Among its many pretensions the Left claims to speak for victims. This now familiar practice involves aspiring or prominent leftists speaking for a designated or widely recognized victim group, while attaching to their attacks an entirely unwarranted moral heroism. Last week we encountered an illustration of this practice when Kamala Harris went after the history curriculum approved by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis because it allegedly taught that slavery was a positive experience that “benefited” blacks. What William Allen, the black historian who prepared that discussion, actually pointed out was that black slaves were often taught trades and acquired skills that they later put to use, especially after they were emancipated. This observation is an easily documented, historical fact. It is one that black Marxist historians like William Du Bois, and many white historians who could hardly be accused of praising slavery have stated.
What struck me most about Harris’s gross misrepresentation, however, was the indignant posture she assumed while lying so brazenly about what was in the Florida history guidelines. She spoke as an official black, which is exactly how her party and the MSM depict her. Really! Kamala’s mother was an Indian Hindu; her father was a West Indian Marxist economics professor who taught in Canada. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is a wealthy Jewish liberal, who inhabited with Kamla an opulent Brentwood domicile, before moving to DC. Kamala has about as much to do with the American black slave experience as Charlton Heston did with enslaved ancient Hebrews, on the basis of the fact that Heston played Moses in a movie.
But given the quality of “conservative” TV entertainment this stupidity wasn’t going to die. What DeSantis refers to as Kamala’s “slavery hoax” has a long shelf life. It came back like a bad meal on “The Five,” which seems to be intended as a Republican answer to “The View,” but which manages to be almost as silly as what it ridicules. Typical of the frivolous conversation that takes place on this program are exchanges between “conservative” comic Greg Gutfeld and former Democratic operative Jessica Tarlov. Each one has his schtick, Gutfeld poking fun at liberal competitors on other channels and Tarlov faithfully defending whatever the liberal party line is on a particular day.
As her role required, Jessica ran to Kamala’s defense and suggested that DeSantis and his scribes are really soft on slavery. In any case, Jessica let it be known that it is morally inexcusable to claim that blacks “benefited” from the humiliation of slavery. Jessica, as a liberal celebrity, speaks in the name of many victims, like the migrants streaming into the Big Apple, whom she views from her luxury apartment.
