Barack Obama is back, and he’s here to send the social justice and Black Lives Matter mobs into a rage of disappointment.
In a podcast appearance with Bruce Springsteen, released hours before the singer and songwriter was to beat the rap for drunken and reckless driving, the former two-term president said that he supported reparations for black people. Except, not really. He said he supported it in theory.
“So, if you ask me theoretically, are reparations justified, the answer is yes,” Obama said. “There’s not much question, right, 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.”
He went on to say that there should be at least some “recognition” on the lasting effects of slavery and legal discrimination against blacks and that the nation should discuss reparations “if for no other reason than to educate the country about a past that too often isn’t taught.”
Some right-wingers are offended that Obama also said that during his presidency, he experienced “the politics of white resistance and resentment,” but so what? That’s how the modern Democrat talks these days. We should all just be grateful that he didn’t actually encourage his party to pursue reparations — because they would totally do it.
No, instead, Obama dunked the social justice monsters in cold water. He told the truth: There’s no real way to make “reparations” work. Polls consistently show that only about a quarter of the U.S. population supports them, and most of those people are the David Brooks types who only say they support it as a way to signal their personal virtue or get obnoxious social justice activists off their backs.
So, sure, let’s talk about reparations. Obama knows that’s as good as it’s going to get.
