Republican Mark Robinson Implies Slave Descendants Owe Reparations to Their Ancestors

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has a few ideas on who owes the bill for slavery.

A previous speech Robinson made during the North Carolina Republican Party 2021 State Convention addressing reparations is circulating as the Republican politician runs for the governor’s seat.

“Nobody owes you anything for slavery,” Robinson said in the speech, mentioning that he made the statement in the face of an “angry” liberal.

“If you want to tell the truth about it, it is you who owes,” he said, emphasizing the word “you” seemingly as if his comments were directed toward Black people. “Why do you owe? Because somebody in those fields took strikes for you. After those fields were ended and slavery was ended, somebody had to walk through Jim Crow for you. Somebody fought wars and died for you. Somebody lived less than because they didn’t have what you have, and they did it for you. There are people in their graves right now, and they are there because they were willing to stand up and fight for you.”

Robinson mentioned those who marched on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and shaded Colin Kaepernick by stating that civil rights activists carried American flags as they marched. “When they were hit upside the head with nightsticks and shot with water hoses and knocked to the ground, they got up and picked those flags up and kept marching,” Robinson stressed. “They did it for you!”

“Nobody owes you anything. If anybody owes, it’s you. Because you’ve been the benefactor of freedom, you are the one that owes,” he added.

Robinson implied that slave descendants owe a bill for the sacrifice in blood laid out in the nation on their behalf. “It’s time you got up off your tail,” he said, emphasizing education, employment, marriage, and caring for children.