Portraits of US politicians identified by a Reuters investigation as descendants of slave owners. Photo: Reuters.
A Reuters investigation concluded that more than 100 US leaders come from former slave-owning families, including legislators, presidents, governors and judges. These lines of succession could symbolically indicate that those who caused the most brutal oppression in US history remain in power.
This archeology of US history shows that one-fifth of the nation’s congresspeople, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved African people.
“Among 536 members of the last sitting Congress, Reuters determined at least 100 descend from slaveholders. Of that group, more than a quarter of the Senate – 28 members – can trace their families to at least one slaveholder,” reads the article, adding that this list includes the country’s most influential politicians.
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These include Republican Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and James Lankford, and Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan. Current President Joe Biden and all living former US presidents except Donald Trump are direct descendants of slave owners — Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and, on his white mother’s side, Barack Obama.
This data reveals that the positions of power in the United States have always been traversed by these threads of the slave-owning past, and it is precisely these threads that have defined the policies that determine the form of government.
However, according to Reuters, few politicians are willing to discuss the issue, indicating that there is neither the will nor the sensitivity to reflect on this problem. This is one of many fundamental flaws in the current system of governance in the United States.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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