One of the dumbest notions in American politics is the reparations for slavery argument. Practical aspects aside, the entire thing is based on the idea of taking money away from people who never held anyone in slavery and giving it to some other people who were never held in slavery. Nobody is responsible for the sins of their ancestors, even if one does have a slave owner, a horse thief, or someone who talks during the movie in their family background. And who among us does not?
It's something of a challenge to make this dumb idea even dumber. At some point you have to have hit Peak Dumb, after all. There are so many practical and moral things wrong with this idea that it's difficult to know where to begin. But in the Dumb Idea Sweepstakes, leave it to California's Democrats to take a dumb idea and make it dumber still.
Now, they are going after California corporations.
The Legislative Black Caucus is throwing its weight behind an effort to require large corporations to disclose historical connections to slavery, pursuing a new strategy after previously advancing slates of bills based on recommendations from the state’s Reparations Task Force.
The tactical shift comes as the caucus prepares for a likely Xavier Becerra administration — and a chance for a reset after Gavin Newsom grew more cautious on reparations as the national politics around the issue hardened.
Now, that looks innocuous on the surface, but it's only on the surface. Requiring large corporations to "disclose historical connections to slavery" when the vast majority of those corporations in California were founded well after 1865 is nearing Peak Dumb right there. And, while those corporations would be justified in telling the people making these "requirements" where to head in, we already know that the next requirement laid on those corporations under any reparations scheme would be "pay up."
The Pacific Research Institute's Wilfred Reilly has some thoughts.
There is, as they say, a lot here – including many points that illustrate serious problems with the overall idea of reparations. First, speaking as a businessman, it is unclear how many firms would actually be impacted by the bill. Roughly 99.9% of all America-based corporations were founded after 1865, the year the U.S. Civil War ended – and slavery with it. None of the ten largest U.S. firms by market cap – Nvidia ($5.15 trillion), Alphabet ($4.61 trillion), Apple ($4.52 trillion), Microsoft ($3.68 trillion), Amazon ($2.99 trillion), Broadcom ($1.99 trillion), SpaceX ($1.63 trillion), Meta ($1.50 trillion), Tesla ($1.29 trillion), and Berkshire Hathaway ($1.11 trillion) – appear to have any core-business connection to historical Black slavery.
Remember, California was never a slave state. The pro-reparation howlers in California are relying on claims of "historic oppression" or some similar horse squeeze in these demands, which is ridiculous on the face of it; there has been no legal discrimination against black people (or any people) in California for many years, unless it's against Republicans trying to speak at a school board meeting or something radical like that.
Read More: Reparations for Slavery: Dumb Policy That Solves Nothing
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One other question: What about the ancestors of Chinese laborers, imported in considerable numbers in the 1800s, who were actually the targets of some pretty severe legal discrimination? Are they entitled to something, too? Because I've looked over a few of these schemes, and I've never seen any mention of Chinese laborers. Now, some Americans of Japanese ancestry were paid reparations for their internment in World War II, but in that case the people who suffered from that policy were still alive, and the payments were made to them.
So, since the proponents of this latest reparations scheme are targeting corporations, let's look at the practical aspects. How do we determine if any company had any connection to slavery? The number here is going to be very low. The same applies to taxpayers. Take my family background; if American citizens were to be asked to pony up for these reparations, well, one-fourth of my family background goes back to one Johann Reiss, who immigrated from Germany in 1850, moved to Wisconsin, and never had any part in slavery. So am I on the hook for only one-fourth? Also, all of my family in and before the Civil War states lived in free states. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War and was badly wounded; he died at 46 as a result of those wounds. As far as I'm concerned, my family has paid any debt and then some.
As for the recipients, who is eligible? Anyone who claims any African ancestry? What about an immigrant from Nigeria who has no family history in the United States? What about someone like a certain former president I could name, half of whose ancestry was as white as bed linen?
These schemes are money grabs, pure and simple. No matter who is targeted, no matter who is the intended recipient, these proposals all have one thing in common: Taking money away from people who were never involved in the injustice and giving it to people who were never the victims of said injustice.
It's dumb. It's wrong. It's unethical. And it flies in the face of the notions of individual liberty and individual responsibility.
I'm not responsible for the sins of my ancestors. The shareholders of any corporation are likewise not responsible for any actions that any previous shareholders may have taken hundreds of years ago. That is rightly where this discussion should end.
