Beyond Belief. Larry Elder Speaking Of Reparations Comes Down On the Side Of Slave Owners

It’s a blessing that we live in a technological age where moronic comments are recorded on video. Maybe our conception of history would be different if we had the same kind of equipment back in the days of Franklin, Jefferson and the like. It’s possible that one of them might have had an off day and said something regrettable, but I find it beyond imagination that any real statesman or stateswoman in this country would have made a gaffe like this one.

Larry Elder was part of a two-person Oreo convention on Candace Owens show earlier this summer. The conversation turned to reparations, which is generally understood to mean reparations to black people for the centuries of slavery on this continent. Not in Elder’s lexicon. He offered the view that ‘”like it or not, slavery was legal. And so, their [slave owners’] property, their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War. So, you can make an argument that the people who are owed reparations are not only just Black people but people whose ‘property’ was taken away after the end of the Civil War.””

And it gets worse, if you can believe it. Owens spoke about returning to Africa.

“I think I could be pro-reparations,” Owens said. “I think we should allow people the opportunity or the chance to go back to Africa. I would sponsor that like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I don’t think you would have a long line,” Elder said, laughing.

“This was one of the first countries to ban the slave trade,” Owens added. [Editors’s note: It was one of he last. See detail below] “I mean Britain was ahead of us. The U.K. was ahead of us. America was just right behind them.” […]

“And by the way, that’s why there was no war in the U.K. The slave owners got substantial amounts of money,” Elder said, “which is one of the reasons why they didn’t fight a war.”

And this guy wants to be governor of California. Maybe he’ll be like Reagan and go from Governor of California to the White House and then he can work on evening the score with the slave owners. Not good enough they lived off the sweat of their slaves and deprived them of their humanity, now their descendants should have cash on top of it. It’ll play in Texas and Florida, at the very least.

California Republican candidate for Governor Larry Elder once said it can be argued that slave owners were owed reparations at the end of the Civil War. pic.twitter.com/B2j2tS1ZAq

— Resist Programming ? (@RzstProgramming) September 3, 2021

And it doesn’t stop there. Here’s another humdinger.

Larry Elder added “Blacks get longer sentences” from judges for “legitimate reasons” and “Black boys get kicked out more often than white boys do in school” because of their “behavior” and not because of “pernicious racism.” pic.twitter.com/nTNKUb1MEm

— Resist Programming ? (@RzstProgramming) September 4, 2021

Right Wing Watch:

Apparently Elder is unaware that the U.S. has offered reparations to white slave owners. The Civil War was already underway when President Abraham Lincoln emancipated slaves in Washington, D.C., in 1862 via the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, which granted those slave owners loyal to the Union up to $300 for every slave freed. Formerly enslaved people received nothing.

While the U.S. abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 (a year after the U.K.), it did not abolish the slave trade or slavery throughout the United States until 1865, making it one of the last—not first—countries to do so. The U.K. abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, but gradually ended slavery with legislation passed 23 years later. The British government did indeed pay 20 million pounds to “compensate” slave owners.

Elder’s comments fall in line with others he has made on racism and slavery. According to The Sacramento Bee, the conservative radio host has stated that systemic racism is a lie, blamed rising crime on Black Lives Matter, and claimed that welfare is more harmful to Black families than slavery. He also supports banning “critical race theory”—an academic framework for examining the ways in which systemic racism shapes and influences national and social institutions—in schools.

If you know any Democrat in California who isn’t already committed to Gavin Newsom over Uncle Tom sellout here, send them this article. As far as I’m concerned, this should be the banner headline on all the newscasts from now until Tuesday. Larry Elder is bad news. California would do better to sink into the ocean than have this clown run it.