NFL legend Burgess Owens decries 2020 Dems' push for slavery reparations

Former Super Bowl champion and conservative author Burgess Owens says the slavery reparations movement promoted by several Democratic presidential candidates is an affront to American ideals, and has laid out his argument in a recent op-ed.

What are the details?

Owens penned a column for the Wall Street Journal last week, declaring, "I didn't earn slavery reparations, and I don't want them." The retired Oakland Raider told the story of how his great-great-grandfather, Silas Burgess, was able to achieve great success in America despite first arriving to the country as a slave.

The author of "Why I Stand: From Freedom to the Killing Fields of Socialism" went on to explain how his ancestor escaped slavery to become a successful entrepreneur, land owner, and family man who built his town's first black church and first black elementary school.

"Now, because of him," Owens wrote of his namesake, "a bunch of Democratic presidential hopefuls want to give me money, because of work I've never done, stripes I've never had, under a whip I'll never know, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren and others want to give me free stuff. Never mind that it will be taken from others, who also dreamed, worked and sacrificed to earn it."

Several 2020 candidates have gone on record saying they believe the descendants of slaves should receive payment from the U.S. government to compensate for America's slave-owning past.

Owens went on to decry the reparations movement in its entirety, calling it divisive, demeaning to both blacks and whites, and a notion which "demeans America's founding ideals."

Anything else?

Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Owens reiterated, "Unfortunately, the left doesn't see respect the way we see it. They will lie, steal and cheat to get what they think they deserve, which is somebody else's property."

The former NFL player told the network he did not believe the slavery reparations movement would continue to gain steam, and instead called for the Democratic Party to pay reparations for the damage it has done "to our country and the black community."

Fox and Friends 7AM 5/28/19 | Fox News Today May 28 2019www.youtube.com