Dr. Phil has folks on social media dragging him to hell after he said providing cash reparations for slavery would be an “absolute disaster” during an episode of his talk show on April 18.
The talk show host made the statement after economist and Duke University Professor William A. Darity Jr. said that $14 trillion should be distributed evenly to the 40 million Black descendants of slavery in America, or $350,000 per person.
The payments would be an attempt to help eliminate the wealth disparity between Black and white Americans, which he said is about $840,000. Darity co-authored the book “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.”
Darity noted that the government could pay the funds in a way similar to how federal payments were distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It would be paid by the federal government in the same way in which the federal government has met the expenses that were, uh, that were paid out for the purposes of trying to deal with the great recession and also, most recently, with the economic downturn associated with the great pandemic,” he said.
Civil rights activist Bob Woodson also appeared on “Dr. Phil” and disagreed with Darity.
“When you go into slavery, it’s much more complex than all white people were the oppressors, and Black people were the victims,” Woodson said. “If you dissect it, you will find there were about 3,700 free Blacks who owned 12,000 slaves — Black slaves. The question is, do the descendants of those free Blacks who owned Black slaves, do they pay?”
“Blacks really benefited more the first 100 years after slavery than we have in the last 50 years,” he added.
Darity responded that the federal government paid reparations to white families after slavery but reneged on their promise of 40 acres and a mule to each Black family.
“There is a substantial history of the United States government providing financial assets to white citizens when it did not provide similar assets to Black citizens,” said Darity. “The U.S. government gave one-and-a-half million white families in the United States 160-acre land grants in the western territories under the Homestead Act of 1860. That was a transfer that has resulted in a situation in which 45 million living white Americans are continuing to be beneficiaries of those land patents.”
Dr. Phil replied that giving any group of people $350,000 without guidance would be disastrous and brought up the people who took advantage of the federal government’s PPP loans as an example.
“I can tell you from a psychological perspective that if you take $350,000 or $840,000, and you write a check to any group of people, Black, white, poor, homeless, whatever, you give any group of people that much money and say, ”there you go, best of luck,’ you come back in six months, they’re going to be broke,” he said. “Whatever reparations are done, that would be an absolute disaster, as opposed to guidance and help in creating generational wealth, as opposed to income.”
Darity explained that no one is claiming that some people might not mismanage their money but asserted that it wasn’t the point, prompting Dr. Phil to retort, “I just said it. I just said, ‘you give that money to anybody, they’re going to mismanage it. They’re going to blow it.’ Look at the fraud that just occurred with all of the money that was given in support of COVID.”
Some viewers did not appreciate Dr. Phil’s reparations assessment and took to social media to drag the talk show host.
“Dr. Phil is a f*cking idiot. Cash Reparations are owed & I don’t give a f*ck what anyone “thinks” about it,” wrote one Twitter user. “The law is the law, crimes against humanity never expire, wage theft is illegal. Black Americans are owed what was taken from us. F*ck all this talk. #CutTheCheck.”
“Let’s be clear,” responded another user. “Why would we be asking the opinion of a white man about reparations? When did slave owners like for slaves to be free? Someone answer. The point is Dr. Phil doesn’t have to like it, we’re owed a debt, let us mess it up or not mess it up. It’s ours!”
Another user reminded Dr. Phil about his production company’s $7 million in PPP loans. His youngest son Jordan McGraw paid $10 million in cash for a Beverly Hills mansion around the same time, but sources claimed there is no connection.
“Why do some people feel they need to police Black folks? If we get reparations and decide to burn it all in a furnace, that’s our dam [sic] business,” replied another.
“Dr. Phil got some nerve after [Oprah] put him on,” added one.
American government paid $300.00 dollars to landowners for every enslaved person freed after the Civil War. American were total fine with reparations for the Jews.
Give the bro’s money. They sure as hell don’t want to work for it. If anything is owed to anyone it should be the Native American people.
Dr phill is an absolute racist because he wouldn’t have dare said that addressing the Jewish holocaust and reparations for the Jewish people or the Japanese people would were put in camps during the second world wars
Dr.Phil I wouldn’t gaf what we did with the money..you’re just praying we don’t use it to put our minds together along with the money and change the game on y’all (then y’all know y’all f’d fr) !!
General Sherman promised forty acres of good farmland and a mule for each freed slave family. He began to deliver on that promise. Politics and racism blocked that. They are owed that value plus interest.
White were inslaved in the American colonies for 150 years before the first African slave were ever brought her white Catholic Irish slaves should be getting reparations first first slaves first payment read so history
Why should we pay for something we didn’t do How about suing Africans after all they kidnapped and sold their own country men??? So exactly how much do you think you owe the native Americans whom land your home is on was stolen from them. Or the Irish or Chinese. Just saying? I hate that whole chapter of our history but trying to make us pay for something we did not do or benefit from is absurd and that entitled syndrome coming out what is owed to white folk whom lost everything including their lives to help set folk free how much is owed their families
Well in that case why doesn’t US government pay Mexican people too, our land was taken and our people was hurt and killed by white confederate soldiers, this country belongs to native Americans and Mexican Tribes pay us all back and give back to each one what is owed.
Phil and his family benefited from the enslavement of Black/African people and he is continuing his master, slave mentality by perpetrating a stereotype about black people, while not acknowledging a black woman made him wealthy. I wonder what she thinks about his comments?
And oh, they never said that about native Americans, Japanese people and the made up country of Israel
This entire topic is so outlandish, does black America truly believe the U.S.A. is going to cough up 14 trillion dollars for them? That may sound nice and some will possibly agree that scenario is a real possibility, but, before that happens America needs to to straighten out it’s own problems “The National Debt” how much does this country owe? Somewhere in the vicinity of 34 to 38 trillion last thing I read. Good Luck with getting blood out of a ROCK.