Retired NFL Super Bowl champion Burgess Owens denounces the political strategy of white, progressive Democrats who he says have engaged in the “programming” of blacks in the United States for more than a century.

In an interview with Breitbart News, Owens, who played with both the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders, applauds Baltimore Ravens tight end Benjamin Watson for his pro-life stance and for confronting the abortion of millions of black babies by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.

“I am thrilled and proud of Benjamin Watson for speaking up on behalf of innocent black lives, traditionally an unpopular stance in the mainstream media”, said the retired defensive back, author of the new book Liberalism: Or How to Turn Good Men Into Whiners Weenies and Wimps (Post Hill Press, 2016). In his book, Owens addresses the racist origins of Planned Parenthood and its eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger.

When asked in an interview at Turning Point Friends about the relationship between race and abortion in America, Watson responded, “I do know that blacks kind of represent a large portion of the abortions, and I do know that honestly the whole idea with Planned Parenthood and Sanger in the past was to exterminate blacks, and it’s kind of ironic that it’s working.”

These creative & innovative leaders are moving us to repro, racial & gender justice. #BHM https://t.co/8LVoLv1ir2 pic.twitter.com/GFihmeSHjk — Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) February 14, 2016

“It began with the NAACP,” Owens tells Breitbart News, and continues:

The NAACP was not a black-run, black-originated organization. It was run by 21 white, socialist, atheist, Marxist Democrats. It was the antithesis of Rev. Martin Luther King Sr.’s community at that time, which was capitalist, Christian, very pro-life, and pro-America. So, these 21 white people began to put a message through to the black community that Democrats were good, liberalism was good, and they subscribed to the same philosophy that Margaret Sanger believed of blacks at that time. Sanger looked at blacks as “weeds.”

Sanger, who began the Negro Project in 1939 and worked to bring birth control to blacks in an effort to reduce their population, joined with elite and well known African-Americans Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. The Negro Project was sold as a solution to poverty and high birth rates among the black community. At the same time Sanger promoted her theory of “eliminating the unfit,” she also condemned charitable organizations that she believed were elevating the very population that needed to be weeded out.

Breitbart News asked Owens about the narrative being communicated to young black women by Planned Parenthood, which uses the hashtag #ReproJustice to appeal to women aligned with Black Lives Matter.

As we commemorate the 51st anniversary of the #VRA, we must remember that #VotingRights are #ReproductiveRights https://t.co/znyODoPamL — Planned Parenthood Black Community (@PPBlackComm) August 6, 2016

He says young black women have been getting the same message Sanger created years ago via Black Entertainment Television (BET):

If you wonder why urban, young, black women are allowing themselves to be victimized by Planned Parenthood, look at BET, which is owned by very wealthy white Democrats. Look at the 15 years of messaging that has been gotten through to our urban black communities: anti-white, anti-police, anti-family, and pro-abortion. So, you have these young people growing up for 15 years of their lives thinking of their children as “weeds” and – no big deal. So, it’s very much a breeding process, and not only are they breeding out our daughters and 16 million black babies – who have been killed since 1973 [when Roe v. Wade was decided]. Forty percent of black babies have been given to the altar of abortion. In any other society, that would be considered genocide. Today, we put a nice name to it and, at the same time, have convinced our own mothers that their babies are no more than an inconvenience or a profit.

In his book, Owens says he came to realize “the gradual degradation of my once proud and independent Black community.”

He writes:

I remembered the introduction of the 1960s Great Society welfare program and the resulting increase of dependent women and young girls—given financial incentives to remain single, pregnant, and jobless. These same programs encouraged black men to abandon their roles as patriarchs, providers, and protectors of their families. In the decades since my youth, I’ve witnessed the explosion of fatherless families, and an exponential increase in illiteracy and crime.

Owens, who says that since retiring in 1983 his goal has been to “resurrect my community,” believes the black community needs to get its “soul” back.

“If we don’t believe in the sanctity of our own babies, how are we going to believe in the sanctity of our adults and that they are special also?” he asks, adding:

It’s been a very interesting process the Democrats have put on us – I call it the ‘Black Misery.’ Now we have blacks living in the freest country in the world, in a country in which we have a black President of the United States for eight years, where I can get into any business I want to, I can go to any college I want to, yet they believe they cannot succeed because of another race. That is the greatest insult to my past generations.

Owens says he and Watson are not the only blacks in America who see how their community has been victimized by progressives in the United States.

He asserts:

There are 28 percent of black Americans who think like I do. We are very proud of who we are, proud of God, proud of country, our race, our children. And we have to get the word out so that those 28 percent of black Americans stop voting in “group-think,” and actually start to vote principle instead. If we vote for principle and for the right ideas, that means that, all of a sudden, the capitalists in us would not be voting for socialists, the Christians would not be voting for atheists, and most importantly, those who believe in the sanctity of life, will stop today voting for abortionists who believe our children are nothing but inconvenient weeds.

“It’s time for our race to man up, become proud of who we are, and stop pointing the finger,” he concludes. “At the end of the day, we are where we are because of the way we think of ourselves. And when we kill our babies – 1800 per day killed by abortion – if we believe in that, if we allow that to happen, we cannot expect any better for ourselves or to be blessed in this great nation.”