Kamala Harris once made a speech that mocked a big portion of voters. It was mostly the 18–24-year-olds. She called them stupid and said that’s why they’re in dorms.
A video where U.S. Vice President and presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party in November’s presidential election Kamala Harris refers to young people aged 18-24 as “stupid” has been taken out of context on social media.
The longer, original footage shows Harris presenting a program aimed at lowering recidivism among young offenders with better reintegration.
One of the social media posts sharing the clip is captioned, opens new tab: “Yo, 18-24 year olds never forget what the presumptive Democrat nominee thinks of you when you vote in November…”

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Harris can be heard saying in the 22-second snippet, “And it’s a specific phase of life, remember, age is more than a chronological fact. What else do we know about this population, 18-24? They are stupid. That is why we put them in dormitories and they have a resident assistant. They make really bad decisions!”

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However, the video has been cropped and stripped of its context.
The clip shared on social media matches exactly between timestamps 17:38 and 18:00 of a longer video, opens new tab published in May 2014 by the Ford Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in the United States.

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The full video shows Harris talking about how “Back on Track,” a program aimed at reducing recidivism among young people, can help those arrested on low-level charges by having charges dismissed after completing the program (around 16:00).
The wider quote before the snippet shared on social media shows Harris saying: “When I was at Howard University and we were in college, we were 18-24 and you know what we were called? College kids. But when you turn 18 and you’re in the system, you are considered an adult, period.”

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At about 20:00, she says that in five years, the program helped reduce recidivism among young people from 54% to less than 10%.
Reuters previously addressed the narrative circulating online prior to the 2020 presidential election, when Harris became the first woman, first Black American and first Asian American to win the second highest U.S. office.