A guest who appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show said African Americans “need to move on” from slavery because it was abolished “a century-and-a-half ago”.

Mark Steyn, a cultural commentator, made the comments on Thursday during a segment discussing 2020 presidential candidates who are in favour of reparations for African Americans.

During his rant, Steyn said: “Slavery was abolished a century and a half ago, nobody alive today has a grandparent who was a slave, and in that sense I think you reach a point where, you know, you need to move on.

“The reparations thing, eventually, as the decades go by, becomes ridiculous.”

Steyn then compared the experience of African Americans to Canadians such as himself - who he claimed also deserve reparations on the basis that if “[America] hadn’t had the revolution, the whole continent would now be Canada”.

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As Steyn spoke, Carlson interjected a “yeah” before laughing along with the guest’s comments.

The conversation then turned specifically to 2020 Democratic contender Senator Kamala Harris, who supports the idea of reparations for African Americans.

The segment ended with Steyn contending that Harris’s “own experience is entirely apart from the African-American slave experience,” and that she is getting involved in “identity politics,” which prompted Carlson to agree.

“It’s also bad though. It’s really divisive,” Carlson concluded.

On social media, a clip of the segment was met with anger.

“Two white privileged men discuss reparations. Was this 1867?” one person tweeted.

Another said: “What a ridiculous comment. A sick disregard of the evils of slavery. Horrific.”

The Fox News host's latest controversy comes after previous comments he'd made cost him a significant portion of his advertisers.

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In December, Carlson, who is friends with Donald Trump and who regularly uses his show as a platform for divisive hate speech against immigrants, said that immigration makes America "dirtier".

The comment was met with widespread backlash and resulted in more than 20 sponsors pulling their advertisements from the primetime show.

At the time, a spokesperson for Fox News told The Independent: "It is a shame that left-wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed 'media watchdogs,' weaponise social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech.