Chambana Sun

A University of Illinois alum who co-founded a cable television channel geared toward African Americans believes the federal government owes the descendants of enslaved people $14 trillion in reparations.

KSGF posted on its Facebook page that Robert L. Johnson, who launched Black Entertainment Television, has called for not just financial compensation but an apology for past transgressions against black people.

“Robert  L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, owns several  homes, leads an asset management firm and is the first black person to own a majority stake in an NBA team, but wants cash reparations himself,” the Springfield, Mo., FM station wrote on July 1. “Along with the check, Johnson wants an apology for racism, including slavery and Jim Crow laws.”

This Mississippi-born entrepreneur used a June 28 CNBC appearance to implore Washington “to go big.”

“Wealth transfer is what’s needed,” Yahoo reported Johnson as saying on Squawk Box. “Think about this. Since 200-plus years or so of slavery, labor taken with no compensation is a wealth transfer. Denial of access to education, which is a primary driver of accumulation of income and wealth, is a wealth transfer.”

Johnson earned an undergraduate degree in social studies from U of I in 1968.

During his time in Urbana-Champaign, he was also a member of the Beta chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

He became the first black billionaire in the U.S. when he sold BET to Viacom in 2001 but is no longer on the Forbes billionaires list, Yahoo reported.

Johnson achieved another first about a year after selling BET when his 2002 purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats, the previous incarnation of the Charlotte Hornets, made him the first African-American majority club owner of a major American sports league team.

Daily Caller reported Johnson referring to critical race theory, or CRT in education, COVID-19 relief solely for black farmers, local reparations for housing in Evanston, Ill., and pledges from corporations the past year, following the death of George Floyd in May 2020 as the new reparations.

Johnson asserted that what he calls “placebo paternalism” is detrimental to the current approach to reparations.

“Reparations had two components: The first was atonement, and the other was monetary,” Daily Caller reported him as saying in an interview with the web site Vice. “With no doubt whatsoever, it was supposed to come from the government representing the people of the country. It was  reimbursement, or recompense if you will, for the harm.”