Mark Levin Says Kamala Harris, Democrats Should Pay Slavery Reparations

Conservative Fox News host Mark Levin responded to Senator Kamala Harris's support for slavery reparations by saying the Democratic Party should pay back those who can prove they descended directly from slaves.

Levin, who also hosts the Fox News program Life, Liberty & Levin, made the slavery reparation remarks on his LevinTV program Monday. He responded to comments Harris made earlier this month on the syndicated WWPR-FM radio show The Breakfast Club in which she said the U.S. government should provide benefits to black Americans for ancestor enslavement. Levin also took a shot at Senator Elizabeth Warren, who told The New York Times she also supported government-backed slavery reparations.

Levin opened the segment by saying, "I actually agree with reparations. People are getting mad with me, and they don't even let me speak," he said on the BlazeTV program Monday. "I believe that if somebody can show they have a linkage to somebody that was enslaved in this country, many, many many, decades ago, that they should get reparations. Where I disagree with Kamala Harris and the rest is who should pay them. Why should the American people generally pay for reparations?"

Slavery officially ended with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865 following the Civil War, although Jim Crow laws quickly re-enforced segregation policies for almost another 100 years.

Levin began a lengthy monologue ridiculing the Democratic Party's role in continuing slavery. Many members of the party in the 19th century looked to appease their Southern slave-owning constituents by opposing President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party's support at the time for the abolition of slavery across the country, he said.

"That doesn't make any sense to me. A lot of people, their ancestry dates back to a time when they weren't even in this country during the course of slavery," Levin told his viewers on Monday. "But we do know one entity that's been in this country during the course of slavery and we do know one entity that promoted slavery. We do know one entity that fought on the wrong side of the Civil War with respect to slavery. We do know one entity that supported the [Ku Klux] Klan. We do know one entity that supported 'separate but equal,' and we do know one entity that was terrorizing civil rights workers in the South—and that's the Democrat Party."

Levin referred to a frequent criticism expressed by modern day conservatives that accusations of racism from Democrats were misguided because of the party's role in upholding racist policies through the 1960s. Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, attempted to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act, for example. But the two parties flipped bases in the ensuing years as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan invoked a "Southern Strategy" to win voters in the traditionally Democratic South.

Harris, in her Breakfast Club appearance, said that she favored "some type of reparations" for black Americans whose ancestors had been enslaved. The California Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate confirmed this sentiment to The New York Times, saying, "We have to be honest that people in this country do not start from the same place or have access to the same opportunities. I'm serious about taking an approach that would change policies and structures and make real investments in black communities."

Levin continued his historical rundown of connecting the Democrats' to slavery and racism. He challenged Harris to "embrace" having members of her own party pay reparations.

"The Party of Lincoln opposed slavery, Republicans have never supported slavery," Levin said. "The Democrat Party should pay reparations to the progeny of slaves in this country if they can prove their ancestry was in fact part of the slave population.... Let's see if Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and the other loons on the left embrace it."

While Levin's partisan call for reparations may be a hyperbolic political bit—Levin, Harris and Warren did not originate the call for reparations. Author Ta-Nehisi Coates called for them in a June 2014 cover story published in The Atlantic titled "The Case for Reparations."