Kamala Harris Amongst Best Contributions Immigrants Have Given Our Nation

In a recent item, “Overdue Debunking of MAGA Cult Xenophobia”, I noted how “throughout history, decent, hard-working immigrants (like me) have contributed to the economy and our national security”.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a woman who could very well become the 47th President of these United States, is amongst the best contributions a pair of immigrants, Donald J. Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, have given to our nation.

Their daughters Kamala and Maya are by no means their only contributions…

Both parents were born in 1938 in what was then parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations: Donald in Jamaica and Shyamala in India. Both were remarkably gifted intellectuals who, after emigrating to the U.S., met as students at U.C. Berkeley. Kamala’s father became a leading economist who is currently a professor emeritus at Stanford University. Kamala’s mother, who passed in 2009, became a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory.

Both Kamala and her younger sister Maya inherited something from their immigrant parents that is far more significant than the $413 million Donald Trump inherited from his father, Fred. They inherited superior intellects. Maya, like Kamala, is an attorney, who graduated with distinction at Stanford. She not only became a law professor, but also, at the age of 29, became one of the youngest people to serve as dean of an American law school.

Kamala attributes her commitment to equal justice under law to her parents’ active role in the civil rights movements of the ’60s. She observed via Instagram in June that “we are still fighting for justice and to confront the systemic racism that has plagued our country since its earliest days.”

Contrary to the false claims leveled by some Republicans, Kamala Harris was born in the U.S. and is a descendant of African-Jamaican slaves. Kamala may also be a descendant of the Irishman, Hamilton Brown, who owned slaves in Jamaica during the 18th Century, according to a genealogical study performed by the Irish Times.

Even if accurate, what that genealogical study doesn’t tell us is whether or not the relationship between Hamilton Brown and Kamala’s female ancestor was consensual.

One of the horrific aspects of slavery was the ability of white slave masters to rape female slaves with impunity because black female slaves were considered the property of the white master. The Peculiar Institution was so perverse that, at birth, the mixed-race child from that union became the property of the white master who raped the child’s mother.

A genealogical link to Hamilton Brown neither erases the fact that Kamala is a descendant of African-Jamaican slaves nor serves to diminish her stature. After all, there are numerous African-Americans, who can trace their roots to the long-running affair between the revered Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence — “all men are created equal” — and his slave, Sally Hemings.

Jefferson freed the children he and Sally produced, according to the Monticello archives, but he didn’t free Sally. After Jefferson died in 1826, Jefferson’s white daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, “permitted” Sally to “leave Monticello”, the archives recount. Sally “went to live with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville.”

Thomas Jefferson was, by no means, the only Founding Father who owned slaves. George Washington, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and James Monroe owned slaves.

It would be the height of racist hypocrisy for anyone who reveres our slave-owning Founding Fathers to try to throw shade on Kamala Harris because she may be genealogically linked to an 18th Century slave master. Indeed, in this writer’s view, by electing Kamala Harris to become our 47th President, the voters of this nation will attain a measure of justice with respect to what Kamala herself described as “the systemic racism that has plagued our nation since its earliest days.”