Tag: reparations

‘Time for a Divorce’: California Reparations Task Force Meeting Gets Heated

A California Reparations Task Force meeting got heated this week when several people began publicly denouncing the United States for its role in slavery, with one even calling for a “divorce.”

The final meeting of the Reparations Task Force in Sacramento occurred a little over a month after the nine-member panel recommended that California state legislators pay black residents of the state up to $1.2 million in reparations for slavery and past discrimination. During the public speaking segment, people did not hold back their opinions. One man, named Reggie Romanie, believed the recommended $1.2 million would never be enough.

“This reparations task force, I appreciate y’all, but you all opened up a whole can of worms. I’m going to tell you this: reparations is about ‘repair.’ To me, I qualify. I’m going to tell you how you repair this,” he said, as reported by Fox News. “First of all, America, from the evidence that they gave us, you’re guilty.”

Referencing the debunked 1619 Project, which made the false claim that America had been founded specifically to protect slavery, Romaine accused the United States of essentially marrying black Americans and now owe them a divorce settlement.

“You kidnapped us! Put a hate crime on us! That’s the first one. Now you came here with all the other atrocities. When you brought us here, you raped our men, women, and kids. So, therefore, you married us!” he said. “Don’t treat us like no cheap piece of meat! So, therefore, our last name’s ‘American!’ So now’s the time for a divorce! What do you get in divorce? You get half the money, half the land, alimony, child support, attorney fees, and everything else! So that’s what we want!”

Don Tamaki, a Japanese-American attorney and member of the task force, said that he sees parallels between the black American fight for reparations and the Japanese-American fight for reparations.

“If it wasn’t for the Black Civil Rights Movement, where would we be?” Tamaki told NBC News. “That whole movement changed the culture a lot. And it changed us. And so it began this movement toward redress and reparations.”

“I don’t think we knew who we were. The term ‘Asian American’ was not coined yet. And we called ourselves ‘Orientals,’ and we just assumed we were second-class citizens,” Tamaki contnued. “What woke us up was Martin Luther King on national television, leading peaceful demonstrators and being sicced on by dogs and being beaten by police with clubs … just to be able to go to a school, just to be able to sit in a restaurant or be in an integrated bus. And that was followed by a more militant call for Black power.”

California state Sen. Steven Bradford, a task force member, said on Thursday that reparations “likely won’t happen with one legislative cycle or two legislative cycles, or one bill,” according to USA Today.

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NYC considers reparations for black residents, removal of ‘racist’ public art amid flurry of legislation

The City Council is mulling a package of controversial bills that include weighing whether black New Yorkers deserve reparations for slavery, and another resurrecting a woke push to remove artwork they consider “racist” from public property.

Councilwoman Farah Louis (D-Brooklyn) introduced her reparations bill on Thursday – the same day the state Legislature in Albany approved a comparable bill.

That legislation, which has been sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul for consideration, would create a commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination on the entire Empire State and potentially reward payments.

Louis’ reparations bill – which only covers the city — would create a nine-member task force that would be required to deliver a report one year after being appointed. Like the state bill, any recommendations would be non-binding and strictly advisory.

It is part of a larger legislative package introduced Thursday by some council members of color they said is aimed at “rectifying” historical “injustices.”

One measure by Crystal Hudson (D-Brooklyn) would require the city’s Commission of Racial Equity to create a “Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation” process that establishes “historical facts” about the city’s past use of slavery and then recommends changes for local government and institutions to “prevent recurrence” – even though New York abolished slavery more than two centuries ago, and lost more than 50,000 men while fighting to free slaves during the Civil War.

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Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations?

In the United States, calls for reparations are, once again, heating up. A Duke University professor recently called for $14 trillion in reparations for the descendants of American slavery (roughly $350,000 per recipient).

The professor, William Darity, isn’t the only one calling for reparations. The mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, has established a task force that will explore compensation for black citizens. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has signaled his support for the idea. Detroit’s Reparations Task Force is currently exploring forms of compensation for the city’s black residents. Similar events are taking place in St. Louis. In early May, California’s reparations task force approved recommendations that could see some black residents receive $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and racial discrimination.

Reparations are a terrible idea.

Calls for race-based compensation appeal to emotion, not logic. First, how do we define slavery? Contrary to popular belief, African Americans weren’t the only victims of slavery. As Stephan Talty, an author who has researched slavery in great detail, has noted, white people were also the victims of slavery.

In a piece for Salon, a hyper-progressive online magazine, Talty discussed the fact that, contrary to popular belief, white slavery did occur prior to the occurrence of the Civil War. Talty referenced the work of Joel Augustus Rogers, a historian who meticulously documented the many ways in which whites were kidnapped and sold into slavery. These kidnappings occurred from the early 1700s right up until 1861, the year the Civil War started. Some of the victims were orphans or unwanted babies, while others were impoverished immigrants. White slavery occurred in America. This is an inconvenient truth that receives little or no attention, probably because it contradicts the “white privilege” narrative that continues to do the rounds.

Even if we were to agree on a definition of slavery, how are we supposed to verify those that claim to be victims? Then, of course, there’s the matter of financing reparations. Where will the money come from?

For comment on the matter, I reached out to David W. Rasmussen, the director of the Policy Sciences Center at Florida State University. Rasmussen recently published a paper discussing reparations for black citizens, and why such a system of redress for past injustices deserves criticism.

Rasmussen told me that although it’s easy to make the case that black citizens are owed reparations—the right to own slaves is embedded in the Constitution, after all—this doesn’t mean that the case being made has any real substance. The idea of reparations, noted Rasmussen, fails for many reasons.

First off, reparations are expensive, with “reasonable” estimates ranging from about $500 billion to $2.7 trillion. The highest estimate of damages is $7 quadrillion, he said, “a figure that emerges because damages are compounded at an annual interest rate of 6 percent.” For the mathematically challenged, a quadrillion is 1,000 trillion.

Moreover, black reparations would benefit about 12 percent of the population.

In other words, said Rasmussen, “We are asking 88 percent of the population to pay as much as $500 billion (probably over a period of years) to bear the cost.”

All Americans, including those who are currently struggling to put food on the table, would bear this cost (40 million Americans, more than 25 percent of the population, currently live in poverty). Only 30 percent of Americans are in favor of some form of reparations. “Many of these,” according to Rasmussen, “may find a $500 billion price tag a hard sell.” Indeed.

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Squad Member Cori Bush Introduces Resolution for $14 Trillion in Reparations to Black Americans

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), a member of the far-left “Squad” in Congress, introduced legislation on Wednesday that would provide a federal reparations program for black Americans.

The draft of the resolution claims the United States “has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people” in the country. The resolution further calls for $14 trillion to be distributed to American blacks in an effort to close the racial wealth gap.

“The only way we get closer to [reparations] is if we start putting forward those bills that speak to it and are very clear about what reparations could look like,” Bush said in an interview.

Reparations packages have been introduced in Congress since Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) in 1989 and later by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), neither of which passed. Bush’s resolution would likely face the same fate, per the Washington Post:

The political path forward for Bush’s resolution also remains murky. During the 2020 Democratic primary election, The Post asked candidates if they thought the federal government should pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people. Nearly all of the leading contenders, including Joe Biden, said that they supported a comprehensive study of the issue.

While public opinion polls have shown that the number of Americans who support reparations for Black Americans has grown significantly over the last 20 years, the idea remains broadly unpopular.

A 2021 Post poll found just 28 percent of Americans supported reparations, while 65 percent opposed paying cash reparations to the descendants of enslaved Black people. While 46 percent of Democrats favored the idea, 92 percent of Republicans opposed it. Two-thirds of Black respondents supported the idea, but only 18 percent of White respondents did.

Reparations advocate Dreisen Heath said the window of opportunity passed for such radical legislation in 2020 during the George Floyd murder crisis.

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Activists Demand Reparations for Latinos for Land Under Dodger Stadium

Activists are demanding reparations for land in the Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles that currently sits under Dodger Stadium, part of a broader movement across California that has focused thus far on African Americans.

The New York Times reported Wednesday on “the growing call for reparations from descendants of the people who lived where Dodger Stadium was built.” It cited reporting earlier this month by Jesus Jiménez, who wrote:

[I]n the early 1950s, the city of Los Angeles began displacing the residents of Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop, through voluntary purchases and eminent domain, with plans to build a housing project in the area.

It was never built, and eventually, after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, the team acquired the deed to the land. A condition was that the team build a stadium with capacity for at least 50,000 people.

…

The last of the families were forcefully evicted by sheriff’s deputies in May 1959. One woman, Aurora Vargas, who was known as Lola, was infamously photographed being carried out of her home by deputies. An article in The Los Angeles Times on May 9, 1959, described the scene as a “long skirmish.” Vargas was kicking and screaming and children were “wailing hysterically,” the newspaper reported.

The activists formed an organization in 2018 called Buried Under the Blue. They drew encouragement from the successful effort to obtain restitution for the original black owners of Bruce’s Beach. As Breitbart News noted:

The owners, Willa and Charles Bruce, purchased the land in 1912 and created a beach resort catering to black clients before the city used eminent domain to seize the property.

The land was dormant for decades until the city built a park in 1960 and later renamed it Bruce’s Beach. Descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce sued, claiming the eminent domain program was racially motivated.

The website for Buried Under the Blue states that the group’s mission is “to preserve our history of our three destroyed communities” and “[t]o empower and educate all people to create healthier communities, sustainable communities, and maintain historical documents for self-determination.” While the Times describes the group as “Latino,” the website refers to the former inhabitants of the area under Dodger Stadium as “indigenous.”

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We Asked Every California Congressional Democrat If They Support Their State’s Reparation Plan. Here’s What They Said

The Daily Caller News Foundation asked every Democratic member of Congress from California if they supported their state’s ambitious reparations plan, finding that just two would go on the record regarding the proposal.

California’s Reparations Task Force voted Saturday to send a plan to the legislature that would, if approved, pay out $800 billion in reparations to black citizens. Despite numerous attempts to contact members, only one Democrat in California’s Congressional delegation, which numbers 42 members, responded to inquiries.

The office of Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier deferred to Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee’s opinions when contacted by the DCNF.

“We think checking in with our neighbor Rep. Lee would be best given her work on this issue,” Mairead Glowacki, a spokesperson for DeSaulnier, who represents California’s 10th Congressional District, covering Concord and San Ramon, told the DCNF.

Lee, who represents Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a former Congressional Black Caucus chair, has expressed support for the plan, which would see eligible black Californians receive up to $1.2 million in payments, on average. These include a housing discrimination payment of $148,099, a mass incarceration payment of $115,260 and an annual yearly payment of $13,619 for health care disparities, assuming an average lifespan of 71 years, according to the recommendations.

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Colorado Councilwoman Wants to Tax White-Owned Businesses to Atone for ‘Stolen Land’

A Denver city councilwoman facing a runoff election in June said white-owned businesses should pay reparations for the sins of slavery.

During a business forum, Candi CdeBaca — a Democrat socialist — said the race-based tax could be levied by the business improvement districts, as first reported by 9News. A business improvement district is managed by local business owners, residents, and local government officials and can levy incremental tax increases which are then redistributed in a specific geographic region, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. 

“Capitalism was built on stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen resources,” CdeBaca told the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, 9 News reported. “You could be collecting those extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black and brown-owned businesses.”

While a tax levy can be distributed to assist underserved businesses, the tax can’t be applied based on an individual’s skin color.  That would be illegal under federal law, but the 37-year-old argued this plan would not be illegal since the taxes levied are “voluntary.”

A spokesperson for Denver’s Department of Finance told 9 News this was false. 

“Non-residentially assessed property owners within the BID are required to pay the additional taxes/fees,” said spokesperson Courtney Meihls. “It’s not voluntary.” 

Footage of CdeBaca became viral after being picked up by the Libs of TikTok page, garnering the video more than 4 million views. Critics have said this proposal is going too far. 

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California Reparations Panel Approves Apology for Slavery, Compensation Payments Destined to Run into Billions

California’s reparations task force voted Saturday to approve a report with instructions detailing state financial compensation for slavery alongside a formal apology.

The nine-member committee, which first convened nearly two years ago, gave final approval at a meeting in Oakland to a hefty list of proposals that now go to state lawmakers to consider for reparations legislation, AP reports.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who is cosponsoring a bill in Congress to study restitution proposals, used the meeting to issue a call for states and the federal government to pass reparations legislation.

The demand follows others made previously by lobby groups insisting on payments for the misdeeds of previous generations and the “righting of historical wrongs.”

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California reparations hearing descends into chaos as activist blares out James Brown, another tells absent reparations tsar to ‘stay in Africa’ with Kamala Harris – and a third screams ‘we’re not asking for money, it’s ours!’

California‘s reparations task force has descended into chaos as activists blasted music and aired wild accusations – a day after it was revealed they want $800billion.

Among the first people to speak was Reggie Romain who blared James Brown’s I’m Black & I’m Proud through his phone and down the microphone.

Romain, as well as members of the audience, danced to the 1968 track and after cutting the song short promoted his social media channels before sitting down.

Later, a San Francisco-based activist at the podium described the US as a country ‘born in the name of evil’ and said: ‘Evil cannot give justice.’ She went on scream at the committee members: ‘We ask you for nothing. It’s ours!’

The second-day began amid controversy over the absence of senior committee member Rev. Amos Brown, who is in West Africa, as part of Kamala Harris’ official trip to the continent. On Thursday, one activist demanded that Brown ‘should stay in Africa.’

Unlike at Wednesday’s meeting, Rev. Brown did not Zoom in to make remarks on the meeting. 

Brown Zoomed into Wednesday’s meeting in Sacramento in which he complained that the reports that $5 million would be given to black residents in reparations in the Bay Area were part of a ‘smear campaign.’ 

Brown, 82, said that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, of which he is a member, gave ‘lip service’ to reparations and noted that the city is facing a massive deficit. 

A member of the public who called into the meeting to offer comment addressed Brown’s absence saying: ‘Shame on you.’ 

The reverend’s absence came on the same day that it emerged that the bill for California’s reparations bill has skyrocketed to at least $800 billion.

During the vice president’s historic visit to Africa, Harris promised billions of investment to the continent as she toured historic sites associated with slavery.

It later emerged that while in West Africa, Brown attended a lavish state banquet in Ghana this week as part of the VP’s delegation. 

‘Dr. Brown, shame on you… absolutely shame on you. You give us these fiery speeches only to turn around as Judas did Jesus and betray us…. Him being in Ghana with Kamala Harris, whose administration has done nothing to help black folks is a symbolic gesture,’ a member of the public said at Wednesday’s meeting.

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Reparations for Black Californians could top $800 billion

It could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for generations of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination, economists have told a state panel considering reparations.

The preliminary estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated.

Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state may never adopt the economists’ calculations. The reparations task force is scheduled to discuss the numbers Wednesday and can vote to adopt the suggestions or come up with its own figures. The proposed number comes from a consulting team of five economists and policy experts.

“We’ve got to go in with an open mind and come up with some creative ways to deal with this,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, one of two lawmakers on the task force responsible for mustering support from state legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom before any reparations could become reality.

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