When attempting to predict the next wave of leftist insanity, it’s always smart to look to California, the land where Babylon Bee-style parody five years ago is inevitably tragic reality now, and the absurdist parody being written today is likely just a few months down the pike, if not already there. So naturally, in 2020 the land of fruits and nuts became the first state to establish a real-live “task force” to study the issue of slavery reparations. That task force made news earlier this month by voting to limit any compensation plan to, according to The Guardian, “descendants of enslaved and free Black people who were in the US in the 19th century.”
Lest you think the craziest of crazy ideas purported by the most crazy people on the planet somehow got a tiny bit less crazy (I know - that’s a LOT of “crazys,” but look who we’re dealing with here!), the reason cited has nothing to do with sanity. It’s because leaving out, say, people who immigrated from Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries and never had anything to do with slavery supposedly “had the best chance of surviving a legal challenge” in a “conservative Supreme Court.”
Take a moment to let that sink in. If these nutcases could recreate some sort of permanent, race-based compensation system that leaves out all white people entirely, they most certainly would. But they’re dialing it back a notch because of that inconvenient Constitution and, presumably, laws passed in the 60s expressly to PREVENT the kind of chicanery they’re trying now.
Ever true to form, some on the committee were all-in, arguing that “reparations should include all Black people, regardless of lineage, who [apparently] suffer from systemic racism in housing, education and employment.” Since lineage is “difficult to prove,” don’t you know, let’s just lump in anyone with African ancestry just to be safe. Even apparently people like the son of Lebron James - you know, because racism, or something.
The potential compensations to the black community listed by The Guardian include things like assistance purchasing homes and businesses, grants to community organizations and churches, and even free college. Maybe it sounds reasonable to some of you, if openly discriminating against entire swaths of people when handing out free goodies sounds reasonable. Of course, it’s not reasonable. Not even a little bit. No governmental policy that expressly discriminates against or grants benefits to a particular group based on an immutable characteristic is or ever should be considered “reasonable.”
But, for argument's sake, suppose we granted a few or even one of these things. Maybe we want to be nice, or maybe we just want to shut them up for a while because the incessant whining is getting on our nerves. Would it stop there? Of course not. Because if you know anything at all about leftists, you know good and well that these sort of demands never stop “there,” or anywhere for that matter. For them, there is always “more work to do” on whatever issue they’re pushing at the moment. That’s why it’s generally best to consider the slippery slope an inevitability - not a fallacy - when dealing with these nutjobs.
Want a prime example? Consider Johnathan Perkins, the director for Race and Equity at University of California, Los Angeles, who once responded to news of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ hospitalization by tweeting his wish for him to die. (Aren’t wokists the nicest people?)
“If we ever expect to get anywhere on Reparations, we’re gonna need A LOT less pondering on the theories and WAY more ‘yes, whatever Black people think is best, I support,’ from white people,” Perkins tweeted in December. “Follow. Let us lead. We won’t scam y’all. We never have, despite having every reason to.”
Riiiight. He’s saying up front he won’t “scam” us, so shouldn’t we just take him at his word and find out what he wants? I mean, you’ve made it this far. Why not keep reading, right? OK, here goes:
“Proposal for Reparations,” he wrote. “1. cancel all Black home mortgages, 2. cancel all Black college debt, 3. cancel all future Black tax payments, 4. cancel all current auto payments, 5. release all prisoners, currently jailed or imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. Next time someone responds to the mention of reparations with the ‘how would we even DO that??’ argument, show them this tweet. And one or all of these five measures would do wonders.”
Now obviously, we’ve gone from nutty to absolutely insane with this guy. Can you imagine how lower and middle-income white, Hispanic and Asian people would feel watching blacks in similar economic situations pay zero taxes and have their homes and cars paid off by the government? It’s the very definition of injustice and it would cause far more racism than it ever purported to solve. And remember, leftists never stop. Even if we granted ALL of those demands, as absurd and unfair as they are, there would be an entirely new list waiting on the other end. Why? Because leftists are leftists and also because simply transferring wealth isn’t a workable solution for the problems that sadly plague parts of the black community.
The article cited above goes on to lament the fact that black residents of California are “over-represented in jails, prison and unhoused populations” despite being only “5% of the state’s population.” Yes, this is a problem, but it’s certainly not white people’s fault, and it’s not one that any other community can solve but their own. As I’ve written about here before, I’ve got all kinds of questions about the reparations scam, but the biggest one is one they will never be able to answer definitively: Where does it stop?
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