(PresidentialHill.com)- On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the National Museum of African American History & Culture where she proceeded to display a profound lack of understanding of African American History.
Don’t be too hard on Kamala. She isn’t African American.
Kamala, who was at the museum to flog the new federal holiday “Juneteenth,” told a group of about two dozen elementary school children that blacks in America were enslaved for 400 years before slavery was finally ended.
Even by the “America was founded in 1619” standard, this is incorrect.
Slavery ended in 1865. Blacks weren’t brought to America in 1465. Columbus hadn’t even gotten here yet.
The first African slaves arrived in the Virginia colonies in 1619. The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865, in other words, 256 years after the first African slaves arrived in Virginia.
Kamala was off by about 150 years.
As rounding errors go, that’s a big one.
The ironic part was what Kamala said after bungling the historic details.
She told the school children that Juneteenth isn’t just about celebrating freedom. It’s also about speaking “honestly and accurately” about “the context of history.”
Whoops! She failed on both counts.
The New York Post spoke with a White House official who acknowledged the Veep’s historical error. And like they often do for President Biden, the official “clarified” Kamala’s remarks, explaining that the Veep was “referring to 400 years since slavery began.”
No, she wasn’t. She expressly said slavery ended 400 years after it started. Unless Kamala Harris believes slavery ended in 2019, she was wrong.
Kamala also appeared to diss the entire concept of a Juneteenth holiday, telling the students that freedom is a “God-given right” and “we’re not going to celebrate being given back what God gave us anyway, right?”
Oh, okay. So if you don’t want to celebrate freedom from slavery, why on earth did Congress make Juneteenth a federal holiday?
