Descendent of slaves who is running for Congress calls for $2.8 million in reparations
A Congressional candidate whose ancestors were enslaved is calling on President Joe Biden to issue reparations of $2.8 million to qualified black Americans.
Gregg Marcel Dixon is running a longshot primary challenge to unseat US Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat, in South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District.
‘This country owes reparations to black Americans, and if this country had done to you what it had done to black Americans, I would be right there fighting for you to get what you’re owed as well,’ he told Fox News Digital in an interview published on Wednesday.
Dixon proposes that federal reparations in the form of $2.8 million in cash bonds should be paid to Americans who both identify as black, and can trace their ancestry to people who were enslaved in the US prior to the Civil War.
He said that he believes Biden could issue reparations with an executive order reinstating the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency that was tasked with assisting formerly enslaved people after the Civil War.
Gregg Marcel Dixon is running a longshot primary challenge to unseat US Rep. James Clyburn, and has called on Biden to issue reparations of $2.8 million to qualified black Americans
Dixon grew up in the home of his great-grandmother Justine Brown (with him above), who was herself raised by formerly enslaved ancestors
‘That bureau has an unfinished job of repairing the great inequities that we see here in America, where Black Americans have been in this country longer than nearly all other ethnic groups,’ he told Fox News. ‘We’re at the bottom in terms of land and wealth and that’s because the job of reconstruction never finished.’
Dixon identifies as Gullah-Geechee, a black American ethnic group native to the southern sea islands, and says his family has resided in South Carolina’s Lowcountry since at least the mid 1700s.
He grew up in the home of his great-grandmother, who was herself raised by formerly enslaved ancestors, according to a campaign ad he posted on Twitter.
His great-grandmother Justine Brown, who died at 101 years old in 2015, grew up in the home of her grandfather, who was born enslaved in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1838, and died in 1930.
‘We like to say slavery was a long time ago, but you are looking at a man who was raised in the same house with a woman who was raised by someone who was enslaved by America,’ he said.
Dixon, who garnered just 4.5 percent of the vote in the 2022 Democratic primary for the 6th Congressional Seat, said that reparations are a matter of paying a debt that is owed.
‘It is not to fight against racism, it is not to punish white people, it is not race based,’ he said, comparing the issue to payments made to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II.
Dixon was critical of the Biden administration for failing to do more to tangibly help black Americans.
Dixon identifies as Gullah-Geechee, a black American ethnic group native to the southern sea islands, and says his family has resided in South Carolina’s Lowcountry since the mid 1700s
Dixon garnered just 4.5 percent of the vote in the 2022 Democratic primary for the 6th Congressional Seat, but is running again to challenge longtime incumbent Clyburn
In March, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to reveal Biden’s stance on federal reparations for black descendants of slaves
‘He has no incentive to do for us because he knows no matter how awful he is, he is going to still get the majority of the black vote,’ he said.
‘Black Americans don’t get any of that besides fish fries and feel-good dances and wearing Converse and listening to rap music— that’s all we get, and we allow that to the bottom, and we just give away our vote,’ added Dixon.
In March, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to reveal Biden’s stance on federal reparations for black descendants of slaves, saying the administration feels the issue is best left to Congress.
At a press briefing, a reporter asked Jean-Pierre where the Biden administration stands ‘on reparations for slavery, and segregation, and similar historic wrongs’ specifically affecting black people in the US.
‘We think Congress is the appropriate venue for consideration on such action, and so we’re going to leave it there for Congress to decide,’ she responded, referring to a recently re-introduced federal bill to study the reparations issue.