LOS ANGELES — PragerU released a new 5-minute video Monday titled “Why I Don’t Want and Don’t Deserve Reparations” featuring Super Bowl champion Burgess Owens as its presenter. Owens emphasizes the lessons of his heritage while exposing the racist roots of the increasingly popular Reparations Movement.
Owens tells the story of his great-great-grandfather, Silas Burgess, who came to America on a slave ship. After escaping to Texas with several other slaves, he worked hard, saved his money and eventually purchased his own 102-acre farm. He went on to start the first black elementary school and the first black church in his town. Silas taught his descendants to overcome obstacles to their own American Dream by using the same principles of hard work and personal responsibility.
Fast-forward to 2019 and a host of progressives, including several Democratic presidential candidates, have advocated that African Americans should receive tax-payer funded reparations to atone for America’s history of slavery.
But Burgess Owens doesn’t agree with this idea. “Because of work I’ve never done, stripes I’ve never had under a whip I’ve never known,” he says, “progressives want to give me money I’ve never earned.” He further laments the fact that reparations money would be forcibly taken from others who “also dreamed, worked and sacrificed for it.”
At the core of the Reparations Movement, Owens declares, is a “distorted and demeaning view of blacks and whites” that seeks to nullify the hard work of both in America.
“The Reparations Movement conveniently forgets the 150 years of legal, social, and economic progress obtained by millions of American minorities,” Owens points out. “It also minimizes the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of white Americans and a Republican president who gave their lives to eradicate slavery.”
Owens concludes with a somber reminder: “Those who seek reparations have accepted the theory that skin color alone is capable of making one race superior to the other — that with no additional effort, values, or personal initiative, white Americans will succeed, while black Americans will fail. At its very core, this represents the condescending evil of racism.”
“If Grandpa Silas were here,” Burgess Owens suggests, “I’m certain his message to everyone, whether black or white, would simply be this: good character cannot be bought by bribery.”
View Burgess Owens’ PragerU video here.
Burgess Owens is an entrepreneur, father of six, Super Bowl champion, and bestselling author. He played college football at the University of Miami and then played for the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders, ultimately leading the Raiders to a Super Bowl Championship in 1980. After retiring from the NFL, Owens wrote two books, Why I Stand: From Freedom to the Killing Fields of Socialism and the national bestseller Liberalism, or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies,and Wimps. He now travels the United States as a guest speaker and has partnered with PragerU to argue against the Reparations Movement.
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PragerU, founded by Dennis Prager in 2011, is a not-for-profit organization that helps millions understand the values that shaped America and provides millions of Americans and people around the world with the intellectual ammunition they need to advocate for limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom. Since its founding, PragerU videos have received over 2 billion lifetime views. PragerU is a resource for all who value liberty. It is a threat to all those who do not.
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