What If Kamala Isn't Black?
Shaking the Harris Family Tree
Right now, as you and I are minding our own business, Candace Owens is putting on her scuba gear and doing a deep dive into Kamala’s genealogy. She’s getting a media blackout on this—the mainstream folks are ignoring this despite the fact that it has the potential to be either a blockbuster story or a major fiasco for the scandal-plagued Owens. Either way, it’s interesting, so the mainstream media are going to tell you more about climate change.
Candace Owens is a reporter, podcaster, political commentator, and controversial figure. She is often excoriated for her antisemitic views. In no way am I saying that I am in love with Candace Owens and endorse every word that she has ever said. What I do love is a good story, and I don’t care who brings it.
This is a really good story. It’s going to blow up in somebody’s face, the only question is whether the face will belong to Candace or Kamala.
To get the news directly from Owens, you can follow her podcast, or go here if you’d rather read a transcript. The kerfuffle actually began when Janet Jackson said that she heard Kamala was not Black. Jackson didn’t make the claim, she just shared that she had heard some skepticism about Kamala’s being the first Black Vice President and now the first Black woman candidate for President. MSNBC immediately pronounced Jackson’s remarks to be misinformation, so I knew there was something there.
And MSNBC is wrong because when a person like Janet Jackson said she heard something, how is that misinformation? Does MSNBC know everything Janet Jackson ever heard? Anyway, MSNBC is big mad and already doing damage control.
That means this is real.
It goes without saying that race should not be important in political contests, but we live in 2024 America, so race is vastly overemphasized. Certainly Kamala went out of her way to identify as a Black candidate. She is quick to point out that she attended a historically Black university, but that doesn’t make a person Black any more than sitting in the garage makes you a car. A lot of white students attend historically Black universities and vice versa.
Kamala also claimed to have been part of the “busing” efforts to integrate schools, but lots of kids got bused. The whole business of busing was based on neighborhoods and school districts, not race. A lot of white kids were bused, too.
You may remember when Trump made a joke about how Kamala just suddenly “turned Black.” He was observing an indisputable fact. When Kamala’s political career plopped her in a Senate seat, she advertised herself as a South Asian and proudly claimed to be America’s first Indian-American Senator.
She wasn’t Black then, or at least she did not market herself as Black or African-American.
Kamala, like a lot of other people in the United States, is of mixed ancestry. However, in today’s racially fraught times, people can get points by being a member of a favored race or ethnicity. Likewise you can lose political points if you are from a disfavored group. If you are a Democrat, this is a good time to be Black or Latino, but not necessarily a good time to be white or Jewish. Being female is better than being male, politically speaking. Being atheist is better than being religious and being Jewish is a political liability (just ask Josh Shapiro). It’s all too ridiculous. But back in 2020, Joe Biden promised to name a Black woman for his vice president. And there was Kamala Harris ready in the wings, suddenly a proud Black woman.
In a sane world, none of this would matter, but the sane train has pulled out of the station back in 2008.
Candace Owens is diving into genealogy to find out a little bit more about Kamala’s grandparents. Her mother, who has since passed away, was from the south of India. Her father, Donald Harris, is still alive and was born in Jamaica. Candace has turned up some very credible evidence—I would not call it proof, but she did find some stuff—that Donald Harris had two white parents. Kamala claims her father had a white father but a Black mother (these would be Kamala’s paternal grandparents). The alleged Black grandmother whom Kamala so proudly touts may not exist at all. What Candace found in her research is that Kamala’s paternal grandmother without a doubt is not who Kamala says she is.
One of the reasons this is so egregious is that Kamala wrote a memoir called The Truths We Hold. It’s filled with autobiographical information, including talking about a person named Beryl (sometimes spelled Beril), a Black woman Kamala claims is her paternal grandmother. This is her proof that she is Black. She put this photo of herself and her alleged Black grandmother in the book.
Kamala said in her book that this woman, Beryl Finnegan, is her father’s mother. There is indeed a Beryl Finnegan in the genealogical records, but this is not her picture. The reason we know this is that Beryl Finnegan died before Kamala was born. One of the advantages of unusual names and small locations is that there are not too many Beryl Finnegans born in Jamaica in 1917. This is not Beryl Finnegan. Who is it? We don’t know.
But that’s OK, because the deeper Candace got into the research, the stranger it got. It’s worth a listen to see what Candace has uncovered, but it suggests that Kamala “fabricated” this Black ancestry and that she is actually Indian on her mother’s side and white on her father’s side.
Here are some of the Kamala mysteries:
Her father Donald Harris is alive but he has been visibly absent from her campaign; he did not even show up to her historic nomination at the convention in Chicago
Donald Harris has written briefly about growing up in Jamaica but he failed to mention siblings; he apparently has several, including a brother named Christopher who seems to be off the grid
Donald Harris’s birth certificate only says he is Jamaican and does not specify race; he himself calls himself Jamaican-American
Donald Harris married Shayamala Gopalan when they were both in California on expired student visas. The Indian culture is very class and caste conscious and they have problems with racism. Black-Indian intermarriage is uncommon and back in the 1960s it would be considered scandalous in some parts of Indian culture
Candace Owens uncovered a white woman who resembles Kamala who may very well be Donald Harris’s actual mother
Now all of this could be filed under the “stupid files,” except for one thing. Kamala made it the cornerstone of her drive toward the White House that she is Black. She nabbed the Vice Presidential slot by being Black. She campaigns as a Black woman. Of course, she also claims to be middle class when, actually, she is the daughter of two highly educated people and she grew up with her mother and one sister in a tony Montreal neighborhood. However, marketing oneself as a rich white girl of Indian descent who was educated at a private school in Canada is not nearly as engaging as being Kammy from the Block.
Kamala should be proud of her mother who was a leading cancer researcher and held a prestigious position at McGill University and other research centers. But being the daughter of an important scientist isn’t as compelling a narrative as being a street kid. Imagine the shame of being the daughter of a white man and an Indian scientist. These are misguided times.
Back in ancient days, around the year 2000, the Census department defined the term “African-American” as Americans who descended from slavery. It was not just being from Africa that mattered, it was that these were special people who came from that specific historical experience. By that definition, Barack Obama was not African-American. He has African ancestry, of course, but he did not descend from former slaves. He descends from upper-class Kenya.
Obama didn’t fit the definition, so we fixed the definition. Right around this time, it was decided that the definition of African-American was changed so that it meant an American of African descent.
By the way, that would make Elon Musk an African-American.
So then we just started using the term “Black.” Poof, Elon is white. The term “African-American” got sanitized out of our language. That’s a shame in that the descendants of slavery deserve special recognition—but it was politically expedient to broaden the definition to include elitists.
Race is complicated, at least the way liberals do it. Kamala claims to be descended on her father’s side from a mixed-race couple that included a white grandfather and a Black grandmother. So even if this were true, Kamala is no more Black than she is white and she’s twice as “South Asian” (or Indian) as Black.
In a sane world, it would be mildly interesting that Kamala was of mixed ancestry, since so many people are. She could proudly claim her Asian, Caribbean, and European ancestry. I think she should be proud of the fact that her parents were both highly educated intellectuals and her mother was a cancer researcher. But she won’t, because there is political hay to be made out of not being white. It’s not just that Kamala may be stealing the Black racial identity, she is also doing the Barack Obama number of erasing her white ancestry.
If what Owens is digging up turns out to be true, it should damage Harris for several reasons.
Kamala lied about something that she should have held dear and not betrayed—her family, her own grandmother
Just like Tim Walz is guilty of stolen valor, Kamala Harris may be guilty of stolen suffering. Her ancestors were slave owners (that’s undisputed) and she may have stolen the racial identity of those her family enslaved to game the system
Most importantly, it shows how race is a game used by Democrats and how Kamala is so abjectly ashamed of being white that she identified with those her ancestors abused to get into office
Of course, Candace Owens may be wrong. Even she says to withhold judgment till all of the puzzle pieces are on the table.
But what if America’s first Black woman Presidential candidate isn’t Black? After all, our first African-American President turned out to be not African-American at all (till we changed the definition). It is astonishing to me that so many people who descended from American slavery endorse these carpet-baggers, these people who steal that identity to parlay themselves into power.
When Kamala visited the border the other day (don’t worry if you missed it—she was there for about 30 seconds) she wore one of her signature necklaces. It’s a beautiful necklace from Tiffany’s HardWare collection. According to what I read online, it sells for $62,000. That’s $11,000 more than the average income of an American Black family. This is not to say that she cannot own expensive jewelry—but a person who builds a campaign on the American Black experience and being a “middle-class girl” who was raised in a single-parent household should realize that Tiffany jewelry doesn’t exactly fit that cultivated image.
As for Candace Owens, she admittedly has a mixed reputation, but she is a good investigator who will not quit till she gets her story. I suspect this matter will be settled one way or the other soon. We’re living in a world of lies, and it would not surprise me if our first Black woman candidate for President turns out to be just another rich white lady.