Steve King, a Republican representative from Iowa known for his racist comments, in a tweet asked whether Kamala Harris was descended from slave owners or slaves. “I’m reading that @KamalaHarris made history as first woman, first black woman, first Asian woman, etc = a boatload of intersectionality points. But Kamala, are you descended from slaves or slave owners?” King tweeted on Sunday.
Due to his tendency to make such racist comments, Republican leaders stripped the politician of his committee assignments in 2019. King’s tweet even caused Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to tell him to “find another line of work”.
"Thankfully, this racist monster will no longer be a Congressman in just 42 days," wrote Yashar Ali, writer for New York Magazine.
"Who's going to tell him how Black people got to Jamaica and how some of their descendants wound up with European blood?" MSNBC host Joy Reid wrote.
Harris's father, Donald, did say he was a descendent of slave owners. "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)," Donald Harris wrote in the Jamaica Globe. Vice President-elect Harris’s roots are known to be from slave owners and the enslaved, too.
King, come January, will be replaced by fellow Republican Randy Feenstra, after he lost his bid for re-election after 18 years in the Congress.
"I condemn Rep. Steve King's comments on white supremacy; they are offensive and racist—and not representative of our state of Iowa," tweeted Republican Iowa Senator Joni Ernst.