Leftists dance around report Kamala Harris' ancestor owned slaves

LEFTISTS DANCE AROUND REPORT KAMALA HARRIS' ANCESTOR OWNED SLAVES

Snopes calls claim of candidate's father 'unproven'

Published: 18 hours ago


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An old article by Sen. Kamala Harris’ father stating his ancestors owned slaves has presented supporters of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate with an unpleasant choice.

They either must accuse Harris’ father of lying or admit that their candidate, who made racism a major issue in the first debate, lacks credibility.

The far-left “fact-check” site Snopes chose a third way, however, dancing around the issue. Snopes acknowledged her father wrote the article but concluded the claim was “unproven.”

The site explained it was “the right-leaning website” Big League Politics that posted a report naming slaves owned by Harris’ ancestor Hamilton Brown.

The namesake of Brown’s Town in Jamaica, Brown recruited massive numbers of Irish migrants to Jamaica to work on his sugar plantations after the British empire abolished slavery, according to Donald Harris, the senator’s father.

A retired Stanford University economics professor, Donald Harris was born in Jamaica and arrived in the U.S. in the 1960s. He married Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian cancer researcher, but the couple separated after Kamala and her sister, Maya, were born.

Donald Harris wrote: “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me). The Harris name comes from my paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, land-owner and agricultural ‘produce’ exporter (mostly pimento or all-spice), who died in 1939 one year after I was born and is buried in the church yard of the magnificent Anglican Church which Hamilton Brown built in Brown’s Town (and where, as a child, I learned the catechism, was baptized and confirmed, and served as an acolyte).”

Snopes said there is “no doubt that Hamilton Brown was a prominent plantation owner in Jamaica during the first half of the 19th century, owned slaves, and also advocated against the abolition of slavery and sought to downplay the difficult working and living conditions of slaves in Jamaica.”

But the site said it couldn’t verify the family links between the slave owner and the contemporary Harris family.

“As such, the claim that an ancestor of Sen. Harris owned slaves in Jamaica remains unproven.”

The public policy website California Political Review said the issue of Harris’s ancestry is relevant because the senator has advocated for reparations to be paid to the descendants of slaves.

“It’s a ridiculous supposition, of course, to hold anyone responsible for the actions of distant relatives hundreds of years ago,” the site said.

“If we travel far enough back, most of us are likely related to slave owners at some point in history since selling people into slavery has always been a part of the human story across the globe. But since Harris has decided to embrace reparation theology, shouldn’t she lead by example?”

Big League Politics cited Jamaican Family Search, which said Hamilton Brown “owned several plantations, including one named Minard, which had 128 slaves on site.

A list of slaves he owned is recorded in the National Archives in London and the University College London’s “Legacies of British Slave-ownership.”

Critics have questioned Harris’ “blackness,” because she was born in the U.S. to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

The heritage claims of another Democratic candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., haven’t fared well. She claimed a Native American heritage based on “family lore.” But a DNA test later indicated she was less Native American than most Americans.

Leftists dance around report Kamala Harris' ancestor owned slaves

By Melanie Arter | July 5, 2019 | 3:04 PM EDT

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - Speaking to supporters at a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice America on Wednesday, Sen. Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump “a predator.”

As a prosecutor, Harris said she successfully prosecuted “big banks who preyed on homeowners, prosecuted pharmaceutical companies who preyed on seniors, prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who preyed on women and children, and I will tell you, we have a predator living in the White House.”

“And the thing about this person is he’s got predatory instincts and a predatory nature, because let me tell you a secret about predators, they prey on the vulnerable. They prey on those whom they assume are weak. They prey on those who they assume are desperate, and the thing about predators is this: they’re cowards, and what we need and want in our America is a president of the United States who recognizes that her strength derives from an ability not to beat people down, but lift people up, lift them up,” she said.

Harris said Trump ran on the promise to make America great again, but “he has actually betrayed America.”

“He ran on a platform that said, farmers, I’m gonna take care of y’all. Well I don’t need to tell Iowa that this so-called trade policy, trade by tweet has resulted in Iowa farmers, some whom are looking at bankruptcy, those who had cultivated a market over at least the last decade in China to sell soybeans, those soybeans are now sitting rotting in bins,” the senator said.

“I don’t need to tell you how he betrayed people when we’re looking at the fact that it is very possible that as many as 700,000 auto workers in the United States may lose their job by the end of the year. Let’s talk about betrayal of American families when because of that so-called trade policy, which I call the Trump trade tax, American families right now are spending $1.4 billion a month more for everything from shampoo to washing machines,” she said.

Harris accused the president of wanting to take America backward but said her campaign is “prepared to turn the page.”

“And so look at the rap sheet on this case. Let’s look at the rap sheet, shall we? So let’s look at the fact that [Trump] promised working people that they’d be helped, but then he passes a tax bill benefiting the top one percent and the biggest corporations. You look at the Trump trade tax. You can look at what’s happening in terms of yet again continuous attempts to take health care from American families, including reviving pre-existing conditions as a ban on getting access to health care,” she said.

“You look at the fact that there are children in cages, and they’re separating children from their parents in the name of border security, which in fact, what that is, is a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government. There’s plenty of evidence to prosecute this case,” Harris said.

Sen. Kamala Harris: ‘We Have a Predator Living in the White House’