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Racial Reparations Solve Nothing

Posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2023
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by Outside Contributor
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Reparations

This week, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad — as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”

This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure, to be cured with social engineering.

This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.

Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco’s reparations committee — simply cutting checks — has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black.

It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”

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Michael J
Michael J
1 year ago

Let’s test reparations on sanctuary cities first, just to see if it’s feasible.

PaulE
PaulE
1 year ago

I listened to one of the authors of this SF study briefly outline how he came to his conclusion on the need for reparations and the amount per person to be awarded. A $50 billion dollar price tag, that would represent 4 whole years of the normal budget of SF. So everything would come to a halt for 4 years while SF made these payments, which make ZERO sense. This is just another attempt to justify another massive money grab under the guise of so-called “social and economic justice”. The one author being interviewed was a black professor from the local university. He was your typical Marxist spouting anti-capitalistic drivel and the need to completely remake the country into the socialist Utopia, that they all incessently drone on about. He didn’t try to hide what he was, so at least that was somewhat refreshing.

The Marxists in this country want to kill capitalism in this country and will use any pretense to justify that action. Climate change or “social and economic justice” ploys like reparations are merely 2 of the avenues the left are deploying to get the United States to commit national economic suicide. The left in this country are open about their goals now, because they know the American public, as a whole, won’t stand up to them. So while this latest so-called reparations study likely won’t go anywhere, even in ultra-left SF, the left will keep sending up their trial balloons to see if the American public are stupid enough to go along with any of these insane ideas.

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 year ago

SCAM to RAISE TAXES and RACIST
AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE.
Talk about inequality.

Terri Matson
Terri Matson
1 year ago

On that subject of “equity” which seeks to artificially level the playing field between races and guarantee equal outcomes, somehow forget the elephant in the equity room. That “equity” of outcome probably won’t happen unless there is a way to “equalize” the average IQ scores between the races. Home page – I.Q and Human Intelligence (human-intelligence.org)

Smike
Smike
1 year ago

I’m not sure I understand the logic here. I’m a northerner, many of my family members fought and died in the civil war to free the slaves. If anybody owes anything to anybody the black race owes my family for the death of my relatives. My relatives died to set them free and they don’t even acknowledge the sacrifice they made, none by them. No sir, they owe my family for our loss, I don’t owe them a dime.

Laura
Laura
1 year ago

Equality is Capitalism. Equity is Communism.

Julie
Julie
1 year ago

The reparations proposal is the most ridiculous absurd proposal in the history of San Francisco.

Corbin L Douthitt
Corbin L Douthitt
1 year ago

they don’t solve anything, but they buy low information voters.

John H
John H
1 year ago

Taking the money of those who have never enslaved others, and giving it to those who have never been enslaved is insanity!

Dean
Dean
1 year ago

My family didn’t come to Aerica until after the civil war. And we were based in the north. Why are people who had nothing to do with slavery be cast as guilty?

Jeri
Jeri
1 year ago

Reparations ramp up hate, vile, and anger…

Charlotte A Mahin
Charlotte A Mahin
1 year ago

Makes me wonder what will happen when the next generations of blacks is here…will they also want $5 million each as well? I see no end to it. It is sickening to constantly see the Democrats kow-towing to the blacks. This is one of the Democrat’s ways to keep the crime wave increasing. Am I the only one who notices that most of the looters, people who randomly attack whites and Asians and the shop-lifters who steal an entire store’s stock with a large mob are blacks?? They also are now given jobs because of their race, colleges give them precedence over other races, and I could go on and on. We had horrible riots over this in the 50’s and 60’s to fight to stop segregation and now the Dems are creating again that very thing. Who is giviing reparations to all of the people who are the victims of black crime…including blacks on blacks?

anna hubert
anna hubert
1 year ago

Is Spain and France included in this insanity? How can past possibly be altered ? Present situation all over the world is overlooked it’s all good

NewDay
NewDay
1 year ago

How will they decide exactly who is black? skin color, DNA test, family history? What if you are half black, do you get half the money? Can you see how ridiculous this plan is?

Carol
Carol
1 year ago

My family came over in the 30s. Why am I being held responsible for something when I wasn’t even alive and my family was in Eastern Europe???

granky
granky
1 year ago

We are watching a mentally ill city trying to commit suicide………

John
John
1 year ago

If Frisco isn’t already bankrupt this would surely do it.

J
J
1 year ago

Nobody is alive who had a slave
Nobody is alive who was a slave
End of argument
This will propel an internecine civil war over bs

Charles
Charles
1 year ago

The idea of reparation is ridiculous because (1) blacks have profited from AA/EEO for 50 years as qualified people have suffered (2) reparations are tax funded and that means taxing blacks, immigrants and the decendents of immigrants to give to a select few who had ancestors who were slaves well over a century and a half ago.(3) the amount of payment is ridiculously high and would give 5 times the amount necessary for investment to generate the average American citizens income.

Richard
Richard
1 year ago

Israel new church to honor Ben Netanyahu 2nd revolution against terrorists a well deserved church for leadership of Jenny Beth Martin single mother of twins. Ben Netanyahu would support Jenny Beth Martin as next USA leadership. Even Marsha Blackburn honors Jenny Beth Martin as next president of the USA

Jeanne
Jeanne
1 year ago

Does that mean that every black person has to repay the government for every job they got because they were black? Or every loan they got because they were black? Or every grant or scholarship because they were black? Or every welfare or Medicaid assistance they had because they were black? You know these things took place but no one is talking about all that! What about the special tests given for job placement that were different than others….because they were black? I’m just saying, they need to think back and be a little more thankful for all the special things they’ve received and see how far they’ve come. Except for color they’re no different than any other American. There are a lot of people that came from hard times but I don’t believe anyone alive today was a slave. There have been a lot who were persecuted and still are for no just reason ( Christians for example) and they’re not asking for anything. And who’s going to pay for all this? The hard working middle class of course! Pretty soon the middle class is going to get tired of working hard to pay for everyone’s everything and they’ll quit working!!

Freedom USA
Freedom USA
1 year ago

I’ve seen lots of stupidity but this takes the cake.

NewDay
NewDay
1 year ago

Our country should provide equal opportunities for all people, but that doesn’t mean equal bank accounts.

John Diaz
John Diaz
1 year ago

Really? San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee. Next they would want all white people to leave San Francisco and be run only by a black government. One that only allows black thought in.

A.Grace
A.Grace
1 year ago

1. How about reparations for all families who lost loved ones who fought and died to free slaves during the Civil War? 2. Shouldn’t people need to prove their family members were slaves? Not all black people had family members in the U.S. who were slaves before the Civil War.3. What about reparations for Native American tribes who sheltered slaves until they were able to get up North?4. What about reparations for white people who sheltered slaves on their way up North?They put their own lives in danger, too.

Jeffrey
Jeffrey
1 year ago

It will, in effect, increase the divide in racial relations for those who struggle with it.

Philip Hammersley
Philip Hammersley
1 year ago

Democrats supported slavery; democrats ran Jim Crow; democrats founded the KKK; democrats run nearly every failing city and school system. So how about DEMOCRATS use THEIR money to make reparations. Republicans already paid with their blood from 1861 to 1865!

Rod
Rod
1 year ago



Tracy
Tracy
1 year ago

If you really want to do this, then you have to be totally honest and fair. You must start with native people who had their land and homes stolen from them, then marched hundreds of miles in the snow to a reservation, then take all the massacres like wounded knee into account. Then consider all the poor Irish immigrants who were taken off of ships and Forced to fight in the Civil War.

johnh
johnh
1 year ago

The idea of reparations should stop. This was a dark time in USA history (including slaves & native Americans) but times were totally different then. We should learn from History & do not repeat it. Why try to divide this nation again, except to give a horrendous amount of money to descendents.

johnh
johnh
1 year ago

A few years ago, I read that if California was a country it would be in the top ten economics in world. Today, what would happen if a state went bankrupt such as California ? This state does have some problems & keeps piling on more with radical ideas.

James Popielarz
James Popielarz
1 year ago

The California Governor has aspirations of becoming president, so he can do to the country what he is doing to his state, and is using the blacks again with more empty promises, using them like his party has done since days of yore.

Dennis Math
Dennis Math
1 year ago

If “reparations” for blacks in some repayment for slavery that ended some 150 years ago………then shouldn’t white people have the right to receive refunds for property taken without recompense?
“AH DEMAN MAH REBATE”

BillC
BillC
1 year ago

It’s just more pandering to shore up votes for a failing party agenda. Of course there will be plenty of fraud in claims for reparations, not unlike Elizabeth Warren’s claims if Native American heritage. Thanks to sexual abuse of slaves by their “masters” generations ago, there literally millions of people who outwardly appear to be very white, but actually have some percentage of black DNA. It’s all just another excuse for Socialist wealth redistribution and they will call you a racist if you disagree. I say making any policy based on race only, is in and of itself, racist! Reward should always be based on merit, plain and simple. Anyone that thinks Socialism works need only look at the unrest in countries under Socialism. Do they look happy and prosperous? As the WEF begins it’s annual meeting to further the cause of ever expanding the Socialist/globalist agenda throughout the world, I stand with Elon Musk in denouncing the the elitist’s lust for power at the expense of our own sacrifice!

Jane CA
Jane CA
1 year ago

Oh Lord!

Leslie Crum
Leslie Crum
1 year ago

I learned an interesting fact a few years ago. Henry Louis Gates Jr (black historianwho wrote an article dated 1/06/14 “How Many Slaves Landed in the US?” and posted on his website The Root.) Same guy that does the great show Finding your Roots. He looked at all of the shipping records between 1525 to 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. How many went to what is now the US? 388,000 (maybe 450,000 IF some from Caribbean came north). Yep, way less than half a million. Majority went to South America and Caribbean. Interesting thing is that the 42 million Americans in 2014 when article was written are all descended from that one small group. He also mentioned that Black plantation owners had slaves too, and a bunch of other interesting stuff. Look it up!!!

Arthur
Arthur
1 year ago

What about reparations for the families of the dead and wounded soldiers of the North. All gave some. . . Some gave all. I say this as I have no direct family members dating back the Civil war so I have no alternative motive.

NewDay
NewDay
1 year ago

According to a TIME article, 70 percent of people who have won large amounts of money lose it all within several years. Some have said it was the worst thing that ever happened in their life. Others are bankrupt, commit suicide, go through divorces and family fights. Giving people money is not the answer to the problem, it is the beginning of another problem.

Jackie
Jackie
1 year ago

First of all, if the federal government is the one in charge of reparations, well, our federal government fails at everything so they should not be in charge AND there should be NO reparations, period!!! Secondly, those who have generational anger at another person or another race of people or a past situation, being paid reparations will never solve their anger. They will only come back to want more somewhere down the road!! Some of these reparations are personal but some of what these people are angry at is not a person but at their personal situation so, of course, someone should take care of that for them – NO!! God created us all equal!! If effort is put in, there will be a good outcome. Decisions have consequences!!

Eric
Eric
1 year ago

What about reparations from all blacks paid to white people? If blacks had not been sold by their own people into the slave trade they would still be domiciled in Africa. Since they live in a free and prosperous country should they not be willing to pay for the privilege?
Know that won’t fly.

Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis
1 year ago

I lived poor, but within my means for a lifetime. The 2008 bank bailout robbed me and all taxpayers. The artificially high prices the bubble created cost me the purchase of a traditional home. I had to settle for a mobile home. Where are my reparations? Where does this nonsense end?

Morris Paxton
Morris Paxton
1 year ago

No way! This is absolutely ridiculous .
Do these lost souls remember our revolutionary war to fight to free all the slaves in great nation !

jocko
jocko
1 year ago

I WANNA BE RE-IMBURSED FOR ALL OF THE JOBS I APPLIED FOR AND WAS PASSED OVER DUE TO, ”affirmative action” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

jocko
jocko
1 year ago

JUST WHAT THE CHIMPS NEED, MORE $$$$ FOR DRUGS, TWINKIES AND POTATO CHIPS. MANY MAKE GREAT $$$$ SELLING DRUGS WHICH IS TAX FREE AND they RIDE AROUND IN MERCEDES, ACCURAS, CADILLACS, ETC., ETC

Garyk
Garyk
1 year ago

With assimilation into any society people have been treated differently and often as outsiders until blending in and finding acceptance and understanding.
Happened throughout history with every race,heritage and religion.
It seems that rather than allowing everyone to be treated equally,offering the exact opportunities no matter our differences, is the way to acceptance.
All the marxist democrats efforts to shove equity down peoples throats only continues to make the division worse for all.
I say this division and hatred is what the marxist democrat party wants , another lie to distract, deceive and destroy??
Follow this lead….all people were created equal with God given rights!
So simple, yet so correct!

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