Former President Barack Obama said he believes reparations for black Americans are justified, however, “the politics of white resistance and resentment” prevented him from pushing for them while he was in office.

Speaking on his new podcast Renegades: Born in the USA, which he co-hosts with musician Bruce Springsteen, Obama said, “there’s not much question that the wealth… the power of this country was built in significant part — not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it, but a large portion of it — was built on the backs of slaves.”

“And what I saw during my presidency was the politics of White resistance and resentment. The talk of ‘welfare queens’ and the talk of the ‘undeserving’ poor. And the backlash against affirmative action,” the former president said.

“All that made the prospect of actually proposing any kind of coherent, meaningful reparations program struck me as, politically, not only a nonstarter but potentially counterproductive.”

He said it was “perfectly understandable why working-class White folks, middle-class White folks, folks who are having trouble paying the bills or dealing with student loans, wouldn’t be too thrilled” about the prospect of “a massive program that is designed to deal with the past but isn’t speaking to their future.”

Fox News points out that Obama has changed his stance on reparations, having previously opposed the proposal during his 2008 presidential campaign. Back then, he argued that “the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed.”

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