Kamala Harris a Descendant of 'Brutal' Irish Slave Owner Who Was a 'Seriously Bad Man': Report

Kamala Harris' Indian-Jamaican roots are again in the spotlight, but this time it is not her political rival Donald Trump sounding alarms. Radar Online exclusively reported that the Vice President is apparently the descendant of an Irish slave owner who was reportedly 'brutal' and a 'seriously bad man.' A British historian is said to have made the allegation.

From her maternal side, the US Democrat is half-Indian; her mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in Madras, India. She is also half-Jamaican from her father Donald Harris' side. The reports of her Irish connection came after it was revealed that she was born in Brown's Town on the Caribbean island—named after Hamilton Brown, the enslaver—who's been cited as the great-great-great-great grandfather of Harris by the historian. 

Donald, the VP's father who is also a professor, wrote in an article published in the Jamaica Global Online, "My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (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 proved controversial because Northern Irish-born historian, Stephen McCracken, claimed that Brown was a brutal man who owned around 120 slaves in 1826. Brown was born in County Antrim and eventually settled in Jamaica. McCracken shared, "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." 

The historian also noted that Brown was notoriously infamous for his refusal to give up the oppressive practice of slavery: "He was a seriously bad man, who traveled to London a few times to protest against the abolition of slavery. When slavery was finally outlawed, he turned his attention to exploiting Irish migrants, effectively making slaves of them too." 

Meanwhile, Harris' supporters found the story absurd and questioned the authenticity of it. After McCracken highlighted the same in the media, qualified genealogist Megan Smolenyak, who has famously studied celebrity heritage in a series Who Do You Think You Are? called the Brown story 'twisted attempts' to 'weaponize Kamala Harris' family tree.' She argued that there was no record of Brown being married or having any children to have any proven descendants.

"(Brown) was really aggressive about fighting emancipation and that puts him in his own special category," Smolenyak weighed in. "No doubt, unfortunately, his DNA is floating out there... I have very few doubts that he did rape some of those he enslaved," however, "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." 

Meanwhile, earlier, her opponent Trump had slammed her for her 'misleading' racial identity He asked, "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?" as per BBC.