Commentary
By Frances Rice
Rogan O’Handley noted in a
tweet “Democrats will tear down statues of slave owners, but nominate the
descendant of one of Jamaica’s biggest slave owners for Vice President.”
Dinesh D'Souza stated “Kamala
Harris is directly descended from one of the largest slaveowners in Jamaica,
Hamilton Brown—there is a even a town named after him, Brown Town. So doesn’t
it follow she’s a beneficiary, not a victim, of slavery?”
In this undated photo provided by the Kamala Harris campaign in April 2019, Iris Finegan holds her great granddaughter, Kamala Harris, in Jamaica. (Kamala Harris campaign via AP) / AP
As is revealed in the below
article “Kamala Harris has a troublesome family history” she is
descended from the 19th-century Irish slave owner Hamilton Brown, the namesake
of Brown’s Town in Jamaica, who recruited massive numbers of Irish migrants to
Jamaica to work on his sugar plantations after the British Empire abolished
slavery.
The article that was written during the primaries includes information about how the Harris family's slave-holding history is confirmed by her father, Donald J. Harris an
economics professor at Stanford University who is the son of an English white
man,
Joseph Alexander Harris.
____________________
Kamala
Harris has a troublesome family history
AP Photo/Paul Sancya
The story: Donald
Harris, Kamala’s father, wrote the following in a lengthy essay for Jamaica Global Online in January of his
family’s history:
“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).”
The California Senator has also advocated for the
legalization of marijuana, and in February she suggested that she and Jamaicans
were generally known as big pot smokers. Her father voiced his distress over her remarks.
“My dear departed grandmothers(whose extraordinary legacy
I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents
, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name,
reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or
not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the
pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican
family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
