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Obama says 'white resistance and resentment' stopped him from pushing for reparations

Bailey Aldridge, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) 1 hr ago


Feb. 25—Former President Barack Obama said reparations for Black Americans were a "non-starter" during his presidency.

Obama, the country's 44th and first Black president, said on Bruce Springsteen's "Renegades: Born in the USA" podcast released Monday that he thinks reparations are "justified" — but believed them to be "unattainable" when he was president.

"So if you ask me theoretically: 'Are reparations justified?' The answer is yes," he said. "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."

But, he said, pushing for that type of economic support for Black Americans, including descendants of slaves, during his presidency likely would have been unsuccessful.

"What I saw during my presidency was the 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 said on the podcast. "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."

During his first campaign for president in 2008, Obama said he agreed with the "underlying sentiment of recognizing the continued legacy of slavery" but didn't necessarily support reparations and instead favored more "practical policy goals," The Washington Post reported in 2019.

"I fear that reparations would be an excuse for some to say 'we've paid our debt,'" he said, according to the Post.

Black and white wealth gap

There remains a persistent and wide gap between the wealth of white and Black Americans.

In 2016, the average net worth for a white family in the U.S. was $171,000 — ten times higher than the average net worth for a Black family, according to The Brookings Institution, which pointed to centuries of discriminatory policies against the Black community as a reason for the disparity.

And the wealth gap between Black and white Americans has remained stagnant for decades, The Washington Post reports, with "the black-white economic divide as wide (in 2020) as it was in 1968."

"The historical data reveal that no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between Black and white households over the past 70 years (since World War II)," economists Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick and Ulrike I. Steins wrote in the Journal of Political Economy.

Reparations are a controversial and unpopular issue, polls show. A June 2020 Reuters/Ipsos poll found just one out of every five Americans supports the idea of "taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States" — with around 10% of white people in support compared to about half of Black respondents.

Democratic push for reparations

Obama's comments come as some Democratic lawmakers have renewed a push for reparations.

Last week, a panel in the U.S. House of Representatives heard testimony on the creation of a commission that would be tasked with examining the history of slavery and discriminatory government practices in the U.S. It would also make recommendations, including financial compensation for the descendants of slaves, on remedies, The Associated Press reports.

Passing a reparations bill, however, could be difficult even with Democrats in control of both chambers, according to The AP, and some Republican lawmakers have pushed back on the commission

"Though it is impractical and a nonstarter for the United States government to pay reparations, it is also unfair and heartless to give Black Americans the hope that this is a reality," Rep. Burgess Owens, Republican from Utah, said, noting that his great-great-grandfather arrived in America on a slave ship, according to The AP.

But Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, said the "government sanctioned slavery."

"And that is what we need, a reckoning, a healing reparative justice," said said, according to The AP.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week that President Joe Biden supports a study on whether descendants of formerly enslaved people should receive reparations, The Hill reports.

"I believe that's what's being discussed and studying the continuing impacts of slavery, which is being discussed in this hearing on H.R. 40, and he continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address this systemic racism that persists today," Psaki said, according to The Hill.

Obama said during the podcast that, though he was "convinced that reparations was a non-starter" during his presidency, he understands it should be discussed.

"I understand the argument of people I respect, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, that we should talk about it anyway if for no other reason than to educate the country about a past that too often isn't taught, and let's face it, we'd rather forget," he said.

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