The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Media Smear Machine (and Why Kamala Harris’s Ancestry Is Relevant)

Posted on | July 12, 2019 | Comments Off on The Media Smear Machine (and Why Kamala Harris’s Ancestry Is Relevant)

This is the headline at CNN:

Trump invites right-wing extremists
to White House ‘social media summit’

In the article, the infamous Oliver Darcy calls the summit a gathering of “far-right internet personalities and trolls, some of whom have pushed conspiracy theories, lies and misinformation.” What kind of “personalities”? James O’Keefe and Charlie Kirk, among others. What kind of “misinformation” is being “pushed” by these “trolls”?

Ali Alexander, an activist who attempted to smear Sen. Kamala Harris by saying she is not an “American black” following the first Democratic presidential debates.

Except, no, that wasn’t a “smear.” It was a fact.

Neither of Kamala Harris’s parents are Americans. Her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica. Harris spent most of her childhood in Canada. She thus has little in common with most black people in the United States whose ancestors were slaves here. Before this fact became controversial, it was referenced by such “far-right” personalities as . . . CNN’s Don Lemon.

 

Yes, in February, Lemon engaged in an on-air debate about whether Harris’s ancestry sets her apart from so-called ADOS (American descendants of slaves). Most white people probably think such discussion is silly, but ADOS activists are calling attention to what is, for them, a very important distinction. Many so-called “diversity” initiatives — e.g., admission at elite universities or hiring at Fortune 500 corporations — assign quota value to “people of color” without regard to their ancestry. The original intent of affirmative action half a century ago was to remediate the effects of historic discrimination against black people. But how is that purpose served by granting preferential treatment to “people of color” whose parents are immigrants? In other words, if “diversity” means that the son of an engineer from Ghana or Pakistan is admitted to Harvard, does this convey any benefit to the children of black Americans? Or is it not a fact that black Americans are being excluded because of favoritism toward immigrant “people of color”? And the issues raised by ADOS activists are quite crucial when many Democrats are advocating reparations for slavery. To whom would such reparations be paid? Would someone like Kamala Harris, none of whose ancestors were ever enslaved in the United States, have a claim to such payments?

All of these considerations are ignored by CNN’s dishonest smear of Ali Alexander as a “right-wing” troll, but CNN has long since ceased to be a legitimate news organization. They are now merely partisan propaganda merchants, “Democratic Party operatives with bylines.”

UPDATE: Let’s not omit this:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) is the descendant of an Irishman who owned a slave plantation in Jamaica, according to her father’s lengthy ancestral summary of his side of the family.
Donald Harris, a Stanford University economics professor, revealed in 2018 that his grandmother was a descendant of Hamilton Brown, the namesake of Brown’s Town in northern Jamaica.

Amazing what you can learn from genealogical research. Just yesterday, I learned that my parents were third cousins, once removed.



 

Category: CNN

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