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Many have longarguedthat the United States should compensate Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved, and the issue just received support from one prominent billionaire.
Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), spoke out in support of the payments — commonly referred to as “reparations” — while speaking toVice News.
Two decades ago, Johnson became a billionaire after hesold BET to Viacom. He said he and other wealthy Black Americans are owed reparations.
“Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism,” the 75-year-old mogul told Vice News.
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Johnson is asking the federal government to allocate $14 trillion to pay reparations, which he said would help close the wealth gap between white and Black Americans. He is also throwing his support behind a $30 billion tax incentive program — called the Better Opportunity and Outcomes for Socially Disadvantaged Talent (BOOST) Act — to bolster support for his proposal, according toVice News.
The research group,Brookings Institute, said in a 2020 briefing that the average white family holds about 10 times the wealth today as the average Black family.
Like Johnson, the institute agreed the government should provide individual payments to the descendants of enslaved people to close this divide.
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“Reparations had two components: The first was atonement, and the other was monetary,” Johnson told Vice News.
“With no doubt whatsoever, it was supposed to come from the government representing the people of the country,” he said. “It was reimbursement, or recompense if you will, for the harm.”
source: people.com
