Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has been accused of appropriating a childhood story from the life of Martin Luther King Jr. as her own.
Busted: The anecdote, which Harris shared with Elle magazine in a glowing profile published in October, was flagged as plagiarism on Monday by Maclean’s columnist Andray Domise.
- It quickly became a meme on conservative Twitter as further evidence of Harris’ alleged phoniness and cynical exploitation of race.
Kamala’s story: In the Elle interview, Harris recounted falling out of a stroller at a civil rights march in Oakland, California, and being briefly separated from her parents before her mother recovered her.
- “My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing, and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’” Harris said. “And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom.'”
- The subhead of the Elle article is: “The woman who will become vice president on the fight for justice and freedom she’s been waging since birth.”
Harris referenced the same story in multiple TV appearances over the summer and in her 2010 and 2019 books.
King’s story: King, the civil rights icon, in a 1965 interview with Playboy magazine recalled witnessing a similar exchange to Harris’ — but between a “little Negro girl” and a police officer at a demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama.
- “What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly,” according to King, “and the little girl looked him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom.'”
Harris has not responded to multiple news outlets’ requests for comment on the coincidence.
