News and Commentary

HBO’s John Oliver Demands Reparations For Black Americans, Argues Against Color-Blind Policies

'Our failure to effectively target solutions based on race has doomed potential fixes in the past'

Megan Basham
HBO’s John Oliver Demands Reparations For Black Americans, Argues Against Color-Blind Policies
Dan MacMedan/WireImage/Getty Images

John Oliver, host of HBO’s fake news show, “Last Week Tonight,” believes the U.S. government should pay monetary restitution to black Americans to compensate for the country’s past racism. “The only really strange thing about [it],” he argued Sunday night, “is that we haven’t done it yet.”

Citing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 Atlantic article, “The Case for Reparations,” the British comedian based his argument not on slavery but on housing discrimination.

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