Despite the myriad problems plaguing San Francisco, the city is devoting precious resources to a reparations committee tasked with determining how to address the "legacy of slavery." This, despite the fact that not a single living SF taxpayer owned slaves, nor were any of them enslaved. And some of the recommendations are staggering—we're talking payments of $5 million to eligible black adults, guaranteed incomes, homes in the wildly expensive city for just $1, and the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens.
While this is focused just on the city level—and it's still uncertain if anything will come to fruition from the committee—a new Reuters report may bring the issue into focus on the national level.
In a piece that serves to name and shame prominent office-holders who are descendants of slaves, Reuters identifies that "Among America's political elite…5 living presidents, 2 Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 legislators descend from ancestors who enslaved Black people." Absent from the list is Donald Trump.
For America's political elite, family links to slavery abound https://t.co/zV5wq2zIcd pic.twitter.com/G3iFnZXZh6
— Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) June 27, 2023
The piece even includes sections with profiles of some of the lawmakers, like Sen. Tom Cotton, whose great-great-great grandfather John Cowger had six slaves. The Arkansas Republican "did not respond to five requests for comment," the report states, though we are told in the next sentence, "Some members with slaveholding ancestors have spoken in support of racial reconciliation," like Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who said it was "gut-wrenching" to learn her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had four slaves.
What, exactly, is Reuters getting at? It is highly unlikely any of the public figures identified in this piece can even name family members that far back and what their "sins" were, but even if they could, so what? As National Review points out, "the American experiment is dedicated to judging individuals on their own merits—not damning them for the evil lurking in their family trees."
Still, it looks as though the wire service is making the case for reparations by means of public shaming.
Some of the leading voices on the divisive issue of slavery reparations have an ancestral tie to slaveholding including Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 27, 2023
See where some of them stand on the issue of reparations here: https://t.co/IWtY0T13EP 2/2 pic.twitter.com/t5jMYf6C4n
The same argument critics make in the San Francisco reparations saga applies here, too. There is no one alive right now who was a slaveholder or enslaved. But that is not stopping them from marching toward the "R" word.