Reparations. Like every other issue for the Socialist—whoops—Democrat Party, it’s one steeped in massive pandering, misinformation, class warfare, racism, and lunacy.
I’m black. And white. So would the white side of me have to pay the black side of me?
Oh, and you don’t even have to be a citizen to be paid this magical money that will heal all historical wrongs and make everyone more “equal.” The #BlackLivesMatter movement wants “undocumented persons”, who never experienced the bondage of slavery in this country, to receive reparations, too. The struggle is real!
Everyone is a victim, including rich and powerful black politicians, thought leaders and celebrities. Remember when LeBron complained about NFL owners having a “slave mentality?” Yes. Please. Sign me up for that plantation. Last time I checked, slaves weren’t paid a dime, let alone millions, for playing with a ball.
But some people cannot leave the ideological plantation.
Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee’s rehashed bill, H.R. 40 (named for the government’s “40 acres and a mule” promise broken by President Andrew Johnson, a virulent racist), gives Dems an opportunity to avoid the big ole elephant in the room—I mean the big donkey in the room. The legislation seeks “to address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery…” Senator Cory Booker, a Rhodes Scholar who earned an honors degree in history, offered the exact same bill on the Senate side.
So, you would think they would have checked the history of the Congress in which they serve. There were already two national apologies. The House issued one on July 29, 2008, declaring (in part):
“The House of Representatives apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow.”
The Senate issued a national apology, too, on June 18, 2009:
“The Congress acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws. The Congress apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws...”
So much for that honors degree in history. But that’s not where the historically-challenged theatrics ended.
In his Juneteenth House hearing monologue, Booker turned on the histrionics as he spoke of being “heartbroken” and “angry” every day and that the bill was “not just to examine and study this history that has not been addressed but the silence that persists.” He means the silence, from Democrats, that exists by not daring to name the name which cannot be named.
But I’ll do it. The Democrat Party. Yes. The Party of Slavery. The Party of Racial Oppression. The Party that’s been in control of both houses of Congress 77% of the time since FDR’s New Deal. The Party that saw people of my complexion as less than human still deems a large swath of human beings as less than human, celebrating their violently separate and unequal treatment as “reproductive freedom.” Fannie Lou Hamer considered it to be black genocide.
Many of the panelists invoked Jim Crow, voter suppression, the KKK, housing/lending discrimination and actions that were direct results of their own Party. Author and professional racial nihilist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pontificating: “Enslavement rang for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hallowed principles—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—but America had other principles in mind. And so for a century after the civil war, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror…a campaign that extended well into the lifetime of majority leader McConnell.”
Five minutes of grandiloquence and no courage to call out the perpetrators, Mr. Coates? It was the Republicans who abolished slavery and fought for African-Americans civil rights. It wasn’t “America” that had other principles in mind; it was the Democrat Party. And it waged a campaign of terror so successful that the majority of its victims now think the Party of Slavery is their liberator.
Oh the irony of that silence.
My solution? Make the Democrat Party pay reparations. Who is more guilty of America’s blood-stained history of slavery and its aftermath than the Party willing to go to war to preserve it?
For so-called progressives, every present inequality is because of racism and slavery. There is no doubt that the horrific evil of slavery has had a profound effect on our country, but what will reparations repair?
Senator Booker and others brought up a litany of “injustices” that he accused of being the legacy of slavery. For instance, he talked about higher maternal mortality rates in the black community, where rates are three times higher (not four times higher as he and others claimed) than those of white women. Every loss of life is tragic, and exploiting their deaths for a political agenda is, too. An estimated 700 women die each year (this includes a disproportionate 300-350 black mothers) from pregnancy-related complications that include obesity and older age. Of course, slavery is to blame for being overweight and waiting to have children after 35. (Maternal mortality risk is 4.6 times higher for those 35 years and older compared to those between the ages of 20-24.) Pro-abortion activists, like Senator Booker, think preventable deaths are reduced by intentional deaths. #LiberalLogic.
I know. Black Americans were never paid 40 acres and a mule. Instead, we got trillions of dollars of governmental dependency in the broken political promises of the Great Society. The War on Poverty failed because the government generally promoted welfare instead of promoting the general welfare. And now, a government that rarely cures social ills wants to heal old wounds by cutting them back open.