Did Kamala Harris buy her California home with money inherited from an ancestor who owned slaves -- one of whom was apparently her own great-great-great-great-grandmother? No, that's not true: It is a bizarre claim used to argue that the Democratic vice presidential nominee is now living off the profits of slavery. Harris shares the same family history of an estimated one-third of all African Americans in that they have DNA from white men who impregnated their female ancestors -- who were slaves -- through rape. The descendants of those rape victims did not inherit the wealth of the rapist.
The claim appeared as a meme in a post published by on August 18, 2020 by the "Dinesh D'Souza" Facebook page (archived here) with the introductory message "Democrats don't know what to do because this destroys all the narratives they have spent so much time building to divide America." The meme featured an aerial photo of Harris' home and the following text:
According to Forbes, this is Kamala Harris' $5 million home in Brentwood. Are you telling me this has nothing to do with the fact that her ancestors owned 5 plantations and 200 slaves. If so, then slavery has no impact on the present and we can all stop talking about reparations.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Aug 20 01:32:34 2020 UTC)
The claim that this is Harris' home is true. According to the Wall Street Journal, she and her husband bought the house in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles in 2012 when she was California's attorney general. Zillow.com estimates the property's value at $5.4 million.
This is a satellite image from Google maps.