Reparations, which reemerged as a hot topic after last summer’s race riots, has been defined by realists as “treasure paid out by people who never owned slaves to people who never were slaves.”
Last Wednesday, the Associated Press reports, a “House panel heard testimony on legislation that would create a commission to examine the history of slavery in the U.S. as well as the discriminatory government policies that affected former slaves and their descendants.”
Now former Pres. Barack Obama has added his two cents to the discussion. During a podcast with political scientist Bruce Springsteen, Obama asserted, “There’s not much question that the wealth of this country, the power of this country was built in significant part, not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it, but a large portion of it was built on the backs of slaves,” adding, “If you ask me theoretically ‘Are reparations justified?’ the answer is yes.”
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Springsteen, playing the useful idiot to Obama’s effort to push an agenda, asked how a president could get something accomplished that is “so justified.”
The former president responded by trashing America in jarring fashion. “This brings us to, could you actually get that kind of justice? Could you get a country to agree and own that history? And my judgment was that as a practical matter that was unattainable,” he claimed. “We can’t even get this country to provide decent schooling for inner-city kids.”
Obama went on to submit that he would have pushed for reparations during his presidency alleging it would have been met with “the politics of white resistance” and “white resentment.”
If Obama would’ve started the development of a reparations program during his tenure, he doesn’t have to use whiteness as a scapegoat here. I have zero respect for this man. The reality is, Obama was never for us. He crushed centuries of civil rights work in 8 years. #Reparations pic.twitter.com/HwuSvDyJHJ
— Maxwell Little, M.Ed 🇺🇸 (@MaxHPF) February 24, 2021
Biden Also Supports Reparations
Joe Biden, who since becoming president has conveniently memory holed his long-time friendship with segregationist and KKK member Robert Byrd, has said he supports studying reparations for black Americans. Here’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki affirming that:
White House says President Joe Biden supports study of slavery reparations https://t.co/DdNFqxUYTm pic.twitter.com/XoW0Ss8yJM
— Reuters (@Reuters) February 17, 2021
But reparations haven’t just been met with “white resistance” as Obama claims. They’ve hit American resistance.
As the Political Insider’s Beck Noble points out, “Recent polls have shown that a supermajority of Americans are opposed to reparations.” “Last summer, in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that only 20% of Americans supported reparations,” she adds.
There’s also been some non-white resistance to the idea of reparations that Obama would rather ignore. “Reparations teach separation,” NFL legend Herschel Walker recently lamented. “Slavery ended over 130 years ago.”
Herschel Walker: “My religion teaches togetherness. Reparations teaches separation." https://t.co/LgJQuwcbxx pic.twitter.com/zQw1BEBoCU
— The Hill (@thehill) February 18, 2021
Larry Elder, a black talk radio host, also points out the logistics of doling out reparations would be difficult. “Figuring out who owes what is going to be a hell of an achievement,” Elder said.
No more so than in the case of Obama himself, who the Baltimore Sun reported in 2007, is a descendant of slave-owners.
Cross-posted at The Mental Recession
