In an attempt to out-woke each other, several Democrat presidential candidates have revived the issue of giving reparations to the descendants of slaves.
Click here to pre-order Todd’s upcoming book, “Culture Jihad.”
But former NFL star turned political commentator Burgess Owens said on The Todd Starnes Show that slavery reparations are “nothing but a way for the leftists to divide.”
Owens and Starnes ran into each other at a conference hosted by the Young America’s Foundation in Santa Barbara last week and both expressed admiration for the crowd of young people they spoke to.
“It’s one of my favorite audiences,” Owens said, echoing Starnes, who said that he was “really impressed with those young people.”
The trip to Santa Barbara was a long way away from Owen’s other recent public appearance at the U.S. House of Representatives, where he testified before Congress on the issue of reparations.
“I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race,” Owens said at the congressional hearing. “I do believe in restitution. Let’s point to the party that was part of slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, that has killed over 40 percent of our black babies, 20 million of them.”
“State of California, 75 percent of our black boys cannot pass standard reading and writing tests: a Democratic state,” Owens told lawmakers. “So yes, let’s pay restitution. How about a Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race and those — after we learn our history — who decide to stay there, they should pay also. They are complicit. And every white American, Republican or Democrat, that feels guilty because of your white skin, you should need to pony up also. That way we can get past this reparation and recognize that this country has given us greatness.”
Owens told Starnes that the idea for reparations has been around since 2001 and was started by a Marxist.
“This country has done so good in terms of all of us coming together and all [the] cultures that make this the greatest country in the history of mankind,” Owens said. “So understand that reparations is nothing but a way for the leftists to divide it.”
Slavery reparations won’t “get across the goal line,” Owens went on, adding that this was merely a ploy aimed at low information voters “that are already leaning toward welfare to come out and vote for them.”
“The lefties do their deal and continue to propagandize all kids so they become a little racist,” Owens said.
Starnes referenced presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’ plan unveiled Monday to forgive $1.3 trillion in student loan debt as an example of how we’ve stopped “teaching kids about personal responsibility.”
Owens said that that plan was “interesting” because the “big class elitist class” has done well and “live the American dream,” but at the same time do not understand what it was like to do the “normal thing.”
“This country is a place to [take] chances,” Owens said.
Click here to listen to the entire interview on The Todd Starnes Radio Show Podcast.