Former President Donald Trump caused a furor by publicly speculating about the current Vice President’s ethnicity. Is Kamala Harris Black or South Asian and when did she become either? So confusing!

Mainstream politicians and pundits seem just as perplexed in a different way. Where did this charismatic, brilliant politician come from? Such a mystery! Such a surprise!

For roughly 40 million Californians, however, there is nothing problematic, surprising or mysterious about the former San Francisco District Attorney, former California Attorney General, former California Senator and now the scorchingly effective Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

Take the Vice President’s ethnic identity, for example. California’s population is 14% mixed-race or, as we on the West Coast are more likely to say, multi-ethnic. This is not surprising; California has long been a hyper-diverse, minority-majority society which we have enthusiastically embraced both figuratively and, as those statistics show, quite literally. 

Kamala Harris’s much commented-upon emphasis on social and environmental justice is also quite normal for California. Californians are a lot less likely than the average American to freak out about spending taxpayer dollars to help people who don’t look like them and their family members. Diversity is core to Californian identity, much more than allegiance to a particular racial or ethnic group.

The Vice-President’s very optimistic future orientation has been widely welcomed as a much needed change that has come seemingly out of nowhere. Yet for Californians this is not a change at all. After nearly 175 years of amazing innovation and success, California clearly excels at producing and attracting ambitious people with big dreams. It’s why MAGA never really caught on in California as it did elsewhere. Future focus is nothing new here.

People also seem surprised by Harris’s sharply incisive intelligence and her fierce application of it. This reflects deeply embedded sexist and racist assumptions of course. It might also reflect assumptions toward California as well. From valley girls to surfer dudes, California has long been derided as shallow, superficial and often just stupid. But Harris was born to parents active in UC Berkeley, one of the world’s most rigorous and demanding academic milieus. She grew up surrounded by people with very high intellectual standards and it shows. There are many such places in California, and that shows too in Californians’ intellectual achievements—if people are willing to look past the stereotypes.

Even less surprising should be the way the Vice President quickly and flawlessly unified the Democratic party behind her. Harris came politically in deep blue San Francisco, long notorious for its “knife fight in a phone booth” style politics. Any successful SF politician must be able to unite those fractions to win. Like George Moscone, Harvey Milk and, most of all Nancy Pelosi, Harris learned early on how to turn a circular firing squad into a formidable coalition.

Years of organized anti-California propaganda by right-wingers can help explain why such a talented and competent Californian hasn’t been “seen” all this time by so many US pundits and politicians who have trouble explaining or placing Harris in their minds. 

Adding to this obliviousness is the apparent fact that a great number of non-Californians across the spectrum feel, like Donald Trump, perfectly entitled to define California in their own terms and for their own purposes without a second thought.

This might be a mistake because California is obviously producing—or better put, Californians are producing—something the rest of the US seems to really like, and, more importantly, desperately needs.