Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell confirms that he is a descendant of slave owners and reiterates that he still opposes government reparations for descendants of American slaves.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday confirmed that he is a descendant of slave owners and reiterated that he still opposes government reparations for descendants of American slaves.
At a press conference following a closed-door luncheon with Senate Republicans, McConnell was asked whether he was aware that two of his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners in Alabama before the Civil War and whether the revelation would cause him to reconsider his position on reparations."I find myself once again in the same position as President [Barack] Obama.
The details about McConnell's ancestors, discovered by NBC News through a search of ancestry and census records, came in the wake of recent hearings on reparations before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.to the idea, arguing it would be hard to figure out whom to compensate.
"I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, when none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea,” he said June 18, a day before the House reparations hearing. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African American president.”.
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