The View's Sunny Hostin received backlash after Finding Your Roots surprising revelations

Days after appearing on the PBS genealogy series Finding Your Roots, Sunny Hostin reflected on the program’s revelations about her family’s history and asked people to stop sending her hateful messages during Thursday’s episode of The View. 

While appearing on the Henry Louis Gates, Jr.-hosted series on Tuesday, Hostin discovered that she was only 7 percent Indigenous Puerto Rican and that her fourth great-grandfather was a Spanish merchant "who was likely involved in the slave trade” and “owned at least one human being.”

“At first, I was deeply disappointed,” Hostin told her View cohosts about the news. Still, she noted that her history doesn’t alter her current political viewpoint, adding, “I still believe in reparations by the way, so y’all can stop texting me and emailing me and saying that I’m a white girl and that I don’t deserve reparations.”

“Someone did that to you?” Joy Behar asked.

When Hostin, whose father’s family is of African descent, confirmed the news, Behar appeared confused as she simply remarked, “What?”

“I don’t know who sent her a thing telling her she was a white girl,” Whoopi Goldberg said. “But clean off your television screen.”

“It’s too much, people. That’s a lot,” Hostin agreed. “I still believe in reparations. I still believe this country has a lot to do in terms of racial justice.”

Hostin also acknowledged that she feels “enriched” by knowing her family’s full history now, adding, “I’m enriched by knowing that my family has come so far from being enslavers to my mother marrying my father in 1968.”

The program also led her to discover that her grandfather “was not my grandfather” and that she now has “five uncles and aunts that I didn’t know about” — plus one pretty famous cousin, too.

“I have a cousin too, Whoopi!” Hostin cheered, referencing when Goldberg recently learned she was related to NFL star Tony Gonzalez.

“Anthony Ramos from Hamilton. Isn’t he cute?” Hostin asked.

“He is my cousin and I reached out to him and it’s kinda cool because he was the youngest actor in the original Broadway play of Hamilton and he’s multi-talented,” she said as a photo of him was shown onscreen. “I’ve interviewed him before, but I didn’t know we were cousins! I interviewed him for the Puerto Rican Day Parade."

With a pout, Hostin sullenly added, "I hope that they still let me host the Puerto Rican Day Parade.”

The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.

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