40 acres and mule, redux
When Al Sharpton happens to be in the room, Democrats start loudly talking up reparations.
But ol’ Al wasn’t born yesterday. He surely knows the party’s movers and shakers are selling him what used to be called in his neighborhood a “wolf ticket.”
Here’s one descriptive definition of that term: “When your mouth writes a check your ass has no intention of covering.”
“Wolf ticket” is a ‘hood version of the Texas putdown — indicating a big talker who’s “all hat and no cattle.”
Wherever Democratic activists convene with blacks present, the topic of reparations elicits earnest nods and other indications of fake, enthusiastic support.
But when the party’s high-minded white progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are sipping chablis and nibbling camembert among their own kind, they start equivocating.
Instead of direct payouts to blacks, Democratic sachems start jabbering about the need for “investment in disadvantaged communities,” not actual checks in the mail to the black brothers and sisters.
To more than a few black ears, this surely sounds like dollars continuing to flow to consultant-class elites with PhDs from Princeton, as opposed to, say, the downand-out hoi polloi of Trenton
or Camden.
Not so long ago, the old socialist, finger-thrusting firebrand Sanders was firmly opposed to reparations. Well, in retrospect, maybe not so firmly after all.
Having previously dismissed reparations as divisive and unrealistic, he danced around the issue when seeking Rev. Sharpton’s blessing for his presidential candidacy.
In contrast to his previous opposition, Sanders declared himself now foursquare in favor of studying the matter, by golly.
As for Joe Biden, it’s hard to say where he stands. You can find Biden verbiage suggesting he’s open to reparations and verbiage suggesting maybe he’s not.
At one point he seemed to indicate support even for “illegal alien” reparations, actually using that forbidden term himself, instead of the de rigueur “undocumenteds.” But his remark seems to have since been written off to his trademark, inarticulate befuddlement.
He seems now to have settled on the position that he too is in favor of a reparations study commission.
Warren, meanwhile, also has at times — depending on her audience — sounded like a forthright cheer-leading advocate of reparations.
But a closer inspection of her rhetoric indicates she has never actually endorsed the concept. She says instead that it’s time to have a full-blown “conversation” on the topic. Yes indeedy.
This now turns out to be more or less the Democratic
Party’s official, wolftickety position.
The party’s new platform urges that a serious, furrowed-brow, pursedlips contemplation of reparations be undertaken.
“We believe Black lives matter, and will … study reparations,” pledges the platform.
Sounds like a definite maybe on reparations, doesn’t it?
Or like a parent telling a child who wants a pony for Christmas, “We’ll see.”
While we await a blueribbon panel of chin-stroking academics to explicate the worthiness of reparations, let us dare to ponder the topic on our own.
The first hurdle to reparations looks to be a high one indeed. It’s the question: How do we decide who’s eligible and who’s not?
Do we set up an elaborate list of criteria for determining who’s a “real” black person as distinguished from more dubious applicants? Can we go simply by skin color?
Evidently not, according to Joe Biden. No matter what the degree of your pigmentation, he says, if you support Donald Trump then you’re not truly, authentically black. And in his political circles, he’s far from alone in holding this view.
If you sound and look more like, say, Bryant Gumbel than, say, Mr. T, are you nevertheless a reparations-eligible black?
Seems hard to say. Maybe we’ll need to develop something like the Russians had long ago, back in the days of the czars.
They had a complex, detailed, voluminous rule book called the “mestnichestvo,” as long-winded as our Internal Revenue Service Code.
It determined who was of noble ancestry and who wasn’t.
And it laid out in precise detail where those who didn’t make the nobility cut fell in the intricate social pecking order.
A vast bureaucracy was necessary, of course, to administer the rule book. And that bureaucracy became all-powerful. It came to be known by a name familiar to us today, the Kremlin.
Do we adopt something like Russia’s system?
Or — even more ominously — do we set up elaborate racial guidelines like the 1935 national socialists in Germany did with their “Volksgemeinschaft”?
This was the extensive rule book decreeing who qualified to be certified members of the “People’s Community” — i.e.,the Aryan super race — and who didn’t.
Maybe to simplify matters we could adopt the rule of thumb of the Old South. We could declare that a single drop of African blood, which once relegated you to the back of the bus, now ironically puts your reparations application in the stack awaiting the stamp of official approval.
Next comes the important question: Which one of our many fine bureaucracies might be put in charge of administrating the reparations program? Let us pray, please, Lord, not the Motor Vehicle Division.
The reparations issue comes down to a basic question. Who gets on the gravy train and who doesn’t?
If left to the orthodox “woke” to make the politically correct call, isn’t it likely they would do so based simply on who strikes them as conforming to their stereotype of “real” blacks versus those who seem to them to be too much like whites?
On this basis, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Minister Louis Farrakhan and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters might get the nod for reparations checks. But a more “whiteacting” Barack Obama, Don Lemon or Denzel Washington?
Hmm. Maybe not. The question has been raised: What about Tiger Woods?
Would he get a full reparations allotment? Or, being only one-quarter black (he says) just a quarter share?
Would the rules be stretched to get Kamala Harris (Asian Indian and Jamaican, but not African) a piece of the reparations action?
What about Sen. Cory Booker? He’s 47 percent African, he says, citing a DNA test he took. Does he therefore rate less than a 50 percent reparations cut when the checks are sent out?
Would the question of black authenticity be decided ultimately by the political views of the reparations applicant — meaning an emphatic, immediate thumbs-down for the likes of Herschel Walker, Sen. Tim Scott and Diamond & Silk?
Quite possibly so, it seems.
The sticky issue of who’s an eligible reparations payee leads directly to a related prickly issue: Who gets tapped to be the payor? That is, who gets stuck with the bill?
Everybody? Or some but not others?
The questions just keep piling up.
Would LeBron James get a reparations check even though, whatever the sum, it likely would amount to chump change given the estimated half-billion-dollar magnitude of the NBA star’s Croesus-like riches?
Would a reparations payment, if he received one, be counted as part of his taxable income?
Endless questions, questions, questions.
Would Native Americans get reparations even though, technically speaking, they weren’t slaves?
Given their mistreatment, many Americans surely would say yes — as Joe Biden does.
But the final answer might well depend on how persuasive a lobbying force the Native Americans could manage to deploy. Or maybe depend on what level of campaign donations the tribes could divert from their casino revenue streams.
Keep in mind, meanwhile, that even in Washington limits have to be placed on the distribution of government munificence. Somebody always has to be left out. There has to be a cutoff point drawn somewhere on the handouts.
And if history is an indication, Native Americans look like a good bet to be that cutoff point.
Yet another question: What about Hispanic Americans?
They never had Alabama slaves picking their cotton, did they?
Shouldn’t they then be excused from having to pay into the slavery reparations fund?
But what if their distant ancestors had a hand in subduing the original inhabitants of lands south of the border — the Aztecs, the Incas, the Mayas? Those groups might have counted themselves lucky to have been let off with mere slavery.
But given the growing political clout of the Hispanic demographic, the overpowering temptation surely would be to go ahead and okay the exemption for them.
Keep in mind, though, that every dollar exempted from reparations assessments is a dollar not available for handouts to the progeny of African slaves.
Then comes the $64-trillion political question. It involves those millions upon millions of Americans whose immigrant great-grandparents arrived here from various points in Europe.
From Italy, Ireland, Poland, Hungary and elsewhere.
It’s likely that a majority of their great-grandchildren could make the case that their great-grandparents arrived here long after the era of slavery had ended.
They might well ask then: “Why should we have to ante up for slavery reparations?” They might add, “Shouldn’t we at least get a tax credit if we are forced to pay into the reparations fund?”
Reparations hardliners have a hardline answer. They say that all non-African Americans must pay up. No exceptions. Period.
The unforgiving logic of their argument is that although a non-African American status may not confer the absolute certainty of privilege on you, it does at least enable you to avoid the likely historic disadvantages of a black status.
So now you can start to see the sort of rancorous, Talmudic argumentation that racial reparations surely will spawn.
Therefore, the following prediction can be made with utmost confidence: It’s simply never gonna happen. So why does the Democratic Party go on yapping about it?
It’s a political con, of course. That’s why.
It’s a political hustle Democrats conjured up along the lines of the old 40-acres-and-a-mule policy.
There once actually was such a policy. Sort of. Ever so briefly.
At the end of the Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Field Order No. 15 did indeed promise freed slaves in the South Carolina tideland area and thereabouts up to 40 acres of farm land — though not actually the mule, historians say. (The general felt that the freed slaves could leverage their acreage to acquire a mule on their own.)
But Sherman lacked authority to issue such a decree. His field order was rescinded by the powers that be further up the Washington food chain.
Many, many decades later, however, inquiries are still being made about the status of the 40-acresand-mule promise.
In our own day, the hiphopsters Public Enemy raised the subject, demanding to know: “Why’d you try to fool the black?” They rapped:
“Jack was nimble, Jack was quick/
“Got a question for Jack ask him/
“Forty acres and a mule Jack/
“Where is it … .”?/ Here’s the party’s answer:
“Well, guys, it’s, um, er, under study. There’s gonna be a serious conversation on the subject. Honest. Really. No kidding. Be patient.
“And remember, meanwhile, just keep voting for us.”