PJ Media’s Stephen Green covered the nearly unbelievable story of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors Approving 100 recommendations from the African American Reparations Advisory Committee, which included such goodies as a $5 million payout to every eligible black resident, $97,000 a year for the next 250 years, forgiveness of all debts, and the ability to purchase homes in San Francisco for $1.
I’m sure there’s a demand somewhere in those recommendations that every white male practice self-flagellation and wear sackcloth and ashes for a year.
But the NAACP isn’t happy with the plan.
Amos Brown, the president of the SF NAACP and pastor of the Third Baptist Church supports the idea of reparations but criticized how the city is handling the draft plan.
According to the SF NAACP, the much talked-about lump sum $5 million payment is not likely to be put in action by the city and is therefore giving Black residents of San Francisco false hopes.
“Not one member of that board said ‘we support reparations with cash payments.’ And with a definite plan of how to do it. And a timeline of how to do it,” said Brown.
A draft of that plan, put out by The African American Reparations Advisory Committee in December, currently has over 100 recommendations for how San Francisco can address the legacies of systemic racism in the city. Some of the most notable are a one-time payment of $5 million to eligible adults, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000, and $1 homes for African-American families.
The organization added that it supports cash payments, but called the $5 million “an arbitrary number” in a news release. It said “the payments should have a public rationale for the dollar amount and a method for how the money will be allocated.”
Who knew that “restorative justice” could be so expensive?
Of course, $5 million is “arbitrary.” What else could it be? Putting a price tag on slavery is idiotic. How do you price the abominable “middle passage”? How do you price the indignity of being treated like cattle? How do you value a lifetime of work with little pay?
There’s more, but you get the picture. The real problem is advancing the idea of collective guilt — specifically, the collective guilt of a single race.
History tells us there’s enough guilt to go around when it comes to the slave trade. And if we’re going to hand out reparations for black slavery, why not go after the Italians or Greeks for the slaves their ancestors kept 2,000 years ago? Or the slaves kept by the Aztecs? Or black African tribes?
Slavery is a timeless evil, and to arbitrarily single out black slavery for reparations as it was practiced in North America 200 years ago is massively unfair. The SF NAACP had it exactly right. Any price tag you put on slavery is arbitrary and, therefore, an injustice.
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