Williamson defends math behind massive reparations plan: ‘It’s not assistance’ it is ‘a debt that is owed’

Candidate Marianne Williamson justified her proposal to pay between $200 billion and $500 billion in reparations to descendants of slaves, saying “it’s not assistance” but “payment of debt that is owed, that’s what reparations is.”

“We need to recognize that when it comes to the economic gap between blacks and whites in America, it does come from a great injustice that has never been dealt with,” Williamson said.

Williamson rejected the idea of a commission on reparations to determine how to best address systemic racism.

{mosads}“It does come from a great injustice has never been dealt with,” she said at the Democratic presidential debate in Michigan Tuesday.

Williamson used “40 acres and a mule,” the amount touted during Reconstruction as payment for freed slaves as the basis of her calculation.

Marianne Williamson on reparations: “We need to recognize that when it comes to the economic gap between blacks and whites in America, it does come from a great injustice that has never been dealt with.” pic.twitter.com/iJ0vD5iaaP

— IJR (@TheIJR) July 31, 2019

“If you did the math of the 40 acres and a mule, given that there were 4 to 5 million slaves at the end of the civil war,” she said, “it would be trillions of dollars, and I believe that anything less than $100 billion is an insult.”

Her figure, she said, was “politically feasible.”