Where are you from? is a question that I've often answered differently depending upon the context. To those in the Bay Area, I'll mention the "South Bay" or the "Peninsula" (the exact suburb where I grew up can be grouped in either, depending upon if one wants to sound less or more ritzy). When traveling to other parts of the country and the world, I might say "San Francisco" or "the San Francisco area" or just "California" — depending upon how much of a conversation I feel up for triggering. In one case, replying that I was from "San Francisco" to a neighboring table of diners at a restaurant in Sydney, Australia, after they heard my accent, led to a very long conversation followed by so you're gay, right? (which unfortunately for them, I had the disappointing answer of just being a straight — and extremely jet-lagged — fellow who had just gotten off the plane from "San Francisco.") More recently near Lake Tahoe, while briefly interacting with a white elderly MAGA-hat-wearing man who was visiting from a Great Plains state, I said we were from "the San Francisco area" and he gave a momentarily quizzical look that seemed less revulsion and more a halting of all his internal gears — cognitive dissonance of wondering how a middle (well, upper middle) class fellow and his wife and two kids survive in a purported hellhole — and he changed the subject.

Anyway, the speech-writing team for Kamala Harris's DNC acceptance speech was extremely dexterous in how they named – and didn't name – the geography of her personal and professional connections to Northern California:

"So, my mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California" "Growing up, we moved a lot. [...] to Illinois, to Wisconsin, and wherever our parents’ jobs took us."

Only US states mentioned – her teenage years in Montreal (Canada) are hinted at but not named.

"In the Bay — in the Bay — you either live in the hills or the flatlands. We lived in the flats."

Saying she grew up in the East Bay without saying "Berkeley."

"As a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, California, I stood up for women and children..."

Naming Oakland as the place where she was a prosecutor – but not naming it as also the place of her birth.

"As a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, Calif., I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them. As attorney general of California, I took on the big banks..."

While the speech mentioned when she worked for Alameda County and for State of California, left unsaid was her position in between: elected district attorney of the City and County of "San Francisco."

I have no problem with this strategic dexterity. I find it fascinating to see how Harris and her team are sidestepping the possibility of taunts like "she's from Berzerkeley!" or "she left the US of A for Canada!" or "she failed to fix San Fransicko!" by gesturing toward — but not explicitly naming — those specific places.

Whatever we call these places, I'm pleased to live here with family and friends and everyone else, and I'll be pleased to cast a vote for Harris to be the very first member of the Democratic Party born and raised in California to take our shared values all the way to the US presidency.