of landowners and entrepreneurs in the Jamaican community known as Orange Hill.... The Harris family owned a supermarket and other stores in nearby Brown’s Town, whose Irish founder, Hamilton Brown, held over 100 people in slavery and is believed in Harris family lore to be an ancestor....

In 1961, Dr. Harris immigrated to the United States and enrolled in the graduate school of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. A year later, after giving a lecture on social inequality to a study group known as the Afro American Association, he was approached by a member of the audience. The woman, Shyamala Gopalan, then 24, came from an upper-crust Tamil Brahmin family in India and was sheltered from the hard disparities that Dr. Harris had described in his lecture. The two married a year later, in 1963. Both became naturalized U.S. citizens. ...

Exactly what drove the couple apart is unclear....

Whatever happened seems to have happened in Madison, Wisconsin: 

In 1969, Dr. Harris, at that point an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, remained in Madison while his wife and two daughters returned to the San Francisco Bay Area....

Dr. Harris went on to a life of professional acclaim. Students and colleagues came to regard him as an urbane, understatedly personable scholar and prolific author....

Oh! It's a shame we are not seeing more of him. I feel deprived! But his daughter has kept him at a distance all these years. 

Both in essays and in the classroom, Dr. Harris argued that market economies should be inclusive rather than monopolistic. Some of his scholarly papers analyzed Marxist economic thinking, but by the early 1990s, “he had become more realistic, because he’d learned along the way,” said Anne Krueger, a conservative economist and fellow Stanford professor at the time. “He certainly had more faith in government than some of us did. But among the people I knew as Marxian economists, he was not there.”

One hypothesis could be that Kamala is a careerist who doesn't want any association with Marxism, however slight!  

In the mid-90s, Dr. Harris took an early retirement from Stanford to return to Jamaica and coordinate what would become known as the country’s national industrial policy.... Once the policy did take hold, roughly a decade ago, the economy’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product was halved. The unemployment rate fell from 15 percent in 2013 to 5.4 percent today.

Why wouldn't you want to associate yourself with this achievement? Is the father too much of a high achiever to provide the symbolism she wants from her race? He's too specific, and she wants the general abstraction? In any case, wouldn't the desire for connection with your own father outweigh all that (especially considering that you have an interest in the world's opinion of you and estrangement from one's father feels sad or even wrong to us onlookers).

“The national industrial policy was anathema to Marxists,” said P.J. Patterson, Jamaica’s prime minister at the time. “What Don was propounding was the notion of a market-based economy where the private sector, not the government, was the engine of growth. There was nothing in there about state control of industry.”...

Is this enough to get Trump people to stop calling him a Marxist and asserting that she inherited Marxism? 

Dr. Harris sent her a note of congratulations after she was elected to the Senate in November 2016. After she declared her candidacy for president in 2019, Dr. Harris proceeded to offer economic policy advice to the campaign. But he became angry a month later when the candidate told a radio show host that she supported legalizing marijuana and then added, “Half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me?”

Dr. Harris issued a statement, denouncing as a “travesty” his daughter’s promotion of “the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker.” The father “took umbrage,” said Mr. Hutchinson, Dr. Harris’s friend, “because his family was blasting him for his offspring having embarrassed them in this way.”

The cold war between them resumed.

Why wouldn't you reach out and make up over this? He had a legitimate beef. But maybe from her point of view, he embarrassed her and hurt her (politically) by taking it public. She's seeking to take on the role of the world's peacemaker. Can she not make peace with her father?

Still, after Ms. Harris became Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s running mate on the Democratic ticket in 2020, the father sent another letter congratulating his daughter. A few months later, he received a letter inviting him to attend the inaugural ceremonies. The letter, however, was from an intermediary, not from the vice president-elect herself. Dr. Harris declined the invitation.

Oh! The coldness! 

Today, confidants of Dr. Harris say the father does not dwell on his estrangement from his daughter.... He enjoys tooling around in his silver Corvette, unconstrained by any campaign activity....

Sweet. Sad. I want more of Dr. Harris. I don't like seeing him over there, isolated, even if he is driving a silver Corvette.

By the way, what car do you think Karl Marx would drive? 

138 comments:

Iman said...

So… Willie Brown was a “father figure”?

A mixed up, muddled up, shook up woman.

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

She was busy flippin' burgers.

born01930 said...

Marx would use a palanquin...gotta keep folks employed

tim maguire said...

Interesting that this appeared in the Times as, based on your excerpts, Kamala comes off looking much worse. Her father's accomplishments seem perfectly balanced against her weak points and the continued estrangement is laid at her feet.

He could do wonders for her pivot to the middle, and yet she can't bring herself to forgive him for...what?

Temujin said...

Interesting story. Not what I've been led to believe. But...I have a hard time taking the NY Times at their word(s). I wish there was more- like the man in his own words. Not that it really matters much. I could love this guy and it still could never sway me (or anyone else) to change my vote.

And, Karl Marx would drive a BMW, like all good progressives who hate capitalism.

john mosby said...

The only racial rivalry worse than black v brown is 1619 black vs 1965 black, i.e. descendants of US slaves versus African/Caribbean voluntary immigrants.

So Kommie probably doesnt want to dwell on how her black side is really lace-curtain West Indian.

Also, the rest of the world loves them some international leftism. Lots of bi-national socialist power couples. The US, not so much. Maybe among the college-educated lefty elites, but not in whatever’s left of the Dem labor faction. And certainly, Republicans would Pounce! on the concept that Kammie is a Socialist International nepo baby.

So she has several reasons not to emphasize her dad. Just like Obama had lots of reasons not to publicize his half-siblings and father.

JSM

Tank said...

Marx would be driven in a Rolls. Some animals are more equal than others.

Narayanan said...

holding power in CA political system would she not be able to see the divorce settlement details? if she wished to do so!

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

Why would any reader assume that this is not a cleaned up version of reality?
Another soft-touch report. Who knew Kamala's father is responsible for such greatness in Jamaica! and please - ignore his Marxism - it was no biggie.

btw- I have a friend who was born in Jamaica and raised there. He is white, and he also has dual citizenship in Canada. Oh the stories he can tell. But anyway - Jamaica's major cities are a mess with crime lords. Always been - still is. (I recall visiting Jamaica as a child and we dare not leave our Hotel room in Kingston... had to shuttle to the resort area during daylight hours. )

Aggie said...

Thanks for that link ! You haven't touched on what you think is the most likely reason for the estrangement. I see an achiever and somebody that actually puts programs in place, that have a good, measurable result. He's been a benefit to his home nation, and has improved its standard of living. Describe for me, the similarities to Kamala's achievements.

Because he is labeled a 'Marxist' - and because that particular term has been included in his professional titles - I suspect that blaming Republicans for its frequent reappearance won't wash. I can understand why they would use it rhetorically. The NYT performs its usual disservice by saying he's 'hardly a Marxist'. Thank you for that 'fact check' opinion - Loser !

Money Manger said...

Interesting story, glad the Times is running it. Now they need to profile her early political education, with and through her mentor, Willie Brown. If such a story has run in any mainstream medium, I haven't seen it.

Dixcus said...

Kamala Harris' father is the government ... just like all Democrat women.

Yes you, Ann.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

I believe Ann Landers and Dear Abby, sisters who were paid for advice about family matters, were not on speaking terms.

Both of Kamala's parents came from rare positions of privilege.

Dixcus said...

Her father is Jamaican. He is not a "negro." Negros are African and were brought to the United States as slaves. Her Jamaican family OWNED slaves. Of course this is the cleaned up version.

Christopher B said...

Given that he did wind up returning to Jamaca I suspect the custody battle (and maybe even the divorce) was over a requirement that he couldn't take Kamala out of the country without her mother's permission (which was never going to be given). Her mother, of course, likely had no such restriction, or he eventually gave up trying to keep her in the US.

AWFLs are not going to be put off by Kamala looking less than perfect in this situation. Everything that happens is the man's fault.

The rest of the article is to provide the Inga's with pull quotes that her father had no influence on her political views, and that he wasn't *really* a Marxist.

MadTownGuy said...

"By the way, what car do you think Karl Marx would drive? "

A Trabant.

narciso said...

Robert draper is a terrible hack

Chris said...

What you need to understand, at the very base level here is that there is NO forgiveness or redemption in leftism.

Dixcus said...

Her mother took her to Canada ... where she was raised. She's barely American.

Christopher B said...

She's faking that pivot so the article inoculates her both from claims that she got Marxist beliefs from him as well as assuring her supporters she isn't influenced by his evidently more nuanced beliefs.

Ann Althouse said...

I think Marx would get his friends to drive him around.

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

Christopher B - code, cracked.

john mosby said...

Blogger ate the first attempt at this comment.

2 reasons why Kammie does not emphasize her father:

1. 1619 blacks vs immigrant blacks. She has a hard enough time appearing authentically black without reminding everyone she is really a lace-curtain West Indian.

2. US lefties dont like international socialism. In UK or France or Scandia, they would love her pedigree as another country’s industrial policy nepo baby. In the US, only the educated elite would: not what’s left of the Dem labor vote. And certainly not MAGA labor. Republicans would pounce!

JSM

n.n said...

A Ferrari laughing all the way.
Mom and dad dispute and dysfunction?
Diversity (e.g. racism, classicism) ?
Ashley"s nightmariish dream of her father?

She has a peculiar distaste for black men. Was it Willey?

Gusty Winds said...

Kind of like how Henry David Thoreau would hang out at Hawthorne's house for free meals.

RideSpaceMountain said...

“might just end up eating his children for breakfast!"

We have documented cases of modern Carribean cannibalism. There's even video. He ain't lyin!

narciso said...

Marx had his rich roomate engels covsr his expenses

RideSpaceMountain said...

Marx was constantly broke and constantly asking Engels and othes for money to pay his rent. Same diff.

Milo Minderbinder said...

Kamala's father was a "Donald J," too? Weird....

Maynard said...

I agree with Althouse and narciso. Marx would have others take on the burden of such intellectually trivial matters as driving. It would be just like Engels feeding Marx's family.

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

***Staying the night in a Kingston hotel, (not leaving the hotel!) and the shuttle to resort area is how everyone got there. Certainly we were not some rich family doing this. LOL.

n.n said...

Marx was a class-disordered ideologue. He would drive a Corvette, and a Rolls-Royce when he could afford it, bankrolled through redistributive change schemes. With a green nose thumbed at the deplorables beneath him, Marx captured the epitome of Diversity dreamers.

wildswan said...

This NYT article contradicts almost point by point the only other long article I ever saw on Prof. Harris. As, for example, saying that he changed his Marxist outlook and advocated a form of market capitalism for Jamaica and making clear the continuing breach between father and daughter. But as Althouse says, it doesn't explain the cause of the breach and it strongly suggests that Kamala's main racial identity is South Asian-American, not African-American because she identifies with her mother. And while we're at it it seems to me that Walz has become a Coastie who is doing a Coastie version of the MidWest, a sort of Stepin Fetchit distortion of what he once was.

Oso Negro said...

NEWSFLASH - You don't need "U.S. authorities" to discriminate against men in divorce cases. The average family court judge will do just fine.

Rusty said...

LOL! And not thank them.

Rusty said...

No. You'd drive a Trebant. He'd drive a Bently.

narciso said...

Che was the son of a landowner and nephew of an admiral fidel of a landownsr bastard son (the maid) ho chi minh and mao son ilof mandarins

Ann Althouse said...

I got Grok to answer the question re Karl Marx: 1966 Volkswagen Beetle.

bob said...

“might just end up eating his children for breakfast!" Well, we all know Haitians eat cats, so...

Kate said...

Kamala is married to a man who, in his cups, strikes women. I suspect Papa Harris is more complicated than this article details.

doctrev said...

What do I think of the NYT's history rewrite? Who cares? Pointing out Kamala's stunningly dysfunctional family history only reinforces the fact she's never had children of her own. She hasn't actually stopped being a vapid slut, and would be a terrible choice for the Presidency even if she wasn't already a part of a profoundly unpopular administration.

No wonder the regime is trying to shoot the real President.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne aka Doug Emhoff's Pimp Hand said...

1619 blacks vs immigrant blacks. She has a hard enough time appearing authentically black without reminding everyone she is really a lace-curtain West Indian.

That didn't hurt Obama.

D.D. Driver said...

Iman 👍🏼. That is probably correct. Daddy issues.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Nope. People too. There is modern ritualistic gang-war cannibalism occurring in Haiti as we speak. There's videos....plural.

Birches said...

Reading through your post (and not the article that I will read later), I'm grateful that Kamala doesn't have Hillary Clinton's cunning. Kamala would be doing better with black men if her dad were out there as a surrogate. Clinton would have recognized that years ago and repaired the relationship, if only for selfish reasons.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne aka Doug Emhoff's Pimp Hand said...

...might just end up eating his children for breakfast!

Oh, c'mon! He's not Greek!

RideSpaceMountain said...

“Like so many others, Marx had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.
If he saw something clever like a little coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang, he had to have it. The Klipske personal office unit, the Hovetrekke home exer-bike, or the Johannshamn sofa with the Strinne green stripe pattern. Even the Rizlampa wire lamps of environmentally friendly unbleached paper. He'd flip through catalogs and wonder: What kind of dining set defines me as a person? He wanted it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections. Proof that they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of...…wherever."

JK Brown said...

Karl Marx would drive something like the silver Corvette. As long as someone else bought it for him as he certainly wasn't going work a job to make the money. He wouldn't go the latter even to support his family or the maid he kept knocking up. He also left his daughters without education. Wait, he's starting to sound like Doug Emhoff

TIKhistory has an extensive video on Karl Marx's life at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnwC8WxKMMc

Marx was not a good person regardless of his deadly ideas

Eva Marie said...

“The couple divorced in 1972 after he lost a bitter custody battle that brought his closeness to Ms. Harris and her younger sister “to an abrupt halt,”
The fact that he had no contact with his kids after the divorce indicates that the custody battle was a power play on dad’s part and had nothing to do with love.
Her decision to distance herself from him as an adult is perfectly understandable.

The rule of Lemnity said...

“Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children.”...”

He fought like hell?

Sally327 said...

It would probably by easier to understand the Father-daughter dynamic if we knew more about Kamala's relationship with her Mother. The Mother has been deceased for awhile now but it's not that easy to shift things around.

She made a silly remark, clearly a joke intended for an American audience who sees Jamaica as the land of reggae and ganja, and her Father dumped all over her publicly because he was getting sh*t from other family members. He cared more about placating them than he did having Kamala's back and defending her. I can see that stinging for awhile and maybe just reinforcing whatever views Kamala had of him based on the Mother's attitude over the years.

But he did take the time to write a letter to her when she was elected Vice President of the United States so I guess that's something.

walter said...

Why? The mom is missing from the discussion....

Freder Frederson said...

Her father is Jamaican. He is not a "negro." Negros are African and were brought to the United States as slaves. Her Jamaican family OWNED slaves. Of course this is the cleaned up version.

So what do you call an African brought to Jamaica as a slave? And does it really matter? The plantation system in Jamaica was probably the most brutal in the New World (field slaves were expected to last one season, they were literally worked to death.)

I doubt you will find many people of African descent in this country who don't have a slave owner in their family tree. Rape of slaves was common, with the added bonus that any children of the rape would be the property of the rapist.

Gerda Sprinchorn said...

Surprising that the article doesn't explore how her family's wealth derived from enslaving black bodies has privileged their lives down to the present day. Sometimes slavery is just too long ago to be relevant to the NYT.

Whiskeybum said...

Marx would drive a hand-built luxury car - doesn’t matter which make as long as the manufacturing line wasn’t automated.

rhhardin said...

One hypothesis could be that Kamala is a careerist who doesn't want any association with Marxism, however slight!

"What can be, unburdened by what has been" - Kamala

that's from Marx

"In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Quaestor said...

Althouse asks, "[What] car do you think Karl Marx would drive?"

Something with very wide doors. For an egalitarian, Marx ate big meals.

Jersey Fled said...

Kamala has claimed that her mother raised her to be a proud African American. Seems unlikely.

Rory said...

An ideological shift by a father after their estrangement doesn't seem very relevant to the ideology of the child.

Leland said...

My takeaway is Kamala has daddy issues. But as Walter notes, we don't know much about the mom either, though she did some time ago. Whatever happened, she chose to never have children of her own. Her husband seems horrible. I have some sympathy for Kamala, but none of her life story suggests she ought to be in charge of a country.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"So I was driving Karl around for the umpteenth time and we pull up at Regent's Park and once again, I knew he was gonna stiff me. So I said, 'Hey Karl! Hey! How about a little something. You know...for the effort!' And he looks at me and says back, 'There will be no money Friederich. But when you die, you will have the undying love of the proletariat.' So I got that going for me, which is nice."

planetgeo said...

Are there ANY prominent Democrat women who come from non-dysfunctional families and who have normal affectionate relationships with their fathers? There seems to be a persistent theme that keeps confirming the anti-male stance, not just of Democrat women but also of the party in general.

The rule of Lemnity said...

Someone with daddy issues pushing nuclear family buttons. 😉

Bob Boyd said...

I can't believe they didn't tell us what year Professor Harris' Corvette is. Until you know that, you nothing...about the car or the man. This what passes for journalism today. Sad.
The byline is Robert Draper. It wasn't even written by a woman!
"Oh, it's...um, it's silver." Jesus H Christ.
WTF, Bob? Do better.

Ann Althouse said...

"You don't need "U.S. authorities" to discriminate against men in divorce cases. The average family court judge will do just fine."

I meant to include state judges in that category — "U.S. authorities."

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Reading between the lines I can identify with Donald J Harris. West coast states took a strong position to default to motherly custody in divorce regarding children. Washington state was even worse, and in my case acted as a safe haven for my first wife after she defied a California court order and denied me visitation. I met with a very well-regarded attorney in Riverside (SoCal) who told me that even if I got another court order WA would not honor it and there was no mechanism to compel them to, because the state officially rejected Fathers' rights.

In the intervening years she filled our son with stories of how I had abandoned them (actually she had a fling with a guy at work and said she was leaving) with the result being by the time I finally got to see him again ten years later his mind was poisoned. I've seen similar things play out with family and friends. Children are very impressionable and whoever plants the first story has an advantage over any truth the other parent might want to tell.

That Harris rejects her father so markedly tells me something happened. Maybe she harbors memories of him being abusive in some way, and given the fact she's married to an alleged abusive guy that's plausible. Or maybe her story is like my son's.

Breezy said...

This article underscores the fact that she was not raised as a black American. Her mother’s pedigree dominates her upbringing and she kicked that aside to pander to blacks. I can understand why many blacks are put off by that. Also, I’m curious if her upbringing is really “middle class” by this description.

Wa St Blogger said...

Point 1: Anybody who is not very intimately connected to the people they are speculating about regarding motivations, connections, feelings, and attachment are writing bullshit. I doubt 10% of his conclusions are accurate. This is just tabloid level gossip. A waste of time.

Point 2: Willie Brown was Kamala's daddy.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

How do you know it was HIS idea to not have contact? Maybe that was Mom's idea. It's very easy for the custodial parent to control communication and very difficult to circumvent it on the west coast. I agree with your last sentence but for far different reasons.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

So his direct statement contradicts Eva Marie's take above.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

That's a balanced view.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

States have very wide discretion in Family Law.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

She's an upper class suburban Canadian by pedigree.

wild chicken said...

Eva Marie, that was my first thought too. Very old divorce game to reduce alimony and eliminate child support award. My father played it too, though had he won I would have been dumped at gramma's.

Dave Begley said...

Marx would drive either a Tesla or Hummer.

John henry said...

If we notice her father, we might have to notice her Jamaican citizenship through him.

She was born in California so definitely natural born us citizen

But do we really want a dual citizen as president?

John Henry

Aggie said...

Whatever car Marx would be driving, his car-bunkles would be driving him.

Bob Boyd said...

Marx was a drunk. His D.L. would be long gone. He'd call Uber.

D.D. Driver said...

I bet she even called him "daddy" in private and I am not joking. That's just what young women who date old dudes do. The relationship makes much more sense in context.

Big Mike said...

My thought, too.

Leland said...

You aren't keeping up with the times Begley. No progressive would be caught dead driving an Elon Musk vehicle, nor a vehicle of war like the Hummer. Maybe a Ford Mach-E, but not a Tesla.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Hire a bunch of 1099-filing car-owning Bourgeois private contractors!?! It's not unusual for a man's principles to get mixed up worse than the upchuck he spewed on the sidewalk. Sad!

Big Mike said...

Is this enough to get Trump people to stop calling him a Marxist

I don’t know about Trump’s campaign people, but it works for me.

… and asserting that she inherited Marxism?

@Althouse, consider the possibility that it is not the father from whom she inherited her totalitarian, Marxist views. Note that the couple separated at the time when Dr. Harris’s views were noticeably swinging away from Marxism.

Eva Marie said...

There are many ways for noncustodial spouses to keep at least attempting to maintain contact (and never stopping to do so) with their children. That’s not lost on the kids no matter what they’ve been told at home.

Inga said...

Harris’s father sounds like he didn’t really want a relationship with his daughters after the divorce, why want custody, yet not maintain visitation? It sounds like he was using the custody issue as a cudgel against the mother. Her father sounds like a man with no sense of humor and too full of himself, controlling. Her mother seemed to be an independent sort and that wouldn’t be compatible with a controlling husband. Who knows if there weren’t already attempts of reconciliation that didn’t work out and maintaining distance was a healthier way to live.

AlbertAnonymous said...

I have a hard time believing any of this. The author tries so hard (3 times at least) to say he’s NOT a Marxist, doesn’t believe in government control. The author also tries too hard (3-4 times at least) to make you believe they have an ongoing relationship like any father/daughter. All this talk of letters and calls around her momentous events. All of it hearsay. Can’t show any of it. Oh right they had a call. Oh right they sent letters. Of right she got miffed when she joked about legalizing marijuana because it hurt his Jamaican sensitivities. GMAFB…. This is a puff piece, nothing more.

Iman said...

“I can't believe they didn't tell us what year Professor Harris' Corvette is.”

Corvette Owner: chain of gold, thick of neck, short of dick.

Wince said...

Academic, cultural "Marxism" (neo-Marxism?) prevalent in the academy, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, means something different than state ownership of the means of production.

It means effective control over society via a "long march" through the culture, education, media, other institutions and government.

Actually producing goods and services is hard work.

jrem said...

In all of these family law cases, facts are important. Unfortunately, the New York Times article does not really delve into the facts. For example, there appears to be little explanation as to why the children were taken to Oakland, leaving dad in Madison. Did mom simply pick the children up and drive across country? What, if anything, did dad do at that point?
Once a court action was filed in Oakland, then there would have been some structure to the Family Court action, including the appointment of a guardian ad litem for the children. What were the initial Family Court orders that were issued during the pendency of the Family Court action? What contacted dad have while the Family Court action was pending. It appears as if the case did proceed to trial. What orders were entered by the court at that time.
I suspect, but do not know, that there were abuse allegations, either physical abuse or verbal abuse. Once those allegations are made, it is difficult for the accused to prove his innocence.
I suspect that at some point dad simply gave up.

Freder Frederson said...

1. 1619 blacks vs immigrant blacks. She has a hard enough time appearing authentically black without reminding everyone she is really a lace-curtain West Indian.

How exactly do you think Black people got from Africa to Jamaica? (Hint, they didn't get there on First Class on the Queen Elizabeth.)

Sally327 said...

The Father does seem like a bit of an a-hole.

Oh Yea said...

I'm waiting for the Steve Martin endorsement - "We were brought up as poor black children"

MadTownGuy said...

From the quote of the article:
"The sealed divorce settlement, he said, was “based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting."

Having like bed there for many years, and having seen how custody was adjudicated there, I must agree.

He does sound kind of bitter.

Inga said...

Donald Harris getting so upset about Kamala’s joke makes him look like a man with no sense of humor.

MadTownGuy said...

Wouldn't think of it. Body panels made of resin and sheep's wool.

MadTownGuy said...

Oh , now I get it. Trabant for the proles, cushy ride for the important folks.

Inga said...

It’s so silly to say Jamaicans are native to their island ( indigenous Jamaicans were not black Africans). Some are indigenous people, very few. Over 90 % of Jamaican’s ancestors arrived as slaves for the plantations. If there is a genetic connection to a slave owner, it’s probably because the slave was raped by the “master”, so blaming the victim for having a slave owner in their ancestry.

JES said...

Not really related, but there is some discussion about Kamala's black heritage. After being Indian for all those years she suddenly became black. Tracing that lineage has become problematic.

J Scott said...

John Kerry travels around in Gulfstreams and armored SUVs when he's doing the vital business of America, meeting with people around the world. I imagine Marx would have done the same.

Marx liked to talk about how wonderful his future state would be but was noticeably absent when the discussion got to how to implement things.

1. Propagandize the masses
2. Encourage the revolution of the proletariat
3. ????
4. Marxist Paradise on Earth

Ampersand said...

Anne O Krueger, described as a conservative economist, is the type of conservative who in 2020 published a book on international trade that she promoted as taking a stand against Donald Trump. I don't trust the NYT to tell me about Dr. Harris's Marxist connections.

Bob Boyd said...

Barbie has a Corvette.

Lazarus said...

"In the mid-90s, Dr. Harris took an early retirement from Stanford to return to Jamaica and coordinate what would become known as the country’s national industrial policy.... Once the policy did take hold, roughly a decade ago, the economy’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product was halved. The unemployment rate fell from 15 percent in 2013 to 5.4 percent today."

Maybe he should be our president.

Donald Harris was a Marxist economist, and apparently was one when young Kamala was still living in the US with him. He's now a post-Marxist, post-Keynesian economist. Post-Marxism takes different forms. Trump isn't out of line when he points out that Kamala Harris's father was a Marxist economist. Isn't there a kind of agreement that Republicans point out Democrats' earlier leftwing affiliations, and the Democrats lightly shrug off the allegation, while accusations of alt-right associations are enough to damn Republicans?

Lazarus said...

1970s Black culture was pretty potent. More potent than even today (though White or mainstream culture was also in much better shape then). Kamala fell in with Black (West Indian, most likely) kids at school and then went onto Howard. Whether she's "authentically" Black or Indian, or Canadian or American is a hard nut to crack. Maybe she's not authentically anything. But given the appeal of African-American culture in the wider environment, it's not so likely that Harris was going to stay Indian (or Jamaican). Her Indian family was on the other side of the planet and her mother doesn't appear to have been a Tiger Mom who drives her kids hard.

FullMoon said...

Trivia game show repeat from January 2024 had question "Who was first Asian American woman to become vice president?
Answer obvious. So accepted Asian as common knowledge until lately.

Ralph L said...

Obviously, her mother poisoned her daughters against their father.

who-knew said...

Cushy ride indeed. Old Karl would be chauffeured around in a custom made ZIL like the Russian premier or a top of the line Mercedes-Benz limo (built by those awful capitalists but at least they were Germans).

Ralph L said...

No-Fault Divorce laws were passing across the country about that time. I imagine California's changed before Wisconsin's.

Lazarus said...

Living in a largely Black environment without the "one drop" rule made for a very different experience. We talk about the scars and wounds of slavery, but they are so deep here because of what happened after slavery was abolished. Things were different in Jamaica. Segregation was economic, and the social hierarchy wasn't White over Black so much as it involved a range of different skin tones.

Ralph L said...

It would be funny if it's the same year as Biden's convertible C2.

FullMoon said...

Rape of slaves was common, with the added bonus that any children of the rape would be the property of the rapist.
10/4/24, 8:43 AM

Not to mention seductive black woman taking advantage of ignorant white slave owner.

Michael K said...

Lazarus is right. The medical students I taught were about half of them black. The immigrants from Jamaica or Africa, as some were, were quite different from the one American black who never got over his victim mentality and eventually flunked out.

Achilles said...

Marx was too stupid to actually own a car. The quintessential "intellectual."

He lived off the largess of Engels. He would be a broke college student if he were alive today. His ideas are unoriginal and being a white male would sink any chances he had.

Michael K said...

More Gramscian.

Achilles said...

Kamala grew up rich as a Brahmin caste daughter to an Indian mother. Her mother cast her rich Jamaican father out of her life.

When Kamala made her racist remark about how Jamaicans are lazy and smoke pot her father condemned her.

Kamala has made no attempt to know her father. She rose to power as a harem girl with no other useful skills and she is trying to disavow every policy position she has ever held.

Of course she is popular with a certain type of person.

Achilles said...

Inga is just now figuring out that Kamala Harris is a racist.

john mosby said...

Freder, that last, voluntary step from Jamaica to the US makes all the difference. Even the Great Migration of 1619 blacks from South to North isnt the same thing. For 1619 blacks, the USA is the old country. Everyone else came here to escape the old country.

JSM

D.D. Driver said...

The cries of "Marxism" don't make a tons of sense to me coming from MAGA. Trump was the President that got into a fight with his own party about giving away bigger freebie COVID checks to people sitting on their asses that didn't need the money. Seems pretty Marxist. Trump also prohibited law abiding landlords from evicting deadbeat tenants. Seems pretty Marxist. This was eventually declare unconstitutional. He also engineered the theft of private property here in Wisconsin to fork it over to Taiwanese conmen. This one actually doesn't seem "Marxist" (more "fascist") but its the antithesis of "America First."

(I understand that a lot of MAGA is completely clueless about all of these things, google it or I'm happy to give you a link.)

MAGA only cares about "Marxism" when the other guys do it.

tommyesq said...

Is this enough to get Trump people to stop calling him a Marxist and asserting that she inherited Marxism?

No, because at the time that her relationship with him was severed, he still was a Marxist, and she through her speech and behavior show that she too is a Marxist at heart.

Jupiter said...

Don't overthink this. Kamala Harris is a stupid slut. End of story.

FullMoon said...

At the time of Kamala's birth, what was the general attitude, if any, of upper class Indians regarding mixed marriages?

FullMoon said...

Seems as if mother wanted to punish dad for losing interest in her. That is why she took the kids half-way across the country in order to make visitation impossible. Dad loved children enough to hire high priced lawyer and take case to trial, simply in attempt to keep daughters nearby.
Mom poisoned daughters minds against dad as revenge for dad losing interest in her.
Mom either never had another relationship, or was unfortunately promiscuous, details are murkey.

Martha said...

From POLITICO today: Kamala Harris Undersells Perhaps the Most Influential Thing About Her Mother.—it appears Kamala did see her father during her childhood after the divorce:

“The divorce was final in 1973. Except for every other weekend and two months in the summer she was in essence a single parent — “Shyamala and the girls,” as their friends often said.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/04/the-woman-who-made-kamala-harris-and-modern-america-00181833

Bill Harshaw said...

"She is forefronting ...."

No way. America forefronts her identity as black. We've had the one-drop rule for centuries. Her only realistic choice in the matter as to which part would be dominant was to go with the culture or to spend much of hertime and energy fighting against the culture.

FullMoon said...

In 1961, Dr. Harris immigrated to the United States and enrolled in the graduate school of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. A year later, after giving a lecture on social inequality to a study group known as the Afro American Association, he was approached by a member of the audience.

Ah! There it is. A powerful, rich ,older professor approached by a young student. Student latches on, uses professor for influence and then moves on.
Guess the apple does not fall far from the tree.

BUMBLE BEE said...

An old friend who used to promote Sunsplash concerts back in the day, told me that Jamaicans, in his experience, took extreme offense at being referred to as negro or black. They were Jamaican!

Eva Marie said...

The rule of Lemnity quotes Kamala’s dad as saying:
“Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children.”
Never giving up on his love, however, didn’t include attending Kamala’s wedding. From the article:
“It upset Ms. Harris that her father did not attend Shyamala Harris’s funeral in 2009. Five years later, Dr. Harris declined an invitation to attend his daughter’s wedding to Doug Emhoff in a small ceremony in Santa Barbara, Calif.”
Talk is cheap.

Jersey Fled said...

Now THAT is a cool car!

Inga said...

It’s surprising to hear that black African ancestors in Jamaica were slave owners. Maybe the connection of a slave owner to the slave’s children was in the father/slave owner who raped the slave he owned.

Inga said...

So Donald Harris claiming he had no “closeness” with his daughters after the divorce was untrue? Did he have visitation as described and still felt no closeness to his daughters? Hmmm, sounds like Donald Harris is a not a warm father figure.

“The couple divorced in 1972 after he lost a bitter custody battle that brought his closeness to Ms. Harris and her younger sister “to an abrupt halt,” Dr. Harris wrote in a 2018 essay.”

Derve Swanson said...

Let it go.
Child of divorce.
Her mom got hurt by her dad.
Kamala got hurt by that.
Did he reach out when the mom died? He wasn't there when she was dying... she didn't remarry/love that way again... Kids of divorce know the score. (you're lucky Richrd remrried... lol.)

Rocco said...

Bill Harshaw said...
"No way. America forefronts her identity as black. We've had the one-drop rule for centuries."

False.

The one-drop rule did not even start until Plessy vs Ferguson was decided. And it took a while for it to be fully pushed on America.

Mixed race groups were part of America from the very beginning such as the Creoles, Melungeons, Brass Ankles, etc. Their cultures and heritages were all eventually destroyed and erased from history after the one-drop rule was implemented.

Some quick examples:
- In the 1920s, there was a court case where one of the points rested on whether the Melungeons were black. The court basically said, "Welp, they have some black and Indian ancestry, but they count as white."
- The 1930 census was the first census where a mixed race designation ("mulatto" or "colored") was not available as a racial designation.
- 1947 Mississippi: Davis Knight was found in a court of law to be a white man despite his acknowledged black ancestry. Reading the descriptions of the trial, it is clear that boundary between a white person with some black ancestry and a black person of mostly white ancestry often rested on social standing rather than blood quantum rules.

Rocco said...

Freder Frederson
"So what do you call an African brought to Jamaica as a slave? And does it really matter?"

It matters because Kamala is trying to pass herself off as black.

Kamala does NOT come from the black Jamaican culture; she comes from the prosperous mixed race middle class Jamaican culture. While there was not the hard color line there, the two cultures reflect two different aspects of a shared history.

And even black Jamaican culture is different from ADOS culture - unless you think all those cultures look alike.

James K said...

Inga keeps asserting without evidence that the slave-owning ancestry was the result of rape. Donald Harris himself has not claimed this. He wrote: “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me).

“The Harris name comes from my paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, landowner and agricultural ‘produce’ exporter (mostly pimento or allspice), who died in 1939 one year after I was born and is buried in the church yard of the magnificent Anglican Church which Hamilton Brown built in Brown’s Town (and where, as a child, I learned the catechism, was baptised and confirmed, and served as an acolyte).”
Source

Rocco said...

john mosby said...
"1619 blacks vs immigrant blacks. She has a hard enough time appearing authentically black without reminding everyone she is really a lace-curtain West Indian."

NorthOfTheOneOhOne aka Doug Emhoff's Pimp Hand observed...
"That didn't hurt Obama."

Post Obama, there have quietly been voices who observed that things didn't really change for blacks (ADOS specifically) in America.

Joanne Jacobs said...

I found a 1976 editorial in the Stanford Daily charging that Harris had trouble getting a permanent appointment with the Stanford economics department because he was seen as a "pied piper" leading students to Marxism. Apparently, he was an excellent teacher whose students were influenced by his ideas. Whether he was a Marxist himself or simply more open than other professors to Marxist interpretations is unclear.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Oh! It's a shame we are not seeing more of him. I feel deprived! But his daughter has kept him at a distance all these years.

Well, of course she has!
She see herself as a high caste Brahmin, whereas he's just a dirty black man.

She didn't value that until she started trying to run for President.

Why wouldn't you want to associate yourself with this achievement?
Because it's contrary to the policies she desires, which is pure Marxism

In any case, wouldn't the desire for connection with your own father outweigh all that
You are assuming without evidence that she's a moral and decent human being

“The national industrial policy was anathema to Marxists,” said P.J. Patterson, Jamaica’s prime minister at the time. “What Don was propounding was the notion of a market-based economy where the private sector, not the government, was the engine of growth. There was nothing in there about state control of industry.”...
Is this enough to get Trump people to stop calling him a Marxist and asserting that she inherited Marxism?

1: It's also anathema to Obama / Biden / Harris / Walz Democrats
2: You quoted about that he moved away from Marxism over time. But when he was with her, he was Marxist.
So that's what she inherited

Michael K said...

The dullard has never heard of free blacks some of whom owned slaves. < href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/free-blacks-1619-1860"> Some history.

Mikey NTH said...

You get a Lada if you're lucky; Marx would ride in a ZIL limo.