BET Founder Favors Quotas for Black Ownership

From Maynard Institute, August 22, 2007
By Richard Prince

Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson says he favors not only affirmative action, but quotas, and that many black reporters who criticized BET “wanted to prove they could be tough to their white editors.”Johnson is interviewed in the new paperback version of the Washington Post’s series, “Being a Black Man,” (PublicAffairs) which includes some additional material, including an interview of Johnson by Post editor Joe Davidson.“I definitely favor affirmative action,” Johnson said. “I favor affirmative action to the point that I think there should be some way of measuring affirmative action with quotas and other forms of accountability, that says if you benefit from the government you have an affirmative obligation to meet certain goals in the way this money is being allocated or being spent or the way you’re providing job opportunities. I’m saying you have an obligation to go out and find people, and they’re out there. I know because I go out and I find them. So you can’t say you can’t find them.”At another point, Johnson said he prefers “mandated goals to say if you use the public airways, if the public airways belong to the public, we’re going to mandate 30 percent of the radio stations be owned by black people. If you’re getting money from the government — I’m buying X billion dollars with minority suppliers. If you’re getting oil mining rights, I’m going to mandate that there be X number of black-owned gas stations. That’s the only way you’ll get there,” he said, referring to economic parity.Johnson became the first African American billionaire when the parent company of Black Entertainment Television was sold to Viacom for nearly $3 billion in 2000.
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