Former President Barack Obama shared during an episode of his podcast with Bruce Springsteen, “Renegades: Born in the USA,” that he believes reparations for black Americans are justified.
Obama explained Monday during the second episode of the podcast that he believes reparations for black Americans is a reasonable goal, but that during his presidency a push for reparations wasn’t possible, the News & Observer reported.
Obama backs reparations for the first time and slams ‘politics of white resistance’ https://t.co/C4hu76A2iy
— The Independent (@Independent) February 25, 2021
“So, if you ask me theoretically: ‘Are reparations justified?’ The answer is yes,” Obama stated. “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.” (RELATED: Biden Supports Slavery Reparations Study, Wants Immediate Action On ‘Institutional Racism’)
“My judgement was that as a practical matter, that was unattainable,” Obama said. “We can’t even get this country to provide decent schooling for inner-city kids. And, what I saw during my presidency was that, the politics of white resistance and resentment, the talk of welfare queens and the talk of the undeserving poor and the backlash against affirmative action.”
Obama explained that during his presidency, he felt that a push for reparations would not only go nowhere, but also had the potential to negatively affect bipartisan politics.
“All that made the prospect of actually proposing any kind of coherent, meaningful reparations program struck me as, politically, not only a non-starter but potentially counter-productive.”
The push for reparations in America centers on the idea that descendants of slaves should be given monetary compensation for the injustices perpetrated against African slaves in the nation’s past.
Both President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have stated that they support the idea of some sort of reparations for black Americans.