Miles Dungan (Irish Independent, Opinion magazine highlighted Kamala Harris’ ancestral lineage, writing that “it is unlikely that the US vice president will celebrate her ties to Antrim-born slave owner Hamilton Brown.”
“Do you think you fell from a coconut tree?” Shyamala Gopalan, mother of prominent academic Kamala Harris, once asked her daughter, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, in reference to Harris’ half-Jamaican, half-Indian background.
Well, not entirely, actually, since she has Irish ancestry too – one of her great-great-grandfathers was from County Antrim – so of course, like any American politician wanting to appeal to as wide a range of ethnic groups as possible, she will be eager to establish and flaunt her Irish-American credentials.
Well, maybe not in this case.
[. . .] For overzealous Irish genealogists (and the ever-overzealous Simon Harris), it may be wise to stay away from the Irish branch of this particular family tree.
We wouldn’t be truly Irish if we didn’t latch onto prominent American politicians and claim them as “Irish-Americans.” It’s a bit like the Brits claiming Paul Mescal when he was nominated for an Oscar. We didn’t get Presidents Bush and Obama, but apart from that, pretty much everyone since Ronald Reagan has been heralded as being of Irish descent, even Moneygal’s Barack Obama-Carney. [. . .]
But it would take an intrepid genealogist (or prime minister) to try to lure Vice President Kamala Harris to the birthplace of her only Irish ancestor.
The great-great-grandfather in question was a man named Hamilton Brown, born in County Antrim in the year of the Declaration of Independence, 1776. Apart from the coincidence of his birth year, any associations with freedom or emancipation (other than his own) are purely coincidental.
So why doesn’t the presumptive candidate try to establish his Irish credentials and garner some of the Irish-American vote in the process? That’s probably because his great-great-grandfather Ham was a first-rate, enthusiastic, unreformed slave owner. He considered his pampered and privileged slaves to be more fortunate than the poor English, who were, of course, far more fortunate than the poor Irish.
Kamala Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, wrote in an article titled “Recollections of My Jamaican Father” that, “My roots can be traced back to my paternal grandmother, Miss Crissy (née Christiana Brown, a descendant of Hamilton Brown, the documented plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town), during my lifetime.”
Brown was generous when it came to the ownership of his fellow human beings. By the early 1800s, he had acquired 25 plantations in Jamaica. In the 1830s, when the repentant British government paid compensation to wronged slave owners in the British colony, he received nearly £20,000 for the loss of his human property (886 slaves). He unsuccessfully sought £5,000 for a further 233 slaves.
He appears to have arrived in Jamaica in 1795 to work as a humble bookkeeper, but managed to accumulate large tracts of land (used for raising cattle and growing sugar).
Brown, like his Irish compatriot John Mitchell, born a little further south in Newry, County Down, had intriguing thoughts about the relationship between the status of slaves and their soul mates, the Irish and the English poor. [. . .] “I am the first man to speak to the Methodist minister Henry Whiteley, who was visiting Jamaica in 1832, the year before the Abolition Act was passed at Westminster. [. . .] Here is Whiteley’s account of his meeting with Vice President Harris’ ancestor: “That day on board the ship which had arrived at St. Ann’s Bay I dined with several colonists, among whom was Mr. Hamilton Brown, who represented St. Ann’s Parish in the Colonial Assembly. [. . .] I was rather surprised to hear that gentleman swear to its author that the order should never be adopted in Jamaica; and also that the planters of Jamaica would not permit the Home Government to interfere in any way with the slaves. He and the others present had much to say about the happiness and comfort which the slaves enjoy, and the many advantages which the poor people of England do not have.”
[. . .] Whiteley was a bit skeptical of Brown’s optimistic view that slavery would improve lives, but his skepticism was soon justified. During a trip through the island’s plantations, he witnessed a group of slaves fertilizing sugar cane while an overseer beat the cane with a cart whip. “It appeared to me a very dirty job, for the moisture of the fertilizer was dripping out of the baskets and running down the bodies of the negroes,” he wrote. “The sight rather irritated me, and made me doubt whether the West Indian slaves were in a more favorable condition than other slaves. [English] The factory children…the roar of the cart whip, which echoed in their ears while riding in the carriages, excited very unpleasant emotions.
[. . .] Brown was clearly a sentimentalist (unless you were dark-skinned), as he named one of his 25 properties after the county he was born in. He gave his first name to the town of Hamilton in Jamaica, which was clearly seen as disrespectful and a kind of libel, as it was later changed to the more respectful “Brown’s Town.”
Later, he proved himself a true Irish patriot and tried to encourage the Irish to emigrate to Jamaica after the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies. In 1835, he sent the James Rae to Ballymany, County Antrim, and collected 121 Irish immigrants, who settled around him in St. Ann’s. In 1836, another 185 of his compatriots followed. The avowed purpose of this early project to encourage migration was to prevent the freed slaves from acquiring land in Jamaica.
[. . .] This Irish charmer continued to live in the West Indies long after emancipation. He died there in 1845, aged 68. He appears to have died after being thrown from a carriage.
Of course, culture wars being what they are, Republican crazies have tried to use Hamilton Brown as a weapon against Harris. A headline on a right-wing website a few years ago read: Red State A pretty typical question: “When will racist Kamala Harris admit that she is the descendant of slave owners?” Let me offer a well-thought-out and carefully considered rebuttal to this particular argument. What a bunch of nasty weirdos.
I hope the above is a sufficiently thoughtful and intelligent rebuttal. If not, it may be worth pointing out that most black people who are the descendants of slave owners are also the descendants of slaves. [. . .]
Read the full article below https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/myles-dungan-we-can-forgive-kamala-harris-for-not-pursuing-her-possible-family-link-to-an-odious-irish-slave-trader/a704055725.html
