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Election 2020

Iowa GOP Congressman Slammed After Demanding To Know If Kamala Harris Is ‘Descended From Slaves’

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We can all be glad Steve King (R-Iowa) will soon be vacating his congressional seat and hopefully, he’ll take his racism with him. Because yes indeed he is a notable racist, having done things like ask whether there would be any people left on Earth “without rape or incest” and claimed particularly obnoxious things like comparing Dreamers seeking a path to U.S. citizenship to drug dealers, as noted by Business Insider, he did in a 2013 speech:

“For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” he said in the aforementioned speech.

Because yeah, that’s the kind of guy he is. And while his term ends on January 20, 2021, he’s acting like he’s trying to cram all that obnoxiousness in before he steps down. Currently, he’s facing backlash online after asking Vice President-elect Kamala Harris whether she was “descended from slaves or slave-owners,” Newsweek reports.

“I’m reading that @KamalaHarris made history as first woman, first Black woman, first Asian woman, etc = a boatload of intersectionality points,” he said in a tweet. “But Kamala, are you descended from slaves or slave owners?”

Fortunately, that woke up the Twitterati.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid’s tweet was extra spicy:

Other tweets were also pointed:

In the months leading up to Election Day, some viral posts on social media called Harris a “cop whose family owned slaves in Jamaica.” Harris’ father Donald has said he’s a descendant of slave owners, but Newsweek notes that “many who shared the misleading claim failed to provide context.”

In a story for The Jamaica Globe, Donald Harris wrote: “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town.)”

Newsweek also notes that a fact-check by Politifact found evidence suggesting Harris is a descendant of slave owners— and slaves as well, and also cites a report that appeared in The Atlantic. That report noted, “an overwhelming majority of African-Americans have white male ancestors, largely because of white male slave owners who raped Black female slaves.”

This is the sad reality white male America inflicted on Black Americans, including many particularly reprehensible men who were just like Steve King in their thinking. King is another run-of-the-mill Trump supporter and has urged Trump not to concede the election to Biden, saying that Trump admitting defeat “would be giving license to steal future elections, too.”

State Sen. Randy Feenstra, also a Republican, will replace King. Let’s hope he’s less stupid.

Megan Hamilton
meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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