Black billionaire calls for $14 trillion in reparations

Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson

The U.S. government should provide $14 trillion of reparations for slavery to combat racial inequality, contended Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television.

He said in a CNBC interview on Monday that it's time to "go big" to prevent the nation from splitting into two unequal societies.

"Wealth transfer is what's needed," he insisted. "Think about this. Since 200-plus-years or so of slavery, labor taken with no compensation, is a wealth transfer. Denial of access to education, which is a primary driver of accumulation of income and wealth, is a wealth transfer."

Johnson, who became the nation's first black billionaire when he sold BET to Viacom, called reparations the "affirmative action program of all time."

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"Damages is a normal factor in a capitalist society for when you have been deprived for certain rights," he said. "If this money goes into pockets like the [coronavirus] stimulus checks ... that money is going to return back to the economy."

He said he's not advocating "more bureaucratic programs that don’t deliver and don’t perform."

"I'm talking about cash. We are a society based on wealth. That’s the foundation of capitalism."

The relationship between welfare and absent fathers

However, some African-American scholars and leaders long have contended the problem is not the efficiency of government handouts or welfare but the handouts themselves.

Walter Williams, a veteran professor of ecomomics at George Mason University, argued in his 1982 book "The State Against Blacks" that programs such as the "Great Society" launched by President Johnson in the 1960s not only haven't alleviated poverty, they have made the lives of the poor worse.

Williams wrote that "there's a huge segment of the black population for whom upward mobility is elusive, and it's because of the welfare state — because of government."

He likened the welfare state to a "drug pusher."

"The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery (and Jim Crow and racism) could not have done ... break up the black family," he wrote nearly 40 years ago. "Today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two-parent families. Historically, from the 1870s on ... 75-90 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families."

In 2013, during the controversy over the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, CNN host Don Lemon, who is black, got in trouble with his left-leaning allies when he spotlighted the family issue.

"Black people," Lemon said, "if you really want to fix the problem, here's just five things that you should think about doing."

The No. 1 item on that list, "and probably the most important," he said, is related to out-of-wedlock births.

"Just because you can have a baby, it doesn't mean you should," Lemon said. "Especially without planning for one or getting married first. More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock.

"That means absent fathers," he emphasized.

"And the studies show that lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison and the cycle continues."

A Washington Post blogger was among the many critics of Lemon's commentary.

"If Lemon really wanted to help the black community, he could start by adopting a deeper understanding of the history, sociology and psychology of his own people," wrote Rahiel Tesfamariam.

"Offering made-for-TV analysis about deeply complex social issues in the manner in which he did is irresponsible and lacks intellectual rigor."