DL Hughley is watching what is happening with the January 6th rioters getting money from the government and he has some things to say about it.
The conversation around reparations has been going on for decades but Hughley says Trump just accidentally made the strongest case for Black reparations without even realizing it. If the government can cut checks to people who stormed the Capitol then the argument for compensating Black Americans just got a whole lot harder to dismiss.
“If we’re having reparations given out to people that were unjustly treated by the government, Black people should be the first in line. If you can give people that shit all over the Capitol money, you can give people that were shit on by the Capitol money.”
Hughley also made sure to reframe the reparations conversation for people who think it is only about slavery. It goes beyond that. He pointed to Tulsa’s Greenwood district, Palm Springs and Seneca Village, which sits where Central Park is today, as examples of Black communities that were thriving and then destroyed by the government and those it empowered. “It isn’t what you did to us in slavery. It’s what you took from us after we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and then you use the power of the government to take it away.”
He did not let the bootstraps argument slide either. “You can’t say pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Hey nigga, I’m taking your boots too.”
The government just established that it will pay people for time they spent in prison because of what it deemed unjust treatment. Hughley is simply applying that same logic. “If you’re going to say these people deserve reparations for two years they might have been in prison, 398 years of slavery probably is a safe thing. And now you’ve set the template.”
The argument has always been there. Now there is a precedent sitting right on top of it.
DL Hughley: “If we’re having reparations given out to people that were unjustly treated by the government, Black people should be the first in line. If you can give people that shit all over the Capitol money, you can give people that were shit on by the Capitol money” pic.twitter.com/EGA2tQ83VQ
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 23, 2026
