A Reuters investigation into the U.S. “political elite’s ancestral links to slavery” found that every living former president is a descendant of slaveholders, except former President Donald Trump.
The findings are all the more remarkable considering the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, is directly descended from slaveholders through his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, according to Reuters.
Former Presidents Carter, Clinton, and George W. Bush, as well as President Joe Biden, all had ancestors who owned slaves. The Reuters report noted Trump as the lone exception, explaining that his ancestors arrived in the United States after chattel slavery was abolished. Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, immigrated from Scotland and married Frederick Trump, whose parents were immigrants from Germany.
The focus on slavery’s relationship to the country’s current elite political class coincides with a growing national discourse over cash reparations for the descendants of slaves.
California’s Reparations Task Force recommended that the state make slavery reparations payments of up to $1.2 million to every eligible black person in the state. When the panel submitted its recommendation in May, California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not endorse the proposal, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“The Reparations Task Force’s independent findings and recommendations are a milestone in our bipartisan effort to advance justice and promote healing. This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country,” said Newsom to Fox News Digital.
Reuters also examined the genealogy of members of the House and Senate and found that at least 100 of them are the descendants of slaveholders.
Some of the more high-profile members of Congress with slaveholding ancestors include Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Lankford (R-OK), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Maggie Hassan (D-NH).
Political commentator Greg Gutfeld reportedly said on his Fox News show earlier this week:
“It seems newsworthy. I mean, remember during the 2012 presidential election? There was a big news story about Rick Perry’s hunting ranch, it had a rock with a racial slur painted on it, which his family painted over in the ’80s. Perry had nothing to do with it … yet somehow the media treated it [as] evidence that he was a racist.”
Not everyone seemed to agree with Gutfeld’s perspective. Former Rep. Mo Brooks (AL) said to Reuters:
“Hopefully, everybody in America is smart enough to know that slavery is abhorrent. So the question then becomes, if everybody already knows that it’s abhorrent, what more can you teach from that?”
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