Many people dream of a get rich quick scheme that will make them instant millionaires. They have fantasies of basking in the lifestyles of the rich and famous by jetting to exotic Tahiti, buying enormous mansions, and disdaining the suckers who have to work for a living. Las Vegas card-counters, gold prospectors, Ponzi game schemers, all seek the same quick reward requiring little work to satisfy their inexhaustible greed and materialistic, narcissists impulses. Recently, a new angle popped up in California: Reparations for Black people only.
Rather than work for their wealth, these are people whose energy is devoted to dreaming up a quick fix to the problem of sweat, hard work, and saving and deferring gratification. And who better to milk for the dollars necessary to achieve their dreams than the taxpayer.
The San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee was formed to act as a public forum for activists demanding reparations for historical discrimination. According to the New York Times, the cost to the city would exceed $100 billion. The city budget is $14 billion. The purpose of the committee according to the committee’s chair was not to create “. . . a math formula. It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed.”[1] The committee suggested a $5 million per recipient payout, along with annual income of at least $97,000 and personal debt forgiveness. That should do quite nicely. The state has suggested a modest $1.5 million payment. They might benefit by a journey from the land of Oz to the land of reality as these sums are not even close to payable. But let it be said, that they do not think small. Their demands are based on the slave and discrimination history in America that they claim impoverished Black Americans. Never mind that California was never a slave state, The schemers are now spreading the word around the country: here is your chance to get rich quick.
Sympathetic members of Congress who are used to demanding large appropriations from the government have piled on to the proponents of instant wealth. Representative Cori Bush has called for the expenditure of $14 Trillion to aid the reparations effort. A normally sympathetic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has said that his state can’t afford what the San Francisco based Reparations Commission has called for, though they say that the amount of money isn’t meant to reflect any actual losses. Rather it is the concept of compensating for a wrong that is operative today—another version of the old saw that it’s not really the money, it’s the principle of the thing.
As one Black resident of Tampa, Florida recently said while requesting $3 million per person:
“All this nonsense, homelessness and all this other garbage you all talk about. Police violence and all this stuff—don’t nobody care about that. We care about our reparations. And we have to put White people on notice that we want our reparations. Our foreparents (sic) and us didn’t work for free and get underpaid and all this nonsense and the White folks get away with it while they talk about the great city they’re building. No. We want our reparations. $3 million per person. $3million per person right here in this city. That’s the only [thing] Black people have to care about. All this other little nonsense we do not care about.”[2]
The movement has now spread from coast to coast. Who doesn’t like free money. There are a few advocates who understand the problematic nuances of these payments and ask the question, who would be entitled to this windfall?
As a multi-millionaire politician, would Barack Obama, whose mother was White and whose father was Nigerian be entitled to payments.? Would Black millionaires and Billionaires be entitled to an equal amount? What about White people whose families emigrated after the end of slavery and Jim Crow? There are poor White people. They don’t have the excuse of racism, or do they? Isn’t an assumption that all Black people would be wealthy to the same degree if their reparations are the same? Is it racism that causes poverty or is the particular social patterns of the poor, i.e. drug use, a violent environment, and weak family units, that causes financial failure.
And who is paying for this? Is it the taxpayer? If it is the taxpayer, then aren’t Black people paying for their own reparations. No doubt, a philosophical conundrum. But who cares when you can get rich quick.
Fundamentally, the call for reparations to Black people is racist. It is a part of the continuing story of hate in America. Hold the existing population responsible for the sins of the past generations, and you may assume a high moral perch without cost to you. But it comes at a cost in the form of violence and separation. And it is an old American grift. Dividing Americans racially is a power play intended to put White people (in this case) on the defensive as if all White Americans held slaves or sanctioned racism. The truth is that the dividers in America have hate in their hearts. It is transference of their own self-loathing to others because the haters can’t admit it is they who hate.
As for those of Italian heritage, let us demand reparations from Italy as we remember our hardships under Roman slavery. Let us demand further reparations from Germany and Japan for two world wars. The British brought the first slaves prior to the establishment of the United States of America. They started the ball running on this thing. Yes, let’s get our pound of flesh from them, White people too.
Revenge and resentment perpetuate revenge and resentment. Not all injustices can be rebalanced by compensation. The answer is to learn from the past and don’t repeat the mistakes born from envy, resentment, racism and hate. African Americans tend to think that history began with the first slaves on America’s shores. What they might reflect upon is the condition they would be in had their ancestors remained in Africa and the condition they might find themselves in if they were there today.
What America needs is a healing of the heart which is something money won’t satisfy. As an immigrant people, Americans have learned that:
History is complicated.
[1] Fox Digital, San Francisco’s proposed reparations plan could cost city $100 billion: Report, 5/19/23
[2] Fox News Digital, Tampa man demands $3 million for every Black person in viral video: “We have to put White people on notice” 5/19/23