North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson has an unconventional proposal to end the reparations debate once and for all. What if instead of Black Americans being compensated for the atrocities of slavery — Black people paid reparations?
Robinson, who is Black, is currently running for North Carolina governor.“If you want to tell the truth about it, it is you who owes,” said Robinson during the 2021 North Carolina Republican Party Convention, seemingly referring to Black Americans. “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, who former President Donald Trump once compared to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has made a habit of casting Black people as the real villains of the slave trade. In a 2017 Facebook post about why he doesn’t call himself “African American,” — Robinson placed the primary blame for the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Africans.
It was AFRICANS who fought wars against AFRICANS and then enslaved the losers. It was victorious AFRICAN warriors who sold defeated AFRICAN warriors to European slave traders in exchange for cloth, guns, and money. It was AFRICANS that facilitated the kidnaping of other AFRICANS to be marched off to the slave forts on the AFRICAN coast. It was AFRICANS who watched as AFRICANS were sailed away in the belly of slave ships toward the brutal system of chattel slavery. It was AFRICANS who increased their power through the enslavement of AFRICANS. And today it is AFRICANS who are still doing this to AFRICANS.
Now I ask you. Why would I want to put the name of the culture that fought to sell black people into slavery, in front of the name of the culture that fought to FREE black people from slavery? As far as I’m concerned, the moment the long lost ancestor that created my bloodline here in AMERICA was sold in AFRICA my ties to that continent were CUT.
Robinson’s other greatest hits include the time he compared slavery to abortion and the time he said that white laborers had it just as bad “if not worse than Black slaves.” In more recent advertisements, Robinson repeatedly claimed that he has freed himself from the Left’s “welfare plantation.”
The North Carolina primary election is only a couple of short weeks away. And despite Robinson’s history of “colorful” commentary, polling still shows him as a strong contender for the Governorship.