When it comes to reparations, 75-year-old Robert Johnson, America’s first Black billionaire, is a supporter. Despite new talks about instituting Critical Race Theory and the rise in popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement, Johnson believes America still needs to do more to atone for its original sin of using enslaved Black people to build the country with free labor.
Now, Johnson has reiterated his call for $14 trillion in payments to the descendants of slaves, including himself. Johnson proposed a taxpayer-funded reparations payment system that would distribute wealth to the descendants of slaves who have been forced to struggle through America as second-class citizens for decades despite being technically freed from slavery back in the mid-1800s.
Johnson earned his fortune by founding Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 1980. He believes reparations would be a good first step to help heal the pain of slavery for 40 million Black descendants of slaves. If Johnson’s plan were to pass into law, he would have every descendant of a slave receive $350,000 over a thirty-year period. People would be paid $10,000 to $11,000 per year simply because they started at the bottom of American society.
“If you’re a successful black business, the idea is you’ve had enough,” Johnson told Vice in a recent interview. He believes that no one would ever say the same thing about a white man who was rich.
“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 wants the country to come together to help heal the pain of slavery for millions of slave descendants. He wants to see lawmakers pass “one big bill” that would once and for all get America to “stand up and apologize” for the atrocities committed to Black people since before the country was founded.
He made it clear that “you’re not asking people to pay out of their paychecks” to make slave reparations a reality.
A massive wealth gap exists between Black and white Americans. The gap can be traced back to the slave trade, which stripped Blacks of everything of value and forced them to endure a life of enslavement.
“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.
In his more recent Vice interview, he said, “Reparations had two components: The first was atonement, and the other was monetary. 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.”