Who Is Burgess Owens?

My VIP for this week is Burgess Owens, Republican congressman representing Utah. Owens recently “released a new video produced by conservative education platform PragerU.” The video expresses Owens’ view that reparations for Black Americans “represents the condescending evil of racism.” Rebecca Olds and Suzanne Bates wrote about the video for The Deseret News. 

In his caption on a post about the video on the social media platform X …, Owens, who is Black, wrote that it’s time to teach “our true history.”

The idea of paying reparations to Black Americans to make up for the lasting effects of slavery, as well as for Jim Crow era laws like redlining, has gained steam in recent years, with some states and municipalities considering making payments if the federal government doesn’t act. …. [Evanston, Illinois, and San Francisco, California, are two of them.]

But Owens, a Republican who represents Utah’s 4^th congressional district, has spoken out against reparations, and in the new video he says the reparations movement “grants superiority to the white race” and “does not represent Black America’s potential.”

This divisive message marks the Black race as forever broken, a people whose healing can only come through the guilt, pity, and benevolence of whites,” he said. “Good character cannot be bought by bribery.”

“Because of work I’ve never done, stripes I’ve never had, under a whip I’ve never known, these progressives want to give me money I’ve never earned,” he said in the video. “The fact that this money will be forcibly taken from others who also dreamed, worked and sacrificed for it, I’m told is not my concern. But it is.”

Owens called reparations “condescending” and “counterproductive.” He said the many white Americans who died fighting to end slavery during the Civil War made a “payment in full,” for the evils of slavery.

Slavery is evil, and no person of any race or color has the right to enslave another person. However, slavery ended in the United States following the Civil War. More than 400,000 white men died fighting that war was about ending slavery. Since no one that was a slave or a slaveholder in 1865 is still living, there is no one still living who deserves reparations for slavery, and there is no one still living who is responsible for paying those reparations.

I believe that paying reparations would continue to divide Americans. I also believe that those people pushing reparations do not have the good of America in mind when doing so. I am grateful for Owens to take such a stand on reparations.