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Consider Harris. She has a Jamaican-American father and an Indian-American mother, which is proof enough for some on the left that she’s been a victim of racial and gender discrimination. But look closer at her background and it’s obvious that race and gender weren’t much of an impediment. She didn’t rise up out of a ghetto and overcome the odds. Harris’s father was a Stanford University economics professor and her mother was a breast cancer researcher at McGill University in Montreal. The senator attended high school in Westmount, Que., which Canadians will recognize as among the poshest enclaves in the country. If anything, Harris’s racial background may have been an advantage when she applied to law schools, which often allow lower grades and test scores for minority applicants due to affirmative action policies.

The senator attended high school in Westmount, Que., which Canadians will recognize as among the poshest enclaves in the country

Same story with Booker, who is African-American. His parents were executives at IBM and he grew up in Harrington Park, N.J., where the median household income is US$137,000. That’s about four times the median income in Newark, N.J., the predominantly African-American city where he went on to serve as mayor. Booker went to Stanford University, Oxford and Yale law — all of which have affirmative action programs that favour minorities. He may well have experienced racism, but if he did, it was certainly not enough to hold him back.

Of course, Buttigieg is privileged, too. He grew up with professors for parents, attended Harvard, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. But at least he’s willing to admit he’s not oppressed. In a 2015 essay where he came out as gay to his constituents, having been in office since 2012, he said that he struggled with his sexual orientation but it “has had no bearing on my job performance in business, in the military, or in my current role as mayor.” He also stressed that he believes the way forward on disagreements over things like LGBT rights will be found in a “basic regard and concern for one another” and “not on the categories of politics, orientation, background or creed.” He was re-elected by the people of South Bend in late 2015, with 80 per cent of the vote.