Nationwide, the latest promotional mantra by radical pro-socialists is reparations.
What is a reparation?
The dictionary definition of “reparation” is “the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.”
In war, reparations are paid by the defeated country to the victorious nation. In jurisprudence, a court may require a convicted offender to make a financial reparation to his victim.
Another word for reparation that you are familiar with is compensation.
The radical pro-socialist Leftists are pushing to force taxpaying Americans to pay reparations to blacks and to other previously-oppressed minority groups. They repeat the following talking points ad nauseam:
- African-Americans are owed reparations for slavery and for previous discriminatory housing policies.
- Hispanic-Americans are owed reparations, they say, because we took away Texas and California from Mexico.
- Indian tribes are owed reparations because we took away their land and pushed them onto reservations.
- Japanese-Americans are owed reparations because we put them into internment camps during WWII.
While all of these things were evil and never should have been done, you and I and all other Americans now working or retired and paying income taxes are not guilty of these atrocities.
Government is.
But the government thinks you should pay for their mistakes.
If you live in California, it’s time to ante up and pay reparations for something you didn’t do, something you didn’t support, and something you had nothing whatsoever to do with.
Want to know what California Governor Gavin Newsome and the California Reparations Task Force think you should pay for?
Housing discrimination policies that were in effect between 1933 and 1977.[1]
Governor Newsome, who is running for President in 2024, is making reparations his number one issue.
Probably most of you weren’t even alive in 1933 – much less, old enough that many years ago to have been guilty of housing discrimination against African-Americans.
But the governor and the task force don’t care. They think you should pay anyway — $569 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer income.
Where did that total come from? From $5,074 worth of “housing wealth gap” or housing discrimination per year for 44 years for 7% of California residents whom the task force estimates will meet the complicated qualifications to receive reparations.[2]
It amounts to $223,200 to each qualifying African-American California resident.
Who is responsible for the discriminatory housing policies during those 44 years? You? Me? Millions of other average California residents?
Nope. The politicians and bureaucrats who enacted the laws and the policies are the ones who are guilty of the housing discrimination.
But you get to pay for their discrimination. Does that sound fair?
It’s even worse if you live in San Francisco.
The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee – a group of Black professionals who advise the city leaders on repairing harm to Black communities – is proposing that San Francisco pay each qualifying resident $5 million in reparations to repair the racial wealth gap.[3]
And what has caused this so-called racial wealth gap?
The “legacy” of chattel slavery.
There are at least two problems with this proposal:
- California was founded as a free state and never accepted the institution of chattel slavery.
- It would take an average citizen earning $100,000 per year 50 years to earn a total of $5 million. And at least 25% of that $100,000 probably would be paid out in taxes every year. If the $5 million is to be tax-free, the proposal amounts to paying out more than most people take home from their job in their lifetime.
The advisory committee estimates that there are 10,000 black San Francisco residents who would qualify for reparations according to the complicated criteria recommended. If so, $50 billion would be needed.[4]
Where would the city get the money? From current taxpayers who have done nothing personally against the African-American community—neither to create inequality between blacks and whites nor to warrant being punished for the discriminatory policies enacted by lawmakers and bureaucrats.
Here’s something to think about: Should one class of people be forced to pay compensation to other groups of people whom they haven’t wronged? Is this fair or just?
Since 1965, the federal government has spent more than $25 trillion on redistribution programs to try to close the income gap between the poorest and the wealthiest Americans.
The results of this huge investment have not been good.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of Daily Wire+ and a three-time New York Times best-selling author, in a commentary titled “Racial reparations solve nothing,” writes: “… the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity – but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.”[5]
But this is exactly what the Democratic Left historically has done and continues to do. Then they wonder why the wealth they have supposedly created hasn’t narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with these facts:
- 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers;
- nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school;
- black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example);
- one-third of the American prison population is black.
The radical pro-socialist Democrats want to blame all of the above facts on the evil of systemic racism. And they want to accuse all whites of being racists so that they can guilt them into feeling good about paying an extra tax to cover reparation payments.
Giving free money to people won’t fix these problems. Teaching them to make good and responsible financial and life decisions will. But the latter strategy doesn’t figure into any government policy or program.
That’s the real problem…
The Founders of our country envisioned a self-governing nation in which government would be OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people.
What we are now seeing instead in many states and local jurisdictions are radical pro-socialist elitist political leaders wanting to establish the opposite: people OF the government (inferior to it), BY the government (ruled by its decrees), and FOR the government (in servitude to it) – and liking it.
They have turned the dream of the Founders upside down.
What do you think? Email me at [email protected]
[1] https://californiaglobe.com/fr/california-reparations-panel-estimates-569-billion-is-owed-to-black-residents/
[2] Ibid.
[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reparations-black-americans-san-francisco_n_63c71db6e4b0c2b49ad189a8
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/01/18/ben-shapiro-racial-reparations-solve-nothing-1325629/
5 Comments on “Reverse Discrimination on Steroids: Paying Reparations to Previously Oppressed Groups Penalizes Taxpayers for Discriminatory Government Policies”
I respectfully disagree. Reparations to people who can prove they or their ancestors were victimized by racist policies should be paid. The Egyptians paid reparations to the Isrealites as they went to their promised land. Weve paid reparations to the Japanese Americans. Lets make a deal reparations in exchange for making no more demands afterwards.
I would say to Roy, pay all you want to. My family finds this illegal. I wonder how many law suites this will invite. Can not believe the U S Supreme Court will support this.
Another excellent publication which is both informative and logical. I would suggest that these proposals exemplify yet another attempt by socialist to employ their rather obvious ‘divide and conquer strategy’ that they commonly employ in their attempts to “fundamentally change” our republican form of supposed self-government.
The very idea of reparations at this point in history is decidedly wrong. But the idea of actual perpetrators paying reparations to actual victims of the crimes that they commit does, in my view, have great merit; however, this is definitely not what is being contemplated in these pretentious political airings regarding monetary compensation as ‘reparation’.
Mr. Roy Perry brought up the example of the Hebrew plunder of Egypt, upon which Israel departed for their Promised Land. God assures us that the issue of compensation for hundreds of years of slavery was settled to their satisfaction. In fact, Egypt was financing the establishment of Israel in their new land.
If we use that example to represent slavery in some parts of America, which was objected to and opposed by a greater numbers of citizens of the USA by the time of the war between the states, we have a totally different circumstance. It has been noted that no Republican Party members ever owned a slave. If Democrats became Republicans, they corrected that offense against the higher ideals that gave birth to our Nation.
Our Nation,, and the Democratic Party was redeemed from the past by the blood spilled by the armies and citizens of both combatants in a terrible civil war; which concluded with freedom for all Americans and a promise to protect that freedom forever in a newly rendered Constitution.
That debt was fully paid in blood at that time, and forevermore obliges us to never again allow slavery on these shores. It is a promise given by every American when he performs the ceremony of the Pledge of Allegiance and ceremonially swears to defend the Constitution of the United States of America even at the risk of life and limb. Let’s us hear no more of compensation owed from any from any citizen of this Country who is so blessed.
As a pastor in Harlem said a few years ago: they have Civil Rights, they have the Vote and they [had] a black face in the White House. They’re still not satisfied.