Swiss investor and frequent business media commentator Marc Faber thinks the U.S. is a rich country because white people, “and not the blacks,” populated America first.
The Financial Times was first to report on Faber’s comments after it obtained an investors’ newsletter that Faber — also known as “Dr. Doom” — wrote.
“And thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks. Otherwise, the U.S. would look like Zimbabwe, which it might look like one day anyway, but at least America enjoyed 200 years in the economic and political sun under a white majority. I am not a racist, but the reality – no matter how politically incorrect – needs to be spelled out,” Faber said.
When reached by the Financial Times reporter Tuesday, Faber said in an email that he stood by his comments because “this is an undisputable [sic] fact.”
“If stating some historical facts makes me a racist, then I suppose that I am a racist,” he said.
Later Tuesday Faber was asked to resign from the board of Sprott, an asset management company where he served as an independent director on the board since 2010.
Sprott’s CEO Peter Grosskopf told CNBC that the company was “deeply disappointed to hear these remarks” and said he was “shocked” to find out Faber thought that way, prompting the board and executives to ask for his immediate resignation.
A CNBC spokesperson said the news outlet doesn’t intend to book Faber as a business commentator in the future.
Faber’s blatantly racist comments were part of an investor letter in which he discussed recent pressure to remove Confederate statues across the U.S, according to the FT.
Faber said Confederate symbols should be considered “statues of honorable people whose only crime was to defend what all societies had done for more than 5,000 years: keep part of the population enslaved,” according to the Financial Times.
The discussion about removing Confederate monuments was thrust back into the national debate after a group of white nationalists protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia this summer. The rally turned violent when a man affiliated with the white supremacists allegedly drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman.
