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New York Latest State to Entertain Democrats’ “Reparations” Fraud

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2023
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by David Lewis Schaefer
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AMAC Exclusive – By David Lewis Schaefer

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New York has just become the third state, following California and Illinois, to investigate the possibility of issuing “reparations” for “the legacy of racial injustice.”

Last week, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul signed a controversial bill creating a commission “to study not only the history of slavery, but also its subsequent effects on housing discrimination, biased policing, income inequality, and mass incarceration of African Americans.” In signing the bill, Hochul “challenge[d] New Yorkers to be patriots and rebuke – and not excuse – our role in benefiting from the institution of slavery.”

While Hochul acknowledged having initially had “concerns” about the bill, she concluded that standing against racism today required “more than giving people a simple apology 150 years later.” Unsurprisingly, her announcement earned the thanks of professional race-baiter Al Sharpton (who once incited a crowd that burned down a white-owned clothing store in Harlem at the cost of six lives, and earned further infamy in the Tawana Brawley case, where he defended a black teenager’s fraudulent charges of rape, and ended up having to pay damages after he accused Brawley’s prosecutor of having been the rapist).

To note the holes in the argument for reparations really is easier than shooting fish in a barrel. But sometimes, the shooting is worth the effort – since the city of Evanston, Illinois has already issued $1 million so far in reparations in the form of “housing grants” of $25,000, while Illinois’s reparations commission is continuing its work through public hearings. Meanwhile, in May, California’s reparations commission approved a report calling for payments of over $1.2 million per beneficiary, a proposal that would cost the state billions at a time when its budget already faces an $88 billion shortfall.

In contrast to the normal law of torts, there is no way of identifying slavery (some 168 years after abolition) as the cause of damage to any presently living individual. For that matter, there is no way to demonstrate that slavery has been the cause of such evils cited by Hochul as “housing discrimination, biased policing, inequality, and mass incarceration.”

Laws have long existed, and been enforced, against housing discrimination. How much “biased policing” occurs will always be in dispute, and since black people are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than members of any other races, it is by no means evident that the system of policing as a whole, let alone incarceration, has caused them more harm than good, since it serves to deter crime and keep criminals, especially violent ones, off the streets. (Prior to the “Defund the Police” movement, members of the black community have sometimes complained that cities were discriminating against them by devoting insufficient police resources to their communities.)

As African-American social scientist Thomas Sowell points out in Social Justice Fallacies (2023), following the Supreme Court’s invention during the 1960s of a series of “rights” that made it harder to convict criminals, the subsequent upsurge in homicide “was especially severe in black communities,” with the absolute number of black murder victims sometimes exceeding that for whites, even though the black population was far smaller than the white one.

Finally, what can it mean to say that slavery was the cause of present-day racial “inequalities,” presumably in income and wealth?

Looking at another of Hochul’s claims, a considerable proportion of America’s present-day black population are descended from immigrants (especially from Africa and Haiti) who arrived here long after slavery’s end. If arriving in America meant being deprived of the opportunity to advance, what would have lured those immigrants here in the first place? And how would Hochul account for the large economic inequalities that now exist within America’s black population, with literally millions of millionaires alongside the middle class and the poor? (Of course, those millionaires’ wealth greatly exceeds that of a majority of white people.)

Turn, then, to the population that is to be taxed, following Hochul’s and Sharpton’s demands, to distribute reparations to black people.

Needless to say, no living American, nor his great-grandparents, owned slaves. A large percentage of America’s non-black population is also descended from immigrants – typically poor (like the present author’s own father and grandparents) – who arrived in this country long after slavery’s end. In their effort to work their way up from poverty, how could they have benefited from slavery’s legacy?

Large portions of immigrants – Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, and East Asians – themselves suffered from serious ethnic and religious discrimination in the past. In fact, the group that suffers most nowadays from efforts to limit merit-based admission to selective public and private schools and colleges, in the ostensible name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” are students of Chinese and Japanese ancestry – just as Jews suffered from admissions quotas at Harvard and other Ivy League schools starting in the 1920s.

As New York’s Republican Senate minority leader Robert Ortt observed in response to Hochul’s plan, the state had already paid its “debt” for slavery with the blood of the Union soldiers who died fighting against the perpetuation of that evil institution during the Civil War. Should their descendants now be taxed again to compensate for their ancestors’ alleged injustices?

But aside from its effect in promoting racial resentment and division – the only beneficiaries of which will be the professional demagogues like Sharpton – the worst consequence of a reparations policy will be the damage it inflicts on black people themselves. When any person is told that the deficiencies he may suffer from in his life – lack of education, family instability, unemployment, low wages, drugs – is not his fault and is outside of his control to remedy, he is far less likely to make an effort to take on responsibility for his situation and work to improve it, whatever his initial handicaps. Making him dependent on handouts will deprive him of the pride that comes from individual accomplishment.

In contrast to the reparations model, the best example one could provide as worthy of emulation by those seeking to improve the lot of black people (along with other low-income Americans) today would be the that of Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave/abolitionist/adviser to Lincoln/post-Civil War diplomat.

Even before slavery’s end, for which he advocated incessantly, Douglass published an essay in his newspaper The North Star scolding some free blacks for not making more of an effort at self-improvement and wasting their time and money in the pursuit of fripperies and social status.

Beyond abolition, what “the colored people” needed to develop, Douglass argued, was “character,” something that “nobody can give us” but which “we must get for ourselves.”

“Industry, sobriety, honesty, combined with intelligence and a due self-respect,” he argued, would always “be looked up to” and would visibly refute the “sophisms” of slavery’s advocates like John Calhoun regarding blacks’ supposed inherent inferiority.

As early as 1865, when emancipation arrived, in a speech titled “What the Black Man Wants,” Douglass responded by asking white people to simply “let him alone,” elsewhere arguing only that blacks be given “fair play” to make of their talents and industry what they could. Douglass frequently gave a speech on that theme under the title “Self-Made Men” – such as he considered himself to be. (For a contemporary application of Douglass’s position, see New York Post columnist Adam B. Coleman’s semi-autobiographical 2021 book Black Victim to Black Victor: Identifying the Ideologies, Behavioral Patterns, and Cultural Norms that Encourage a Victimhood Complex.)

While demanding Federal enforcement of blacks’ civil rights, lamenting the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the postwar Civil Rights Act, and calling for blacks to be given educational opportunities equal to those of whites, Douglass still maintained that the fate of black people, like that of their fellow citizens, depended in the end on their own efforts and self-discipline. Modern liberals and reparations advocates could learn a thing or two from this philosophy.

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.

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granky
granky
9 months ago

Anyone living in a city or state that pays reparations should leave. If the federal government starts a reparations program, I will sell everything I own, renounce my citizenship and leave the USA to the idiots who are destroying it.

NIcholas Elder
NIcholas Elder
9 months ago

Please try to explain why any race should pay another race for things that occurred 160 years ago! This entire concept is nothing but political pandering. After trying to buy black votes, how bout giving reparations to Asians? Then, maybe Italians? When will this nonsense stop?

Rik
Rik
9 months ago

It’s the Greatest Fraud EVER perpetrated on “white” people! My whole life has been affected by the Racial Discrimination against me in 1974 and because of it I STILL have to work at 76 years old!

Gloria
Gloria
9 months ago

Hochul could use a good brain flushing. That woman is looking through a peep hole the size of a needle. No sense whatsoever. What about everyone other “race” that has been discriminated against since the Pilgrims arrived in the “New World”? The black also had slaves. What about them? And who are the greater discriminators? Democrats were and still are. Biden one of the most discriminators. Obama too, even though he is 1/3 black? Johnson was one of the worse discriminating presidents, lying al the time to Martin Luther King Jr.. Hochul should study history, and actually talk to black people to hear the facts.

American Farmer
American Farmer
9 months ago

I’m not sure how this came about, but it seems likely that the Democrats are completely behind the restrictions on the black community. The black communities are firmly under the thumb of democratic control. They keep voting for the liberal party and they keep getting screwed by them. What’s the definition of insanity?

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
9 months ago

Joe Biden needs to pay ME reparations every time I buy gas and food.

Dale
Dale
9 months ago

I think reperations is a absolute scare tactic by the left to cause another division between the various races. BC WHO gets what ? If you have 1% slave blood do you get the same as a 99%er ? And who pays ? Do people who weren’t here during slavery pay the same as a plantation owner’s great-great grandson?
This will cause divisions in the black community. Are we paying reperations to people who recieved governmental help already or to just those who haven’t been aided by welfare, or affirmative action ? Is this just for slave states or do the Union States pay too ? Even though they fought to end slavery?
It is the best way to divide us and keep the race hussle going NOTHING MORE….

Eric
Eric
9 months ago

I think we should continue to enable black people to sit around and wait for whitey to pay them money vs. making it themselves. Make them dependent on us. Is that what they want?

Fingerlakes
Fingerlakes
9 months ago

Pure political pandering.

Morbious
Morbious
9 months ago

New York sent the most soldiers to fight in the civil war. This is an insult to their memory. But if reparations must be made, i think dems should make them out of their pensions since it was their miserable rotten party that practiced slavery as well as opposing lincoln in the north as ‘copperheads.’

lawrence greenberg
lawrence greenberg
9 months ago

If there is one thing the Democrats are good at – aside from bringing total ruin to everything they touch – it’s buying votes for themselves with other people’s money.

Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
9 months ago

Hell yes,give it away. It’s only other people’s money. The peo0le have a great say in it, dont they. Kyle L.

carole
carole
9 months ago

Ah yes, reparations for people that never were slaves, paid by people that never had slaves and in locations that never had slavery. As tired a phrase this may be it remains true.

MikeDA
MikeDA
9 months ago

Okay but don’t include me or my family, we are here because of our families 20th century immigration. For 10 years my siblings lived in a trailer with mom, we all worked hard to make our own way and we don’t owe anyone a damn thing!

Furthermore, there will be no long term gain for anyone, there is no evidence that that demonstrates that many of the recipients will work and find their way to a productive life.

Jackie
Jackie
9 months ago

If this is such a big deal, the needed apology of white people to the black people, ok, they dig up all of those Democrat Congressmen and Senators from days gone by who voted to keep the black people in slavery and the ones who voted against giving black people the right to vote and see if they will apologize to those dead black people for abusing them at the time!!!
The other thing is, where is the reparation money coming from??? If it’s tax dollars, then black people are having their tax dollars used to pay them back for something that happened 200 years ago AND that no one alive today has experienced!! The logistics of this issue are crazy!!! How do you decide who get reparations?? Do just all black people get the reparations?? Some of those black people nor their ancestors were in this country at the time of the supposed experiences!! What about the white people who have experiences some kind of abuses, intimidation and discrimination?? What about the native Americans who were treated to multiple abuses by our government long ago???
The more you pay these black people, who are generationally angry, the more they will demand!!!!

Casey C Matt
Casey C Matt
9 months ago

Using these scumbag morons logic, as a southern born white person if reparations for being the great, great, great, great, great grandchildren of slaves will be paid then I demand refunds for the theft of the property belonging perhaps to my great, great, great, great,great grandparents.

corbin douthitt
corbin douthitt
9 months ago

Were there ever any slaves in New York?

SSGT USMC
SSGT USMC
9 months ago

Everything the Dems. touch they destroy. Hochul is just another Dem. pushing her WOKE agenda. I live in NY and am thinking of getting the hell out of this cesspool of Democrats destroying a once decent state to live in. I challenge Hochul to explain why New Yorkers are listed as the most oppressed citizens in America. Reparations is just another slap in the face to us in NY. The Dem. controlled senate and assembly just voted their selves a big pay raise making them the highest paid in the country and now they want to rape New Yorkers even more. Do you Hochul, wonder why we are leaving this state in droves? I am totally discussed with You Albany politicians. Why don’t all of YOU move out of state? What a blessing that would be.

Richard Hollingshead
Richard Hollingshead
9 months ago

just a note, there were thousands of free blacks living in the us from the 1700s onward some even had plantations and they had slaves, just because some one is black doesn’t mean their great great ancestors were slaves.look up history about blacks in the us from the 1600s till the civil war and what went on, and what Lincoln was trying to do and the small country in africa that some blacks went to. the Democrats had the plantations in the south they formed the klu klux klan and they made and passed the Jim Crow laws.

Jerry Allen Boggs
Jerry Allen Boggs
9 months ago

It may be that the descendants of slaves are better off than they would have been had there been no slave industry and they had been born and raised in Africa, much of which is crippled by wretched poverty.

Snoocks
Snoocks
9 months ago

Nearly everyone I’ve ever known has come up ‘by their bootstraps’ – including the majority of my former teachers and instructors, none of whom were ever what I would have called rich. What I’ve noticed of late though, is the ‘real’ money found in the educational field, comes to those firmly attached to this new DEI industry…not to those in the more traditional fields. I would almost call this new breed of instructor an interloper, an oozing sepsis that attaches to innocence and defiles it beyond recognition. Keep writing though as some of us – maybe more than you know – are listening.

GTPatriot
GTPatriot
9 months ago

Whatever New Yorkers want to do with their money is up to them. They commonly throw it away. The key here is that this proclamation by the gov is not addressed at New Yorkers but it is addressed to Congress to force taxpayers in every state to pay off New York’s horrid deficit. Same for California. Both states are counting on federal bailouts and are paying countless DC lobbyists to make this happen. Just hang around and keep your wallet ready. You will be paying because DC LOVES to throw away your money.

Phi
Phi
9 months ago

Every state should put reparations to a vote and not have progressive politicians to give our hard earned taxes. You want respect and more money, go earn it. Is this the way Democrats are trying to relieve their conscious for supporting slavery and their white supremacy attitudes for all these years.

Ralph Sacrison
Ralph Sacrison
9 months ago

Yes, the Democrat Party, that organization behind the Trail of Tears, slavery, secession (and that would include insurrection), the draft riots of 1863, founding the Ku Klux Klan, abandonment of Reconstruction and enactment of Jim Crow laws including segregation… .
 
So yes, no surprise that Democrat-majority states try to construe reparations essentially as misplaced penance for their actual Democrat history. Essentially washing their hands by blaming the innocent for their own sins, and granting grift to those who never were slaves and only have been discriminated against by Democrats, not Republicans whose party was founded to abolish slavery. But Democrat policies are never characterized by accomplished fairness, but by grift and expedient routes to power.

Edward
Edward
9 months ago

And what about the ‘white’ slaves. Do they get reparations, too? We don’t hear much about them.

papaYEC
papaYEC
9 months ago

Oh, I don’t know. I think the US Democratic Party of slavery definitely should be forced to pay reparations to all they terrorize, rape, murder, and enslave. The perpetrators were ALL DEMOCRATS.

JPop
JPop
9 months ago

I always figured that if Democrats ever gained enough power they’d ruin the country.

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