Rep. Burgess Owens wades deeper into reparations debate with new PragerU video
Rep. Burgess Owens released a new video produced by conservative education platform PragerU, expressing his view that reparations for Black Americans “represents the condescending evil of racism.”
In his caption on a post about the video on the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, Owens, who is Black, wrote that it’s time to teach “our true history.”
The idea of paying reparations to Black Americans to make up for the lasting effects of slavery, as well as for Jim Crow era laws like redlining, has gained steam in recent years, with some states and municipalities considering making payments if the federal government doesn’t act.
The city of Evanston, Illinois passed an ordinance in 2021 to pay $25,000 to Black residents who lived in the city during a time when the city had discriminatory housing policies. It has so far paid out less than $400,000 of a promised $10 million.
The idea of reparations has also been floated in California, including in San Francisco which proposed a plan for $5 million to be distributed to qualified adult Black residents, as reported by the Deseret News.
But Owens, a Republican who represents Utah’s 4th congressional district, has spoken out against reparations, and in the new video he says the reparations movement “grants superiority to the white race” and “does not represent Black America’s potential.”
“This divisive message marks the Black race as forever broken, a people whose healing can only come through the guilt, pity, and benevolence of whites,” he said. “Good character cannot be bought by bribery.”
“Because of work I’ve never done, stripes I’ve never had, under a whip I’ve never known, these progressives want to give me money I’ve never earned,” he said in the video. “The fact that this money will be forcibly taken from others who also dreamed, worked and sacrificed for it, I’m told is not my concern. But it is.”
Owens called reparations “condescending” and “counterproductive.” He said the many white Americans who died fighting to end slavery during the Civil War made a “payment in full,” for the evils of slavery.
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