McCain and Obama Make Reparations a Campaign Taboo

By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain don’t agree on much. But there’s one thing that they not only agree on, but have made a campaign taboo, and that’s reparations. Obama flatly opposes it, and has repeated his opposition to it every time he’s asked the question about compensation for slavery. McCain doesn’t even bother taking a public position on reparations. In fact, it’s such a foregone conclusion that he would oppose it no one has even bothered to ask him about it on the campaign trail.

The candidates sprint from the issue like the plague for reasons that make good political sense. They both read the opinion polls.

A CNN/USA Today poll taken after blacks filed two well-publicized reparations lawsuits in 2002 found that 75 percent of Americans said that corporations should not pay reparations for slavery, and a whopping 90 percent said the government should not pay reparations.

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