Growing up in the 90s, the prospect of reparations seemed unlikely. I was aware that a subset of the population supported payments to the descendants of slaves, but back then it felt as if most people, regardless of how they were toward such a policy, didn’t believe it would ever actually be implemented. It just wasn’t in the cards – or so we thought.
Times have changed. Thanks to the woke left, reparations are rapidly gaining salience. While the proposal faces massive hurdles at the national level, it is already a reality in some blue states. But this is far from a positive development. There are many reasons why Americans should oppose reparations.
California provides one of the more noteworthy examples of a state pushing forward with reparations. Thanks to Assembly Bill 3121, which was enacted in September 2020, California has a special task force charged with “studying the institution of slavery and its lingering negative effects on living African Americans.” The task force was also tasked with recommending “appropriate remedies of compensation, rehabilitation, and restitution for African Americans.”
The California Attorney General Office’s website contains the following rationale for reparations:
“The institution of slavery is inextricably woven into the establishment, history, and prosperity of the United States. Constitutionally and statutorily sanctioned from 1619 to 1865, slavery deprived more than four million Africans and their descendants of life, liberty, citizenship, cultural heritage, and economic opportunity. Following the abolition of slavery, government entities at the federal, state, and local levels continued to perpetuate, condone, and often profit from practices that brutalized African Americans and excluded them from meaningful participation in society. This legacy of slavery and racial discrimination has resulted in debilitating economic, educational, and health hardships that are uniquely experienced by African Americans.”
Slavery was cruel. Few would deny that. But the last line in the above paragraph is contentious. While African Americans do suffer worse outcomes than other groups, the degree to which that can be ascribed to slavery is debatable. After all, African Americans had a significantly lower rate of out of wedlock births – a clear metric of social dysfunction – in the 50s (17%) than they do now (70%). That cannot be blamed on slavery, so clearly other factors are involved.
But when have the facts ever mattered to the woke left? They insist that slavery is the reason why black people, on average, aren’t doing as well as other races – and those who question this are branded “racists” and ignored. Heaven forbid anyone notice that government handouts have replaced the black father, and that reparations are yet another way to keep this demographic firmly rooted on the Democratic plantation.
So committed are California liberals to the cause of reparations that the state’s task force apparently wasn’t enough – so San Francisco opted to create its very own reparations committee. When it comes to free money – a popular policy these days – it seems that more is more.
And that’s no joke. At a hearing last Wednesday in Sacramento, the California reparations task force was told by angry residents that the San Francisco reparations committee’s proposal to give black Californians $5 million each was insufficient.
One speaker told the task force that the amount should be much higher:
“I believe that $5 million in reparations is too little for the work that foundational black Americans have done for this country and as well for other countries. I believe that $7.6 million is a number that can be used very wisely in our foundational black American communities.”
I can only imagine what sort of advanced calculations were employed to arrive at the $7.6 million figure.
Another speaker, Reverend Tony Pierce, lambasted the $5 million proposal:
“Where’s the money? Where’s the cash? Where’s the check? $5 million, San Francisco’s already made a move. $5 million is nothing, and I’ll tell you why.”
According to him, “you’ll be lucky if you end up with $40,000 a year,” given the fact that the $5 would be disbursed over the course of 50 years and would be subject to taxes.
How California ultimately decides to implement a reparations policy, assuming the state does so at all, will be interesting to observe. July 1 is the deadline for the task force to issue recommendations. However, both the California state legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom must sign off on a reparations proposal before it passes. But given that the Democrats hold a veto-proof supermajority in the former, and the latter is notoriously woke, it is likely some form of reparations will be issued.
Let us hope that it doesn’t. If implemented in California, we could see other blue states follow suit. And while no one could predict the future, providing more welfare to African Americans is unlikely to improve their outcomes. As previously stated, there’s a serious case to be made that much black dysfunction is the cause of government programs which effectively destroyed the black family. Will reparations give black children fathers? I doubt it.
And what of the national level? Fortunately, most Americans do not support reparations. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 68% of Americans say the descendants of slaves should not be repaid. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, support for reparations is far higher among African Americans (77%) than white Americans (18%).
Regardless, public opinion can change quickly. And if liberal elites decide that reparations is the path forward, who would object? Only a “racist,” clearly – and who wants to be one of those?
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