BET Founder Still Demanding $14 Trillion in Reparations
“Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism and for that reason Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth and therefore we as a country now must atone by paying Black people of all stripes —the rich ones, the poor ones, and the middle—out of our pocket.”
On June 1, 2020, Robert Johnson, founder of BET and America’s first black billionaire, told CNBC he wants $14 trillion of reparations from the U.S. government.
Johnson has not changed his mind. He told VICE News on Tuesday reparations would close the wage gap:
He is continuing to push for a $14 trillion reparations proposal he says would provide enough to close the yawning Black/white wealth gap that exists through home ownership, wages, and occupational attainment, among other imbalances. Though he’s not exactly optimistic.
“Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism and for that reason Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth and therefore we as a country now must atone by paying Black people of all stripes —the rich ones, the poor ones, and the middle—out of our pocket,” Johnson says.
Still, he’s working to get his proposal in front of legislators and backing a $30 billion tax incentive program, the Better Opportunity and Outcomes for Socially Disadvantaged Talent (BOOST) Act, to help grease the wheels of change.
And he wants his check. It’s due.
I guess we already hand out reparations because Johnson views them as not real reparations. These include critical race theory, housing grant programs, black farmer relief, and corporate pledges are reparations. He describes them as “placebo paternalism.” Johnson said:
“That’s what’s happening to the reparations—it’s been cut up into small pieces of things that look and feel like, ‘We want to end systemic racism, we want to end police brutality and shootings and to provide financing to Black small business owners,’” Johnson tells VICE News.
“And then people can say, ‘Well, we really don’t need reparations because when you put all of these things together, it’s reparations. It’s just not one big bill or asking this country to stand up and apologize, and you’re not asking people to pay out of their paychecks.”
But that’s the problem, Johnson says. He calls the current approach “placebo paternalism.”
“Reparations had two components: The first was atonement, and the other was monetary,” he adds. “With no doubt whatsoever, it was supposed to come from the government representing the people of the country. It was reimbursement, or recompense if you will, for the harm.”
How can anyone take Johnson seriously? I wrote about him in 2019 and 2020. Do these stories sound like someone who wants reparations and identifies with the left? I mean, he calls for reparations and dismisses the idea of white privilege.
- BET Founder Robert Johnson: Democratic Party has Moved ‘Too Far to the Left’ and Praises Trump
- BET Founder on White People Tearing Down Statues: ‘Frankly, Black People Don’t Give a Damn’
Here is a video of Johnson’s appearance on CNBC last year.
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Comments
Segregation is the answer….segregation via two states. Here is some money, go build your utopia and stay in it.
I can guarantee you it would be trashed in ten years
Secession is a better answer, and planning it now beats attempting it during a civil war.
Since they don’t appreciate America, let’s “repatriate” all of them back to where they came from, after all, it has to be better than what they have here.
Well it worked for India. All the crazies and fundamentalist crazies got shipped off to Pakistan and the Indians were allowed to get on with their lives.
We already gave them Liberia to play with.
Didn’t Zimbabwe print $1 Trillion dollar notes…. scrounge up some and give them to him. That should settle it.
I’d wager 5 years…
Chum in the water. How big a fool would one have to be that if he somehow got his $14 trillion he’d say, “OK, you’re paid up. I’ll never ask you for another freebie again!”?
If they got 14 trillion reparations, 2 days later they would say, “Now we want this.”
To make a long story short, they want to be masters and all whites be their slaves.
It has nothing to do with equality. It is all about REVENGE.
Revenge? I’m perplexed. What did I do?
Piker! Why settle for a measly few trillion $? Go for it all. Demand 13 to 15 Quadrillion or go home!
Love it or leave it.
If you don’t like America, LEAVE!!!
My people were enslaved by the Romans. My check is far more overdue.
It’s not really about slavery. It’s about skin color. If Michael Jackson were still alive he would make his skin dark again.
the only reason that slavery existed in the US was that slave owning Black African kings sold their surplus slaves to whitey( after convincing whitey to culturally appropriate black african culture). Eventually whitey rejected that and ended slavery while it still exists in black africa.
Besides more than half of white America came long after people like Obama were forced to give up their slaves.
I say we consider reparations ONLY after the west African countries agree to pay their 50% share for having sold their own people to slave traders. Once their $6 Trillion check has cleared, we will talk about our role. By the way, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico – they must pat their people Trillions too. We cannot be the only stooges. And let’s be sure to include the families of the 600,000 Whites who died or were severely injured during the Civil War. They are as much victims of slavery as any one. By the time we are finished, I think 80% of Americans will get reparations.
Oh, shut up.
Please, just read Paul Krugman. The initial $14 trillion investment would result in $21 trillion of net benefit to the economy due to the multiplier effect. This is truly a win-win situation. I had a little trouble understanding it at first until AOC kindly explained the underlying equations.
And Sec of Treasury Janet Yellen approves because in her warped view of economics – the USA can just keep printing $$ forever. She is on-record saying she doesn’t see much risk of inflation on the horizon. (2 months after she said inflation report showed a 25% increase in the inflation rate.)
I absolutely support reparations….. Let us give every formerfreed slave still alive today 40 acres and a mule as they were promised. This should cause a net loss of….what? 0 acres and 0 mules? We gave former slaves their reparations and it didn’t cost us a damn thing because THEY’RE EFFING DEAD!!!!
In addition, I propose that we add an addendum for descendants of former slaves. (Let’s say we limit it to 3 generations.) Their reparations are in the form of take it or leave it. If they choose the take it option, then they get to stay in this country and struggle just as hard as my ancestors (from Belarus) and I have had to, and they forever acknowledge that neither they nor their descendants can ever again requestdemandpetition for reparations w/o voluntarily terminating their American citizenship. If they choose the leave it option, they are given a one-way ticket to Africa, $1,000 cash (because that’s going to go far), and they get to automatically rescind their American citizenship.
I think, if reparations are due, they should be paid by Democrats. It was Democrats who resisted ending slavery, started a Civil War to keep it, created a terrorist paramilitary group to attack freed slaves and Republican supporters, implemented Jim Crow laws to keep Blacks segregated, elected racists such as President Wilson who turned back advances of Reconstruction, resisted Civil Rights Act (every fire hose was manned by a Democrat and every schoolhouse door was blocked by a Democrat) and to this day work to ensure 40% of African American babies conceived are killed before they are born. Republicans were created to end slavery, fought a civil war to emancipate slaves and supported Civil Rights laws to overcome Democrat resistance. The Democrats are the most malignant political entity in the history of the US (maybe in the free world). Let the Democrats pay and let the Republicans say so out loud.
Hey Mr. Johnson, I see no reason for white people who have never owned slaves to pay black people who were never slaves any reparations. You aren’t a damn victim of anything but your own dam race baiters that push the bogus “blacks as eternal victims” narrative. So quit demanding something you don’t actually deserve.
14T, we’ll get right on that Bobby.
And, what about the Southern Negro Freemen who owned slaves ? Do their descendants owe under the proposed “plan” ?
I wonder is he’s related to the first legal slave owner in the New World?
(Who was black)
Whether or not “… in the New World …” it is safe to expect that his ancestors in Africa were “slave owners” and likely committed genocide against neighboring tribes who were not like themselves. The history of Africa for millennia and to this present day is violent tribal competition in the form of the “zero sum game” that “johnson” (pun intended) believes others should play – “do onto others before they do unto you” and “everyone can get theirs as long as I gets mine first !”, are bobby’s apparent life strategies. And, those rules have nothing to do with skin tone and everything to do with “being on top”. … He better start praying we all don’t start playing by those rules.
Really? Even Dr. Evil only asked for one billion dollars.
It is a shame when a successful black business man, who came from a hard working family, works his way up the business ladder, then turns around and advocates for massive government handouts. His net worth is $600 million. He could be a positive role model that is so desperately needed, and yet he is pushing for lazy handouts. Gimme, gimme. Men like him are the enemy of black people, teaching lazy, entitlement attitudes rather than hard work. Our national debt is $28T and he wants $14T in handouts. Good luck paying off that debt kids.
He wants to fix income inequality. He can start by getting out his checkbook and divesting himself of his personal wealth.
His version of equality is: if you and him both start out with one hundred dollars and you save yours and he spends all of his on drugs alcohol and tobacco you have to give him half of yours in order to be equal.
Doesn’t his rags-to-billion$ riches story disprove the “systemic racism” theory ?
If the White man just wants to keep the Black man down with a systemic approach – then either
.. (1) the White man is doing a very bad job of it; or
.. (2) there is no systemic racism – there is systemic opportunity.
That is an excellent analysis of the entire situation.
Could be MCI and loss of inhibition … But then again this “johnson” made his fortune “playing others” and promoting racism not ethnic culture – racism; as there is no more a homogeneous “black ethnic group” than there is a homogeneous “white ethnic group” (nor “Chinese”, etc). All such groupings are to promote “WE vs them”. … And the fact that our society / country is still arguing this illogical nonsense is deliberate – and I blame the “K-12 teachers and their unions” and the racist demorats which the “teachers” have supported for 70 + years … they all should be stripped of their pensions and benefits, and accumulated wealth to balance the states’ budgets.
Only if they take those trillions and put them toward ending the current slavery that creates their Nikes, etc.
Yellow ain’t the new black.
There’s one kind of reparations that I could accept (though I’m not for even that): If a slave owner’s heirs still have assets that can be positively identified as coming from his estate, and the slave’s heirs can be identified, it would not be unreasonable to award them compensation out of the owner’s remaining assets.
After all, debts are not discharged by the debtor’s death, if he left enough to pay them; his estate still owes them, and his heirs must pay them up to the amount he left them. Anything beyond that is of course discharged because there’s nothing to collect it from. And a creditor’s heirs certainly inherit his claims, so there’s no reason a slave’s heirs today should not receive what their ancestor was due, if there is something for it to be paid out of.
The same would apply to a corporate entity that owned slaves, and still exists, and those slaves’ heirs can be identified. It’s not unreasonable to make it pay those heirs the compensation it owes their ancestors.
The reason I would oppose even that is simply that slavery at the time was legal, and this was not some peculiar law of the USA but the general law of humanity, including every African nation. The overwhelming majority of slaves themselves were not abolitionists; their dreams were of gaining their freedom, striking it rich, and buying slaves of their own. Making the owners pay for having owned the slaves would be ex post facto law, which may not be unconstitutional in this context but is certainly un-American and contrary to every principle on which our society is built.
This is about as fucked a thing as you have EVER spewed up here moron.
Its practically unworkable in the real world…hence why you probably cant see what a fucked up idea this is. In fact, I think Im just gonna come to your house and help myself to everything because you know…REPERATIONZZZZZZZ!!!
I was sure I’d replied to this before, but it’s not there so I’ll retype it.
You’re the moron. What on earth do you think is unworkable about it? Do you deny that if your grandfather owed my grandfather money, and you still have assets that belonged to him, I and my grandfather’s other heirs can collect the debt from those assets?! Or suppose your grandfather had stolen an identifiable item from my grandfather, e.g. a painting, do you deny that I and his other heirs can recover it from you?! So why is this different?
The only reason I don’t support it is because I don’t believe former slave-owners in 1865 owed their former slaves anything. But if they did, I see no reason why it should not be collectable now, provided there are assets remaining from which it could be collected. If the debtor’s assets are gone then it’s like any other debt owed by a decedent with no estate, and can’t be collected.
No. Just, no. What is needed is an end to set-asides, quotas, race-normed test scores, affirmative action, and more.
What SHOULD be given those people is a boot in the backside, and told to sink or swim. work or starve. They breed them, they feed them.
I don’t owe them a single solitary thing. In the eloquent words of mailman: fuck ’em.
This is not “set-asides, quotas, race-normed test scores, affirmative action”, or anything like them. It’s straight out compensation for a crime committed against them, by the estate of the person who committed the crime.
You say you don’t owe them anything? But your great-grandfather, or whoever, did owe them, and his estate still exists. You still have the assets he left you. Why should they not collect what is owed them from those assets, exactly as they would be able to collect any other debt?
My question is on the assumption that slave-owners ever owed a debt to their former slaves. But if they did, then there’s no reason that debt should be extinguished merely by the passage of time.
The primary problem with this whole reparations thing is that only a tiny percentage of people actually owned slaves (including slaveholders in the North, it was like 1%); many of the compelled workers on Southern plantations, in particular, were whites under the white slavery of sharecropping. These were poor immigrants, the Irish, etc. exploited under the laws of the day.
Your suggestion that generational guilt is justifiable is weird, but if we take it literally, not one of my forefathers held slaves (they were poor, disenfranchised, and demonized Irish, many of whom had been held in slavery by blacks in the Caribbean–oh, yes, blacks held white slaves, and they do to this very day in various African and Middle Eastern countries, where’s the outrage?). What do I owe any black person? Any person, actually? Where are the reparations for my people? Oh, right, it’s best to just let stuff go and move past the discrimination of “No Irish Need Apply” to whoa, who even cares who is Irish?
That is how you solve issues of racism, you overcome it, you don’t milk it for every last dime . . . unless the goal is enriching oneself and making race-baiting a viable career option.
Who cares that it’s only a tiny number of people who would owe anything under such a scheme? So what? How does that exempt those few people? If their ancestor* owed his former slaves compensation then his estate still owes it to them, and therefore to their heirs. You surely don’t deny that a creditor’s heirs inherit the debts owed to him.
And where on earth did you get the idea that I suggested “generational guilt is justifiable”? I made no such suggestion, and nothing I wrote can possibly be twisted into such a suggestion. Guilt is not inherited, but debts are, to the extent of the debtor’s estate. Again, surely you don’t deny that.
If you are not descended from anyone who died a debtor, or even if you are, but you have nothing that came to you from his estate, then of course you don’t owe anything. Why would you?
And it’s not about “solving issues of racism”. I don’t give a **** about that. I don’t believe racism is a crime, and I don’t believe there is “systemic racism”. My suggestion is simply about justice. If an unpaid debt remains from those times then where possible it should be paid. But I’m skeptical that there ever was a debt in the first place.
*The word I’m looking for is actually not “ancestor” but the opposite of “heir”; the person whose heir you are. But I don’t think English has a word for that.
He’s not demanding $14 trillion for himself, he’s demanding that total payout to all black people who, he claims, have suffered from systemic racism.
It’s not total. If you believe that you have been taken in. You see those goal posts? Well, tomorrow they will be in a different place.
I’m just reporting what it is that he’s demanding. Some people here seem to have the weird impression that he’s demanding $14 trillion for his own losses, but that’s just not true. It’s the value he’s “calculated” for the entire economic impact of “systemic racism” over the course of the last several centuries.
Reparations is a 2-way street, no?
Yeah. It’s like the man with money who meets a man with experience. They talk for awhile and go their serparate ways. The man with experience is now the man with money and the man with money becomes the man with experience. Some people never learn.
Proof that the Wackjob Fairy is colorblind and equal-opportunity.
Sounds like Johnson wants to distribute the trillions. ridiculous.
“How about nothing? Zero, zip, zilch, nada? My personal check for bupkis, drawn on the First National Bank of squidoo!” -The Joker
Yeah, Johnson, we’re not giving you anything, much less 14 trillion dollars. Why not just demand 75 kajillion?
So here’s our counter=offer: Eat a bowl full of dicks.
I have a question. How in the fuck did this guy become a billionaire??? Surely with a brain the size of a pea this guy should have run himself in to the ground decades ago and became just a nameless statistic to Democrat racism.
Although maybe he wasnt always this fucked in the head?
I believe he became a billionaire by exploiting affirmative action and set-asides. I can’t remember the details, but I seem to recall reading about it a long time ago.
You would be hard-pressed to find a race that hasn’t been enslaved at some point. Always nice to see those at the top demanding they need more.
His reparations are being spent on illegal aliens at the present time. If he expects to get that blood out of the American turnip, he needs to demand that his party cease and desist in allowing illegals to infiltrate the country and providing them with all kinds of federal assistance.
He should ask reparations FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
The DEM PARTY is keeping the black man down.
1. systemic dependence on the government
2. open borders to people who will work for $1 a day – removes work opportunities for unskilled labor – forces many Blacks to continue to rely on the gov’t.
No problem. The ones who take the reparations loose their US citizenship and are re-patrioted to Africa where they are put on a “no access” to the US list.
This fool can kiss my ass.
Then tell mark311 to pull down his pants
Buggy software is misreporting the number of comments.
I doubt there is that much money on the whole planet at one time.
After taking out black reparations for the dead Union soldiers, welfare and other social justice programs, the net cost to taxpayers if a penny each.
Go fuck yourself Robert Johnson.
No repriations without repatriation.