Slavery reparations an insult
THE race to gaslight black Americans is beginning to feel like an Olympic sport. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors “voiced enthusiastic support” after hearing 111 recommendations from the African American Reparations Advisory Committee. The proposal includes giving every eligible black resident $5 million and the elimination of their personal debt and tax burdens.
Let’s be clear about one thing: Even in a liberal-safe space like San Francisco, this absurd proposal is never going to come to fruition.
Who will pay for it?
It is wildly unrealistic to think that non-black San Francisco families can withstand the burden of an estimated $600,000 each to support the $5 million proposal alone. This campaign for reparations is led by leftist grifters looking to sell their latest lucrative book about being oppressed and progressives who expect a gold medal for their virtue signaling.
Other noteworthy recommendations include a guaranteed annual income of $97,000 for 250 years for each of San Francisco’s 50,000 black residents and a home “for just $1 a family.”
Every American — especially Bay Area residents — should be repulsed by the latter recommendation. California has an estimated homeless veterans population of more than 10,000. You’d be hard-pressed to walk through the
Financial District of San Francisco without encountering multiple homeless veterans who are sleeping on the streets.
Slavery ended in 1865 — and was never legal in California! — yet we are overlooking the needs of veterans in 2023 in favor of “social justice.”
No sane individual has downplayed the gruesome nature of slavery, but it is a slippery slope to attempt to compensate citizens for every injustice in our nation’s history. Black Americans in 2023 were never slaves, and white Americans in 2023 were never slave owners. Distributing reparations to the descendants of slaves may lead to various other communities who have complex, somber histories demanding that people who never themselves inflicted harm be forced to foot the bill.
The current suggested eligibility requirements for reparations necessitates applicants be at least 18 years old and have identified as black or African American on public documents for at least 10 years. The city-appointed reparations task force is still debating residency requirements.
There are glaring flaws within this criteria — such as what does this mean for biracial people? Will a mixed-race person be required to fund and receive reparations? How much African ancestry is required in order to qualify? Are we going to see the return of the one-drop rule?
Furthermore, this news may leave African immigrants and their descendants ecstatic, as there isn’t a clearly defined way to prove that a black American descended from slaves rather than from blacks living in free, northern states during the slavery era or from voluntary immigration to the United States.
Reparations are expected to “right the wrongs” of systemic racism. We frequently hear the left preach about equity over equality. The commonsense translation of that phrase is to lower the bar for black Americans and shower us in privilege — all while selling us our own oppression.
In 2023, we are supposed to believe that our country is still systemically racist, as if affirmative action, university and occupational diversity quotas, a twiceelected black president, a black vice president and roughly a dozen black/biracial billionaires do not suffice to debunk the narrative.
The cry of systemic racism is exhausted, and the victim cards expired about 60 years ago. Nevertheless,
the left continues to manipulate black Americans by keeping us dependent on a system of handouts. It began with welfare, and the left is continuing its predecessors’ work today with the empty promise of reparation proposals.
Free from responsibility
The helpless-victim narrative clouding many black Americans’ judgment and perception of reality has hindered our growth as a collective. Instead of directing our focus toward relevant issues — such as father absence, crime, illiteracy and staggering abortion rates — we are told these problems are somehow the result of slavery and Jim Crow and, therefore, not our fault and only curable by someone else bailing us out.
I pray to see the day that more black Americans will recognize the way we are being gaslighted for political gain. Until then, one thing is certain — these reparation recommendations are a tragicomical representation of how unserious the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are about fixing their drug-ridden city.