The View host Sunny Hostin revealed she was “deeply disappointed” to find her ancestors’ family business was rooted in the slave trade.
Hostin discussed her genealogy during Thursday’s episode of the show after she recently took a genetics test. The lawyer-turned-talk show host admitted she was “reluctant” to discover her ancestry but went through with it so that her children would know their “real history.”
“But what I found out was that my mother’s family, while they are Puerto Rican, they actually originate from Spain. And the reason that they moved to Puerto Rico is because the slave trade had been sort of canceled in Spain and then Curacao, and then they moved all of their slaves to Puerto Rico,” Hostin explained. “And so the biz, the family business — I had been told that they were printers and journalists, but they were, in fact, enslavers. It was deeply disappointing.”
The Spanish government abolished slavery in 1867 but had signed a treaty with the Spanish government to ban the slave trade 60 years earlier. The Dutch government, which included Curacao among its colonies, abolished slavery in 1863 and had a precedent of outlining slaves’ rights until the practice ended.
“I still believe [in] reparations, by the way, so you all can stop texting me and emailing me and saying that I’m a white girl and that I don’t deserve reparations,” Hostin went on to say. “I still believe this country has a lot to do in terms of racial justice.”
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While Hostin was disappointed by the results, she also expressed how she felt “enriched” by knowing her family history. Hostin expressed her gratitude that her Puerto Rican mother went on to marry her black father in the ’60s.
California is in the midst of pushing through several bills in an effort to pay reparations to black people by way of an apology, property restitution, and funding educational and economic programs. The House is similarly proposing a $14 trillion plan for reparations to those who are ancestors of slaves.