'I find myself once again in the same position as President Obama. We both opposed reparations and we both are the descendants of slave-owners,” Mitch McConnell said.
Nicholas WuWASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to an NBC report that his ancestors owned slaves by telling reporters he and former President Barack Obama were"once again in the same position."
McConnell had been asked about the report, which found two of his great-great-grandfathers owned at least 14 slaves, according to NBC's search of the 1850 and 1860 censuses.McConnell's comments about Obama referred to reports from 2007 about the then-presidential candidate's ancestry on his mother's side.
Ancestry.com had also done an analysis in 2012 and found that Obama's mother was also descended from a slave named John Punch, who was the first African to be declared"enslaved for life" in early Colonial Virginia.Ta-Nehisi Coates, Danny Glover call for slavery reparations before Congress McConnell previously sparked controversy about reparations, telling reporters that reparations were not a"good idea" and that the United States had tried to solve the"original sin of slavery" by, among other things, electing an"African American president."
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