Image Source: Getty Images | Photo By Joe Raedle
Kamala Harris’ diverse heritage is once again under scrutiny, but this time it’s not political rivals like Donald Trump raising concerns. Instead, Radar Online has exclusively reported that the Vice President is allegedly a descendant of an Irish slave owner who was reportedly “brutal” and a “seriously bad man.” This allegation comes from a British historian, casting a shadow on Harris’ ancestry.
Kamala Harris, whose mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in Madras, India, is of half-Indian descent. On her father’s side, she is half-Jamaican. The reports of her Irish connection emerged when it was revealed that she was born in Brown’s Town on the Caribbean island, named after Hamilton-Brown, the enslaver. According to the historian, this man is believed to be Harris’ great-great-great-great grandfather.
Donald Harris, the Vice President’s father and a professor, wrote in an article published in Jamaica Global Online, “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrissy (née Christiana Brown), a descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slaveowner and founder of Brown’s Town, a town in Jamaica.”
This claim has stirred controversy, particularly after Stephen McCracken, a Northern Irish-born historian, alleged that Hamilton-Brown was a “brutal” man who owned around 120 slaves in 1826. McCracken explained, “I actually thought this was going to be a nice story, like (former US presidents) McKinley, Nixon, Jackson, Roosevelt, all of whom have links to Antrim, but it wasn’t. Hamilton-Brown was not a nice fellow. He was born in Antrim, Northern Ireland, before moving to Jamaica as a teenager. There, he became a bookmaker, and eventually a plantation owner and slaveholder.”
However, Harris’ supporters have called the story absurd and questioned its authenticity. After McCracken’s claims made headlines, Megan Smolenyak, a qualified genealogist known for her work on the series Who Do You Think You Are? dismissed the Brown story as “twisted attempts” to “weaponize Kamala Harris’ family tree.” She pointed out that there is no record of Brown being married or having children, making it difficult to prove any direct descendants.
“(Brown) was really aggressive about fighting emancipation and that puts him in his own special category,” Smolenyak added. “No doubt, unfortunately, his DNA is floating out there… I have very few doubts that he did rape some of those he enslaved,” she said. However, she cautioned, “It’s one thing to know that on an intellectual level and to claim it concerning somebody who might become the next president of the United States. There is no paper trail proof at all.”
Previously, Trump had criticized Harris for what he called her “misleading” racial identity. He questioned, “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know…Is she Indian? Or is she Black?” according to the BBC.
