In an example of egregious pandering and soft bigotry so outrageous it is difficult to believe it might actually happen, in California, the Reparations Task Force authorized by Governor Gavin Newsom has recommended every black American who descended from slaves presently living in California be given $223,200 each as compensation for what the committee labels “housing discrimination.” From the Daily Mail:
A focus of the California task force has been ‘housing discrimination’ – it has been estimated that it would cost around $569 billion to compensate the 2.5 million Black Californians for setbacks between 1933 and 1977, according to the New York Times.
That is more than California’s $512.8 billion expenditure in 2021 – which included funding for schools, hospitals, universities, highways, policing and corrections.
To say the proposal makes zero sense is 2022’s most tremendous understatement. While no one argues against past racial discrimination being one of history’s greatest stenches, the concept that unearned cash taken from taxpayers and distributed to people not directly affected equals just compensation is blatant virtue signaling. It is a sign that man’s arrogance in believing he can rewrite history, passing retroactive judgment on yesterday’s transgressions using today’s standards, rides high.
The committee has also recommended or at least mentioned other compensatory measures. Again from the Daily Mail, which cites the California Attorney General’s Office as its source.
- Estimate the amount black businesses have lost in stolen or destroyed property through ‘racial terror’ and distribute it back to black Californians
- Adopt mandatory curriculum for all teachers to take anti-bias training
- Recruit black educators for K-12 schools
- Provide scholarships to black high school graduates to cover four years of undergraduate at a choice school
- Compensate individuals who were forcibly removed from their homes due to state action, such as park and highway constructions
- Create funding to invest in environmental infrastructure
- Create equal access to parks and national resources in black neighborhoods
- Compensate families who were denied inheritances they would have received if they were white
- Compensate those who have been discriminated and deprived of rightful profits from artistic, creative, athletics, and intellectual endeavors
- Raise the minimum wage in predominantly black industries, such as food and agricultural
- Require scaling up the minimum wage for experienced workers
- Create a fund to support black-owned businesses and eliminate licensure barriers that harm black workers
- Compensate people whose health has been permanently damaged by anti-black healthcare
- Implement policy to close the racial wealth gap in California
- Implement a clear and detailed program to help African Americans obtain reparations
- Establish an Office of African Americans/Freedmen Affairs to help document eligibility and prevent future harm
The committee’s final report to the California Legislature is due in June 2023. How Newsom handles the matter will speak volumes, as his lust for higher office is no secret. The intense opposition to reparations not only among whites but non-black minorities who have suffered more significant discrimination in California, which was never a slave state (Japanese internment camps during World War Two, anyone?) yet have risen above to be free and full societal participants reaping capitalism’s (gasp!) rewards, will not go away because media simps wish it to be so. This matter is far from closed.