*Robert Johnson, America’s first Black billionaire, is calling for the government to pay $14 trillion in reparations to Foundational Black Americans.
“Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism,” the Black Entertainment Television (BET) founder told Vice News.
“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 said.
Johnson, 75, wants 40 million Black descendants of slaves to receive direct cash payments of $350,000 each – paid out at $10,000 to $11,000 a year over a 30-year period — and he wants a check too.
READ MORE: Activist Bree Newsome Calls for Reparations from ‘Wealthy White People’ Who Stole Land
“If you’re a successful black business, the idea is you’ve had enough,” Johnson told Vice, noting that… “No one ever asks if [a white-owned business] is too rich to benefit from investing in a football stadium’ or receiving other benefits like preferential tax treatment or liquidity injections from the Federal Reserve.”
Johnson believes Black Lives Matter protests, a Juneteenth holiday and conversations about systemic racism is not enough.
“That’s what’s happening to the reparation – 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 said.
“And then people can say, “Well, we really don’t need reparations because when you put all of these things together, it’s reparations.”
Johnson agrees that reparations would close the vast wealth gap between Black and white Americans.
“You want a big idea: white America, what would happen if you said, “please forgive us and accept our apology. And by the way, we think we owe you what was taken from you for over 300 years of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and denial of economic opportunity and rights,”‘ Johnson told Fox News last year.
“Reparations had two components: The first was atonement, and the other was monetary,’ he told Vice. ‘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.’”
The money would come from taxes because all wealth circulating in America can be traced back to the slave trade.
“Reparations is a debt owed by the nation as a whole because all of the wealth that was taken from slaves. Free labor is a transfer of wealth,” he explained to Fox.
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