"The ongoing campaign for so-called Reparations rests upon the allegation that the European civilization in general — and its trans-Atlantic heirs, the founding fathers of the United States in particular — should be taken to task for the fact that they practiced slavery.  That is somewhat ironic since the Western civilization is in fact the only civilization in history to have created from within itself a successful movement to condemn and abolish slavery."

-- Srdja Trifkovic  

Overview / recap of the history of slavery:

(Scroll down for timely news, or click here.)

Fake History Alert:  Because Whites Were Never Enslaved, DEI Must Continue, Claims Black Congresswoman.  Yet another splendid example of the dangerous of Fake History recently manifested itself — by a member of Congress, no less.  On November 20, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) tried to defend diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives by arguing that black people had experienced something white people never did and therefore could not understand — "oppression" in the guise of slavery. [...] Such statements reveal a staggering level ignorance.  Many millions of white people have been enslaved, raped, and forced into labor since well before recorded history.  And many of their enslavers were people of color.  Consider how the Mongols enslaved Europeans, particularly under the Tatars (Mongol converts to Islam). Described by contemporary Christians as the "heathen giant who feeds on our blood," the Crimean khanate alone is estimated to have enslaved and sold some three million Slavs — Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and others — "like sheep" between 1450 and 1783.

Children's lessons about slavery in America leave out the word 'some'.  American slavery in most textbooks is cast as white and black.  The slaveowners are white, and the slaves are black.  In fact, reading or classroom teaching portrays only whites as slaveowners.  It's true that slavery was race-based, with blacks as slaves.  However, not all whites owned slaves nor were in favor of race-based slavery.  "Some" whites owned slaves, but percentage-wise, were a great minority.  At the same time, thousands of blacks also owned black slaves, which is rarely, if ever, taught.  Native Americans representing five tribes also owned black slaves.  As a result of the lost or missing word "some," when it comes to whites and the missing multi-racial fact of slave ownership, an entire race is expected to bear the entire burden of guilt.  Also rarely noted or taught is the fact most of those in Africa selling blacks into slavery were also black Africans.  It's important to also use the adjective modifier "some" to identify those parties.  During the Civil War, black slaveowners also supported the Confederacy financially and otherwise.  In one state — Louisiana — the wealthiest slaveowner with the most slaves was black.

It's really quite easy to rewrite history.  The history of slavery is fraught with erroneous inferences.  The American colonies were not in any way unique in their exploitation of slave labor.  The practice was well in place long before Columbus was a twinkle in his father's eye.  When the Brits began to develop their American colonies, they plundered their own orphanages for warm bodies — mostly Scots and Irish lads.  Northern Europeans, however, were quite vulnerable to the scourge of malaria.  The losers of tribal conflicts in tropical and subtropical Africa, however, were significantly resistant to the bug.  Thus began one of the earliest examples of interracial slavery.

Reparations Mock And Threaten America's Greatest Achievement.  Activists for reparations have been inundating Americans with a larger-than-life version of Black history, while historical comparisons to other groups inside and outside America are buried.  It's no wonder Americans don't know that, from the 17th to 20th century, America's unprecedented diversity was considered a vulnerable point of failure.  It took hard work to bring together a unified American population, work that leftists have undermined.  Even today, many nations teeter on the verge of failure or experience diminished success because their governments find diverse populations troublesome.  One policy prescription is to engage in ethnic or ideological "cleansing."

Obama Rings the Reparations Bell.  As Black Lives Matters and their allies rev up the call for reparations, it is time to revisit what Milton R. Konvitz wrote in 1976 for the celebration of the Bicentennial of American Independence:  ["]In the late 1960s, when militant blacks staged demonstrations in various churches demanding a half-billion dollars in 'reparations' for three hundred years of subjugation and discrimination, a writer in an Anglo-Jewish journal formulated a demand for 'reparations from various nations on behalf of the Jewish people, including demands to the Vatican for the harm done by teaching that the Jewish people were guilty of deicide and for the promotion of the blood libel; on Spain for the Inquisition and for the expulsion of Jews in 1492; on Germany France, Austria, and Italy, as successors of the Holy Roman Empire, for imprisoning Jews in ghettos; on Arab governments for oppression of the Jews for hundreds of years; on Russia for forcing Jews to live in the Pale of Settlement, for prohibiting them from owning land, for imposing on Jews a quota system that severely restricted their admission to high school and to the universities.["]  As far as Italian-Americans, should they too demand reparations?  How many people are aware of the worst lynching in America — the mass murder of Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891?

Politicized Black History And The Great American Shakedown.  For Black History Month 2022, Disney released a Proud Family episode asserting that slaves built America, and Hulu began streaming the 1619 Project docuseries.  The latter builds on The New York Times's 1619 Project, which presents American slavery as the cruelest in the world.  This is nonsense and, even as Black History Month 2023 is in the rear-view mirror, it must be countered because it serves as the basis for a never-ending, society-corrupting shakedown.  Both productions assert that, in addition to the basic immorality of slavery itself, whites were unrelievedly cruel to black slaves.  From that foundation, leftists insist that the world's most prosperous and educated black population are still victims of white oppression, justifying economy-busting reparations.  It's a shakedown.  In fact, the uncontested winners for "world's cruelest slavery" exist outside America's borders and history.  In Haiti, for example, slaves were treated so poorly that they died after a few years.  It was cheaper to purchase new slaves than to treat slaves humanely.

America Would Be A Better Place If We Taught The Truth About Slavery.  Liberal Whites wallowing in revisionist histories have made Whites the racist pariahs of the world, and Americans are ranked the worst.  Americans have themselves to blame.  They can't stop talking about slavery and racism, and now neither can African Americans.  If woke educators have their way, all African Americans, present and future, will be obsessed with slavery and racism because it will be the center of American history.  This will destroy America's ability to hold together as a nation.  America is the only nation where people politick to make its long-dead slave past the center of its history.  As a historical matter, it makes little sense when compared to the slave sins of other nations.  America received 3-5% of the slaves sold in the Atlantic trade.  Over 90% were sold in the Caribbean and South America.  The first collective protest against slavery occurred in the Thirteen Colonies in 1688. In 1860, just over 1% of Americans owned slaves, although it was legal to do so.  Most states never had slavery.  American ships legally participated in the Atlantic slave trade from 1783 to 1794, at which point it became illegal for American ships to transport slaves.  America stands alone in fighting a civil war to end slavery.  An estimated 320,000 white Union soldiers died to ensure abolition.

Ten Statistics to Ruin Your Day.  [Scroll down]  The top ten countries for modern-day versions of slavery are:
  India - 7,989,000
  China - 3,864,000
  North Korea - 2,640,000
  Nigeria - 1,386,000
  Iran - 1,289,000
  Indonesia - 1,220,000
  Congo (Democratic Republic of) - 1,045,000
  Russia - 794,000
  Philippines - 784,000
  Afghanistan - 749,000
Nor is the USA free of modern versions of slavery.  According to Ron Soodalter, "in the United States, it [slavery] has reached epidemic proportions.  Victims are trafficked here from at least thirty-five countries and are held in bondage — and under the radar — in every state, working at a variety of jobs.  They are of all races, all types, all ethnicities, sharing in common only the inability to leave. ... Slavery is all around us, yet most of us are unaware.

Reparations: Another Approach.  The major purpose of reparations is to compensate injured victims.  The hypothetical impact of slavery in subsequent generations, an unknown and incalculable injury of a sort unrecognized at common law, is not compensable under any accepted legal theory.  There are no circumstances in which a victim's great-great-great-granddaughter, who was not alive at the time of the injury, can claim damages for indirect, remote effects of her ancestor's experience.  Rather, appropriate reparations for slavery should look to what slaves might reasonably have claimed as the spoils of war in the conflict that freed them.  This quantity, in contemporary dollars, would be the amount owed today's descendants.  By 2024 there will be about 50 million Americans identifying as Black (based upon PEW data, assuming the most inclusive definition of the group).  The Civil War freed about four million slaves, though not all survived the immediate aftermath.  For each ancestor there are about twelve descendants entitled to receive a piece of the pie.

The Most Dangerous People On Earth, Are Those Who Think The World Owes Them Something.  [Video clip]

The Legacy of Slavery is Not Simply Black and White.  Slavery in the Western hemisphere actually preceded the arrival of both Africans and Europeans.  And afterwards both Africans and Europeans experienced slavery under Native Americans, who were in turn enslaved by competing tribes beforehand and afterwards.  Historically, slavery was nearly universal, with the exception of what Alexis de Tocqueville claimed was the basic elimination of slavery in Europe for the 1,000 years before the Age of Discovery.  Even setting 1619 as the arrival of Africans in the present-day U.S. was preceded by an earlier century of black slavery in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies further to the south.  Interestingly, the first non-native slaves in today's U.S probably arrived even earlier than 1619.  To satisfy his imperial ambitions and enabled by England's first mass vagrancy act creating surplus prisoners, Walter Raleigh dispatched settlers, who were mostly white, near-slave, and indentured prisoners but perhaps also black slaves, to Roanoke Island, Virginia as early as 1584.  Both free and unfree survivors were ultimately abandoned to disappear from recorded history.

The Week In Review.  It's tiresome to keep repeating the facts for these nincompoops, so I'll try to keep these points brief.  1) Slavery in the U.S. was reprehensible but not unique and was in fact legal virtually around the world in 1776.  2) Founding Fathers who owned slaves, particularly the author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson, made no secret of their opposition to slavery and in most cases freed their slaves upon their deaths.  And 3) we had 300,000 white men die in the Civil War to free the slaves, while an exclusively white Congress and a white President passed the thirteenth amendment to abolish slavery forever; all of whom were men, by the way.

The New Secession Crisis: The Democrats have already left the Union.  The Democrats have already seceded from America's historic conception of nationhood in many respects: [...] THEY have pursued race-based reparations/wealth confiscation from one set of Americans to another based purely on skin color in blatant contradiction of the Constitution's promise of equal protection under the laws.  Many of our existing welfare systems are, on a net basis, race-based wealth transfers.  But to racialize such transfers explicitly represents a dramatic escalation in the Democrats' war on the equality guaranteed to us in our founding documents.

The True Lunacy of Reparations.  [T]he very idea of reparations falls apart at the slightest inkling of critical thought; for instance, with the simple question of "Who?"  Who would actually receive these reparations?  And who would pay them?  In that sense, this is a very simple discussion.  Let's start with the latter question first; Who would pay Reparations?  Would all white people pay?  If so, do we distinguish between, say, people whose ancestors lived in the northern United States and never owned any slaves and people whose ancestors lived in the South where slavery was commonplace?  Would we exclude any white people whose families came to America after slavery was abolished?  What about the millions of Northern "snowbirds" who have moved to the South in the last 50 or so years?  Do they still pay?  What about the descendents of slave-holding Southerners who have moved to northern states?  Are they still on the hook?  Moving further into the quagmire, what about people of mixed race?

Some Final Thoughts on Reparations.  How would reparations be funded?  Conservative writer Michael Medved estimates that only 5% of whites in America "bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor."  Why should anyone but Democrats pay?  Scholar Dinesh D'Souza notes that all but a "handful" of slave owners were Democrats.  The Ku Klux Klan, at its height of power and popularity, was known by the NAACP as the "terror wing" of the Democratic Party.  The KKK was founded by Democrats; I did not say by the Democratic Party, but by Democrats.  As a percentage of their party, more House Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did House Democrats.  As a percentage of their party, more Senate Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Senate Democrats.

Why Reparations Will Never Work.  [Scroll down]  Reparations are an attractive concept.  It keeps that status until you examine the details.  As a starter, there must be a group that underachieves by the general standards of its society.  To make a claim, this condition must be attributable to a past wrong imposed by identifiable groups that can afford to pay.  Several difficulties emerge upon closer examination.  Generations might separate the tort from the present.  This makes tenuous the relationship of the past's victims and the persons to be compensated now.  The same goes for the nexus between history's villains and those credited to be their inheritors.  What share of the reparations shall burden a person that might have immigrated, as has this writer, in the fifties?  How is the benefit of an individual with a victim on the family tree to be calculated if a subsequent ancestor intermarried with the "oppressors"?  Is race, or whatever is declared to be one, going to be the sole standard? [...] Interesting are the global implications.  The world is full of victims whose ancestors might have been oppressors.

Stevie Wonder Demands Reparations During Biden Rally in Detroit: 'I Know Joe Biden Will Do It'.  Pop icon Stevie Wonder, whose estimated net worth exceeds $100 million, called for reparations for black Americans while performing at a Joe Biden rally in Detroit on Saturday [10/31/2020].  Stevie Wonder was a guest performer at the drive-in Biden rally on Belle Isle.  The 70-year-old singer — who was born in Saginaw, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit — is the latest celebrity to help the Biden-Harris ticket's effort to flip Michigan blue.

Language and Thought.  [Scroll down]  What about slavery?  Colleges teach our young people that the U.S. became rich on the backs of free black labor.  That is utter nonsense.  Slavery does not have a very good record of producing wealth.  Think about it.  Slavery was all over the South and outlawed in most of the North.  I doubt that anyone would claim that the antebellum South was rich, and the slave-starved North was poor.  The truth is just the opposite.

The Truth About Slavery.  Sailing against prevailing winds, we continue to search for truth.  Many got their vision of slavery from the book and miniseries Roots, by Alex Haley.  When confronted with his lack of historical accuracy the author said, "I tried to give my people a myth to live by."  Think about that.  Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution, in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, provides a great deal of depth and clarity about race and slavery. [...]
  •   Slavery's been part of every culture on every inhabited continent throughout history
  •   Africans conquered other Africans, enslaved them, and sold them for profit
  •   It existed in Western indigenous peoples for centuries before Columbus arrived
  •   Considered a fact of life until 17th century Christians attacked its immorality

Slavery still exists TODAY.
Human trafficking: 629 Pakistani girls sold as brides to China.  Page after page, the names stack up:  629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China.  The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country's poor and vulnerable.  The list gives the most concrete figure yet for the number of women caught up in the trafficking schemes since 2018.  But since the time it was put together in June, investigators' aggressive drive against the networks has largely ground to a halt.  Officials with knowledge of the investigations say that is because of pressure from government officials fearful of hurting Pakistan's lucrative ties to Beijing.

New York Was Named After Slaver Who Shipped 90,000 Africans to America, Has 24+ Streets Named for Slave Owners.  As public discourse continues to move toward removing historical statues of figures with histories considered troublesome by modern standards, ranging from Christopher Columbus, to Robert E. Lee, to President George Washington, new light must be shined on the racist, slave-owning history of the Empire State and its commerce capitol, New York City.

Strange Bedfellows:  American Blacks and Arab Slavers.  For some time now, black American and Palestinian sympathizers have tried to make common cause with each other. [...] The sad fact is that the traffic in blacks as slaves is almost certainly traceable to Islam. [...] It can be argued that the transatlantic slave trade started with Islam.  Prior to 1492, it had often been the practice of Europeans to enslave other whites. [...] When the open fields of the Americas required cheap labor, the Arabs introduced Europeans to black slavery.  This slave trade continued long after the Western World outlawed slavery.

Black Slavery exists today in Muslim-dominated African nations.  Today, an estimated 529,000 to 869,000 black men, women and children are still slaves.  They are bought, owned, sold, and traded by Arab and Muslim masters in five African countries.  This statistic estimates those enslaved in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, and Sudan.  It excludes Nigeria, for which there are no tangible estimates.  Western human rights organizations and the mainstream media are practically and painfully silent on this matter.  It does not fit with their focus on Western white sin.

Ilhan Omar and the Door of No Return.  Estimates are that 11 million African slaves ended up in the Americas; of those only roughly 400,000 came to the British colonies and subsequent United States.  The vast bulk (10 million plus) were sold to buyers in the Caribbean and Central and South America.  European slave traders have rightly been pilloried for their central role in the transport and sale of other human beings for profit, and for their inhuman treatment of those they considered less than human.  And, of course, Americans of the 17th through 19th Centuries have been condemned for being an avid market for the purchase of slaves and maintenance of slavery as an acceptable institution of society.  Little, of course, has been said concerning the fact that until modern times slavery had always been part and parcel of life in every civilization of the world — the powerful enslaved the weak; the conquerors subjugated their victims; empires imposed their culture on client states and conscripted "non-citizens" to forced labor.  That was the way of the world.  To the victor go the spoils.

Americans Are in Desperate Need of a Lesson on the History of Slavery.  Democrat hopeful Pete Buttigieg recently advocated removing Thomas Jefferson's memory from the public square and ending the practice of naming public events in his honor.  The legacy of Jefferson, he said, is "problematic."  "There's a lot to admire in his thinking and his philosophy," he said, "but then again if you plunge into his writings, especially his notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew slavery was wrong."  It's a stunning display of his ignorance, certainly.  But interestingly, Buttigieg has unknowingly pinpointed precisely why Thomas Jefferson should be eternally revered by our society, which believes that enslaving other human beings is wrong.  That is, that Jefferson knew that it was wrong at the time.

Progressives Don't Want Blacks Thinking.  There is not an ethnicity on earth today or in the history of the world whose members have not been slaves.  Slavery was never about skin color; it was about conquest, infrastructure and commerce.  Muslims were in the past the most prolific in the slave industry, albeit it's unpopular to point that out.  It's even more unpopular to point out that Islam virtually owns the flourishing global slave industry today.  A question that demands an answer is:  "If skin-color profiteers are so offended by slavery, and view America not as the repository of opportunity for all, but rather as a portrait of ill-gotten gain(s) based upon the practice of slavery — why don't they hate Muslims?"

Black Slaves, Muslim Masters: An appeal to American blacks.  Arabs and Muslims have black slaves today and hardly anyone, especially the leftist class which preens about its devotion to human rights, is screaming about this.  In five African nations — Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, and Sudan — blacks serve Arab/Muslim masters.  They are bought and sold like furniture.  They are worked until they drop, tortured, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and murdered.  This has been going on for many years, but it only occasionally makes today's headlines.  This is an open secret.  Anyone can Google "blacks sold as slaves in Libya" and see video of slave markets.  I know Africans from Sudan and Nigeria and Mauritania who want to tell this story but they cannot get platforms.  Below is a short clip of the testimony of an escaped slave from Sudan, Francis Bok.  Here is his incredible story told in long form.  I have decided to help these people tell their story.  The people who need to hear it most are American blacks.

Maxine Waters Talks Reparations in Selma.  Slavery was the darkest chapter in American history.  No reasonable person thinks otherwise.  I wish we could undo it so it never existed, but that's not possible.  It happened.  But it's also been gone for more than 150 years.  So why is Maxine Waters talking about reparations? [...] No one alive today in the United States has "legally" owned another human being here.  Because of that, there's no one to actually pay reparations.  Not a single living person is responsible for the sins of that era.  No living person can be forced to pay for the sins of that era without violating his or her rights.

The Age of Expert Ignorance.  To begin with, no living black American ever was a slave, just as no living white American ever was a slave owner.  Making human beings responsible for events with which they themselves had nothing to do is not only incoherent, it is an infinite task.  When does it end?

Slavery:  The Inconvenient Truth.  On the subject of slavery, very few children today are reminded that the process to abolish the Atlantic slave trade began over 200 years ago and was done primarily thanks to the intrepid mariners of the Royal Navy, who set about the arduous and dangerous task of enforcing legislation passed in the British Parliament.  The West Africa Squadron, which was established for this single purpose, was not a popular posting because it brought with it enormous risks, not least of which was death from tropical diseases.  But officers and men pursued the task with almost evangelical zeal and eventually prevailed.  Little or no mention in the history lessons of William Wilberforce, who was a primary player in the campaign to abolish slavery.  He devoted his life to a cause that cost him his friendships and his health.  Not a single African country, to my knowledge, acknowledges him, nor is there any memorial to him.  They are also not told that the Arabs (Muslims) were enslaving Africans long before the Europeans arrived, and that they continue to enslave Africans today.  And as slaves their conditions were immeasurably harsher than those that prevailed in North America.  Nothing in the textbooks about the fact that only a small percentage of the people forcibly removed from Africa ended up in what is today the USA, and that the Africans who came to America as slaves were the lucky ones who escaped the poverty, utter lawlessness, and endemic tribal wars in their homeland to be introduced to the most advanced civilization in history.

Timely news and commentary:

Slavery for the modern man.  In the 19th century, the Southern states argued that putting an end to the slave economy would collapse the cotton, tobacco, and rice industries. [...] The last census taken before the Civil War recorded 4 million slaves in the South.  It hasn't gone away.  It's estimated that there are around 50 million slaves worldwide and 1 million in the U.S. alone.  Modern slavery generates over $200 billion annually in global profits and includes forced labor, sex- and human-trafficking, and debt bondage.  In 2021, a federal grand jury in Waycross, Georgia indicted two dozen defendants who allegedly used H-2A visa applications to bring in dozens of migrant workers as agricultural workers.  The federal program requires that workers be paid a fair wage and reimbursed for expenses including travel, food, and lodging.  The defendants instead kept most of that money, using it to buy land, homes, vehicles, and even a restaurant and a night club.

Ilhan Omar's Daughter Gets Reparations Payments From White Friends.  Isra Hirsi, the daughter of "Squad" member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), has received "reparations" payments from her white friends on Juneteenth most years since 2019, the Washington Free Beacon has found.  Both of Hirsi's parents are Somali immigrants.  Reparations advocates, meanwhile, typically push for payments to descendants of African Americans enslaved in the United States, while Juneteenth commemorates the nation's 1865 end of slavery.  Hirsi, a far-left activist, anti-Israel agitator, and Barnard College senior, has received at least a dozen Venmo payments on Juneteenth spread across four of the past six years, a review of her account shows.  The public transactions include notes like "reparations" and "Happy Juneteenth," though the payment app doesn't indicate how much she was paid.

The Editor says...
This sounds a lot like a laundered bribe, like Hunter Biden's "artwork" that sold for thousands of dollars.  If Ms. Hirsi and Ms. Omar are the descendants of slaves, that slavery had nothing to do with this country.

Harris Says She's Open to Reparations: 'It Has to Be Studied, There's No Question'.  Vice President Kamala Harris expressed openness to reparations during a Tuesday interview [...].  Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose reparations, a Pew Research poll found in 2022.  [Advertisement]  "It has to be studied, there's no question about that, and I've been very clear about that position," Harris told the radio host:  [Advertisement]  ["]In terms of my immediate plan, I will tell you a few of the following one as it relates to the economy, which is a lot of what you have addressed.  Look, I grew up in the middle class.  My mother, you know, worked hard, raised me and my sister, and by the time I was in high school, she was able to afford our first home.  I know what it means for an individual and a family to have homeownership.["]  Harris, who hails from California, previously pledged to force taxpayers to pay "reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved" many times.  While running for president in 2020, she told Reverend Al Sharpton, an MNSBC host and activist, that she would sign a reparations bill if she became president.

The Editor says...
Whether Harris's mother had a hard time raising her kids or buying a house has nothing to do with reparations for slavery.  Whenever a lying socialist Democrat is asked a question and immediately changes the subject, it means they know they've lost the argument.

California, a Free State, Apologizes for Slavery as Newsom Signs Reparations Bills.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a series of "reparations" bills on Thursday, including a formal apology for slavery, even though the state entered the Union as a free state in 1850. [...] Newsom signed several other bills passed by the state legislature and pushed by reparations activists.  As Breitbart News noted, however, the bills did not include actual cash payments or a reparations fund, provoking protests.  The movement for reparations gained traction during the chaotic summer of 2020, when protests and riots spread across the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police in Democrat-run Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Newsom signed legislation establishing a committee to study reparations.  After it made recommendations that included massive cash payments and racially separate schools, legislators toned down the proposals.  Newsom only included $12 million toward the reparations issue in his budget this year, which grappled with a near-$50 billion deficit.

Kamala Harris Says She is Open to Slavery Reparations and Won't Discount 'Executive Action'.  Vice-president Kamala Harris has signalled her openness to the idea of reparations for black people, saying she would not rule out executive action if she wins the White House in November.  Speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday, Harris was asked about her position on the issue, which is typically confined to Black Lives Matter activists and far-left radicals.  "Do you have a position on whether that [reparations] should happen — this [reparations] commission should happen through executive order or via Congress?" she was asked by Politico's Eugene Daniels.  [Tweet with video clip]  It is not the first time that Harris has said she will support reparations for the enslavement of black people, which was outlawed over 150 years ago.

Prepare for an Exodus From New York City After Approval of Idiotic Reparations Program.  In a move that has sparked woke support and lucid skepticism, New York City is set to become the largest city in the United States to implement a reparations program.  Sponsored by Councilmembers Crystal Hudson and Farah Louis, a pair of bills aimed at establishing a Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation Commission, along with a reparations task force, passed on Thursday and will take effect immediately.  "Today, the New York City Council voted to pass legislation establishing municipal efforts to acknowledge and address the legacy and impact of slavery and racial injustices in New York City." — New York City Council.  This announcement raises eyebrows.  Why now?  What's the real agenda behind this sudden urgency?

Also posted under What's the rush?

The Moral Case Against Reparations.  First, reparations, to be just, must be based on the legal definition of restitution.  In the law, restitution exists to achieve an equitable remedy when the money or property is, first, wrongfully possessed and, second, traceable.  Today's calls for reparations fail to show that any money or property is currently wrongfully in anyone's hands.  Money and property (and the slaves themselves) were, indeed, wrongfully in the hands of slave-holders but not even the law is capable of re-writing history.  It can only cure current injustices.  The money and property that could have been restituted after the demise of slavery is no longer traceable.  Even if I've inherited cash and property from my slave-holding ancestors, which of it is from them?  My car?  My house?  How much of my money?  It's all jointly owned by my wife who has no ancestors who were plantation owners.  She's not even American.  Legally, since the reward for stolen labor is long ago untraceable, it's impossible to claim any of it as belonging to a former slave.

Kamala Supports Racial Reparations In Resurfaced Videos From Last Run, Has Not Denounced Position.  Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris supported racial reparations for black Americans during her 2020 run for the White House, and so far has not denounced the policy position.  Nationally, reparations are deeply unpopular, with about two-thirds of Americans opposing such policy.  Opponents, specifically asked about reparations for slavery, often argue that Americans would be paying for sins they didn't commit, and paying people who didn't actually experience slavery.

Now That California Is Giving Illegals Free Money For Houses, Blacks Want Reparations Now.  Sorry blacks.  You have been officially replaced with millions of illegal aliens who will now be getting $150k+ for house down payments.  [Video clip]

Bro Thinks Africans Invented The Internet, Electricity And Everything Else And Whites Need To Pay A Fee For It All.  Internet, electricity, stop signs, cell phones, helicopters.  You name it.  It all comes from Africa, so whites must pay a usage fee.  [Video clip]

Mayor Johnson's Call for Reparations Ignores Chicago's Most Serious Problems.  Let's state the obvious:  Slavery in America was an abomination and the institutional racism that followed for the next century, including segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and housing discrimination, was disgraceful as well.  In Chicago, racial covenants, redlining, discriminatory contract home sales, as well as overt bigotry, were widespread decades ago.  In contrast, Illinois was never a slave state.  Over 250,000 Illinoisans fought in the Civil War to preserve the Union and end slavery, and over 30,000 of them perished in that conflict.  Racial covenants were ruled to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948.  The Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 made redlining illegal, and the swindles of contract home sales became much more difficult to implement because of the protections those laws offered.  Think about it:  Someone who was 18 when the Community Reinvestment Act became law reached retirement age this year.  The socioeconomic situation people are born into, whether they are on the long end or the short end of the stick, is not their responsibility.  And the better people — and I believe that's a strong majority — hope everyone succeeds, regardless of race.

California Budget Deal Slashes Spending but Includes $12 Million for Reparations.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and state legislators struck a deal this weekend to close a $47 billion budget deficit — and agreed to spend $12 million to implement proposals to provide reparations for slavery. [...] CalMatters.org reported Saturday on the budget deal, which combines spending cuts and withdrawals from the state's "rainy day" fund to overcome the shortfall (which CalMatters says is even higher, at $56 billion): [...] The push for reparations began in 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, at both the state and local levels, in left-wing cities like San Francisco.  Proponents began recommending massive cash transfers, leading Newsom to back away cautiously from cash payments as a form of reparations.  Democrats continued pushing for reparations, despite the fact that the state's $100 billion budget surplus in 2022 had crashed to a massive deficit by 2024.

Chicago issues formal apology to Black citizens, creates task force on reparations.  The city on Monday issued a formal apology to Black Chicagoans for the harm that slavery, Jim Crow laws and present-day policies have had on them and their descendants.  The acknowledgement is included in Executive Order 2024-1, signed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, creating a "Reparations Task Force to develop a Black Reparations Agenda" that will ultimately offer recommendations on remedies to the polices that have harmed African Americans in Chicago for generations.  He previously earmarked $500,000 in the city budget to study the issues. [...] A few cities around the country, including San Francisco, Detroit and Asheville, North Carolina, have launched similar efforts to study the legacy of slavery and systemic racism.  Evanston in 2021 became the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination.  A conservative activist group earlier this month filed a legal challenge to the program.

Hope Everyone Had A Great Juneteenth And Paid Reparations To Black People.  A little friendly advice from not a racist person.  [Video clip]

A Short History of Democratic Party Lawfare.  The Democratic Party's use of law and the criminal justice system to maintain political power dates back to the "peculiar institution" of slavery.  It is often ignored or deliberately forgotten that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery.  In the states of the Deep South and elsewhere, Democratic Party legislators enshrined slavery into law, Democratic executives enforced those laws, and Democratic judges upheld those laws against legal and constitutional challenges.  Democratic presidents like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson were slaveholders.  So were many Democratic governors.  It was Democrats who insisted on passage of the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850.  It was a Democratic Supreme Court Chief Justice (Roger Taney) who wrote the court's opinion (Scott v.  Sanford, known as the Dred Scott case) upholding slavery and declaring African Americans to be chattel.  It was Democratic Party state and local officials that in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction imposed so-called "Jim Crow" laws in many states of the Deep South.

Inconvenient Facts about Slavery.  Of course, the existence of non-white slave-owners does not absolve the sins of whites.  But concealing their story gives an unrealistic image of slave societies.  Many groups were involved in the business of slavery, including those that were oppressed at the time.  Long before the introduction of slavery in the American South and the Caribbean, the institution was recognized as a legitimate business.  And despite dreading the thought of enslavement, some blacks embraced slave ownership as a vehicle for social advancement.  Historical sources show that after gaining freedom, many ex-slaves were quite happy to own human chattel themselves.  Descent from slaves did not prevent the Bourne family, for example, from acquiring slaves for commercial purposes.  William Bourne, along with his son London and other members of the family, owned slaves in Barbados.  Like their white counterparts, black slaveholders in Barbados viewed slave ownership as essential to their identity and were keen to remind the political establishment that abolishing the institution would not redound to their benefit.  In the neighboring island of Jamaica, one of the most esteemed black citizens was John Williams, a former slave who graduated into the slave-owning class and used his status to lobby for a law that prevented slaves from bringing evidence against him and his family.  He was the father of the scholar, headmaster, and poet Francis Williams.  The latter followed in his father's footsteps and was listed as owning fifteen slaves when he died in 1762.

The Monstrous Lie of White Privilege.  Of the almost 11 million Africans sold into slavery, 388,000 came to Britain's North American colony from 1619 through 1783 and to the United States itself until the slave trade ended in 1808.  The rest went to European colonies and Muslim countries.  What leftists also refuse to acknowledge is that the slave trade couldn't have existed without the African tribes and independent nations who captured other Africans and delivered them to the Muslim traders who ran the markets.  Slavery exists to this day in Africa and the Middle East!  While Europe's white descendants engaged in a practice that had existed since time immemorial, it's a Big Lie to tar them with this crime to the exclusion of many others, especially Africans themselves.  Leftists also ignore that one in ten blacks in America are recent immigrants and account for 19% of the overall black population.  Being black in America today does not connote a direct correlation to former slave status, with blacks in general coming here from many origins, predominantly Caribbean nations (where the Europeans imported them as slaves).

If anyone should be paying slavery reparations, it's West Africa.  The Dean of Chapel in Trinity College, Cambridge, the Rev Michael Banner, has computed that Britain owes more than £200 billion to Caribbean nations as reparations for slavery.  Banner is not a historian nor an accountant but a clergyman and his calculations, both mathematical and moral, are wrong.  In 1833, when Parliament emancipated slaves in the British empire, the cabinet initially offered the slaveholders about £15 million in compensation.  The two sides eventually settled at £20 million.  To have paid the slaveholders to free their slaves was highly controversial at the time, but it was the only way to secure their freedom finally after years of campaigning.  Banner's calculations start with the valuation initially advanced in the negotiations by the slaveholding interest, which, at £40 million, was twice the amount they actually received.  Why he has taken this as his baseline isn't clear from the reports, but in so doing Banner has ensured that his final figure for what you and I apparently owe is both astronomical and nonsensical.

RFK Jr Says His First Week In Office He Will Pay Black Farmers 5 Billion Dollars In Reparations.  RFK Jr. says the first week he is in the White House he will pay $5 billion in reparations to Black farmers:  "The 1st week I'm going to get rid of those people in USDA and get that money, that $5 billion dollars is not money that is an entitlement it's money that was a loan that black farmers were entitled to way back and was stolen from them through discrimination."  "It was given to every other farmer, but if you were black, you wouldn't get it, and that's wrong.  I don't think anybody who believes in the values of this country thinks that that's a good idea."  "USDA is broken from the top down.  It's not run for small farmers.  It's run to benefit Big AG."  [Video clip]

Boston Blacks Gather To Scream About How 15 Billion In Reparations Is Not Enough.  [Scroll down]  A slavery reparations meeting was held today in Boston & residents demanded cash from white churches.  Mayor Michelle Wu and the City of Boston Reparations Task Force recently announced the appointment of former State Representative Byron Rushing to the Reparations Task Force.  [Video clip]

City Council In [Asheville] North Carolina Has Its Reparations Demands.  The city and county reparations commission has voted unanimously for guaranteed income for some residents, handing that and other recommendations up to local elected officials.  In a series of four votes at its May 6 meeting, the commission recommended guaranteed income and three other programs — the creation of an economic development center, paying for existing initiatives in historically Black neighborhoods and creating a Reparations Accountability Council.  [Video clip]

Chinese Mining Boss In Africa Beats His Black Workers Sparking Allegations Of A New Slave Trade.  Allegations of racial discrimination have again flared up against Chinese nationals working in African countries after a video showing a Chinese man whipping African workers with a stick went viral on social media today.  The viral video shared on microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter) by Dom Lucre, journalist and founder of BTNNetwk, posted, "Chinese employer in Africa treating his employees like Trans-Atlantic slaves."  [Video clip]

California reparations bill on licensing unconstitutional say critics.  A California reparations bill prioritizing black applicants in state professional licensing is likely unconstitutional and violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protections clause under the 14th Amendment, says the Pacific Legal Foundation.  AB 2862, authored by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, D-Carson, would "require boards to prioritize African American applicants seeking licenses under these provisions, especially applicants who are descended from a person enslaved in the United States."  The bill was introduced in February as a broader package of reparations for Black Californians, a package that did not include direct cash payments.

Black Democrat Congresswoman Suggests Blacks Shouldn't Pay Taxes.  Democrat congresswoman Jasmine Crockett suggests black people shouldn't pay taxes but then admits it's a dumb idea because they "aren't really paying taxes in the first place."  The comments came during an interview on the "The Black Lawyers Podcast."  "One of the things they propose is black folk not have to pay taxes for a certain amount of time because... that puts money back in your pocket."  [Video clip]

Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett:  Black Americans Should [Be Exempt From] Taxes as a Form of Reparations.  Freshman Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) suggested that black Americans should be exempt from paying taxes as a form of reparations but then said it might not work because of the black people who are "not paying taxes in the first place."  Crockett, who recently made headlines for perpetuating the debunked myth that U.S. border patrol officers "whipped" Haitian migrants, was giving an interview on "The Black Lawyers Podcast" when she brought up the idea.

Sins and Atonement.  Atonement for the mother of all crimes, racism, may very well be completely out of reach.  Therefore, we are instructed to allow for the righteous anger of colonial victims — or, rather, their descendants — and compensate them on demand.  By contrast, we, the sinners, are expected to condemn our own past and deny ourselves.  The sectarian, self-betraying style in the media evokes memories of forced confessions during the Reign of Terror or Maoist re-education.  As something unprecedented in world history, Westerners call on each other to tear down symbols of their civilization and tolerate humiliation indefinitely as punishment for something of which nobody alive is guilty.  The absurdity has reached unimaginable heights, because we have allowed it to happen.

U.N. chief calls for slavery reparations to overcome 'generations of discrimination'.  United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called on Monday for reparations over the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved people as a way to tackle its legacy in today's society, including systemic racism.  From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped, forcibly transported by European ships and merchants and sold into slavery.  Those who survived the brutal voyage ended up toiling on plantations in the Americas, mostly in Brazil and the Caribbean, while others profited from their labour.  In a statement to mark the U.N. International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery, Guterres said the past "laid the foundations for a violent discrimination system based on white supremacy."  "We call for reparatory justice frameworks to help overcome generations of exclusion and discrimination," Guterres said.

California Democrat proposes tax on gold, cotton, tobacco, and other 'slave' goods to fund homes and schools for African Americans.  A California Democrat wants to tax sales of gold, cotton, tobacco and other goods linked to slavery — and to divert the money to black residents, in the latest bid to turn reparations into reality.  The bill by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer is one of more than a dozen bills backed by the California Legislative Black Caucus seeking reparations for black Californians, especially the descendants of slaves.  They stem from a July 2023 report from the state Reparations Task Force, where Jones-Sawyer served as a member, and underscores efforts to turn controversial policies into a legally-binding compensation scheme.

The Editor says...
That would be a very touching sob story, but blacks have homes and schools already.  Schools, at least.  California spends $13,642 per student per year on education.  Some people say the actual amount is $20,642.

$15 Billion in Reparations from... Boston.  Leftist churches in Boston are calling on their fellows to get behind a plan for reparations for Black Bostonians to the tune of 15 BILLION dollars... and that is, they say, just a start.  To put that in perspective, the White population of Boston is about 300,000, more or less, who are being asked to shell out about $40,000 each as penance for what their ancestors did.  [Tweet with video clip]  Not a bad start for what promises to be an unending series of demands for ever more reparations, which will be necessary because even this large sum of money can't fix the problems of Boston's Black community, which are more social than economic.

Boston: Woke churches demand "white churches" help blacks get $15 billion in reparations to help with "trauma" of slave-trade that ended in 1783.  Slavery has been illegal in Massachusetts since 1783.  A full generation before that in the 1750s, slaves were 2.2% of the population.  Fast forward 250 years later and we have this:  [Tweet with video clip] [...] It's fringe and ridiculous today.  But it's a real battle that will have to be fought tomorrow.  If your church gave an inch to the BLM madness in 2020, expect this to be the next fight.

Black activists seeking $15 billion in reparations, call on 'White churches' to commit to extending wealth.  The Boston Task Force on Reparations called on "White churches" to step up and pay the Black community back for racial inequities that root back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to reports.  The Boston Globe reported that Black and White clergy members met in Roxbury for a press conference intended to be held outside, though it was instead held in the basement of the Resurrection Lutheran Church on Saturday because of rain.  The commission was established through a 2022 Boston City Council ordinance and made up of 10 members, including two from the youth community.  In February, the Boston activists called for the city to "fully commit to writing checks" and for a $15 billion payout since the city's wealth was built on slavery.

The Editor says...
I've heard some ridiculous euphemisms lately, but this is the first I've heard about "the youth community."  And no, don't give them a nickel.

The Democrats and the Rise of Racial Radicalism.  In 1965, 85 percent of the population was white, 11 percent was black, and four percent was Latino.  According to the current tabulation, about 60 percent are white, 19 percent are Hispanic, 12 percent are black, and 6 percent are Asian, and Asians (a category that comprises wildly different ethnicities) are the fastest growing group.  That undermines the radical case for reparations and for racial quotas.  (About 22 percent of black Americans, which includes immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, cannot trace their ancestry back to the pre-1965 era of the Jim Crow South, not to mention the pre-Civil War period of black enslavement.)  Many of these immigrants work in low-wage services and are barely getting by.  Why should they pay reparations that would go to middle-class as well as poor black Americans?

Activists seek huge tax write-off for African Americans as 'reparations 2.0'.  Reparations activists have opened a new front in their battle for compensation for slavery-era abuses — huge tax breaks for black people.  Tiffany Cross, the author and television host, and other presenters of her Native Land Pod, this week tried to reboot America's flagging reparations efforts with a call for tax breaks for African Americans.  Campaigners have already erected billboards to this end in Chicago, pushing for black-only carve-outs on the $6,000-a-year property taxes that are typical in the Illinois city.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Proposes $14 Trillion Reparations Plan.  Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) proposed a $14 trillion reparations plan Tuesday "for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States."  The progressive congressman called on the federal government to foot the bill, arguing that there's a way to pay for it "without raising taxes on anyone."

The Editor says...
Yes, there is a way:  The government can simply print $14 trillion in worthless paper money.  But the resulting Zimbabwe-scale inflation would be a tax on everybody.  Here's a better idea:  Get over it.  If you were never a slave, and your parents were not slaves, you don't have a legal leg to stand on.

Reparations are Just Another Form of Theft.  One of the more ridiculous recent headlines was this one from the Post Millennial: "Squad member Jamaal Bowman demands $14 TRILLION in reparations to black Americans."  You might remember Rep. Bowman (D-NY) Bowman as the guy who dodged time in the hoosegow for falsely triggering a fire alarm in a US House office building in Washington, DC, as reported by CNN.  Then there was this related but unrelated article from Native News Online that describes ethnic cleansing and the Ho-Chunk exile from Minnesota in the 19th century.  Related because its all about victimhood; unrelated because the events are separated by 150 years.  That facts are that every ethnic group has a tragic history and story.  By the way, that includes white European underclasses, too, such as the Irish and East Europeans (my own ancestors) as well as Russian serfs and many other white ethnic groups.  But that inconvenient truth is always ignored by the modern-day race-baiters.

No, Britain's wealth was not built on slavery.  In recent years, left-leaning commentators and activists have claimed that the slave trade was central to Britain's economic development.  Some have even argued that slavery is the source of much of Britain's contemporary wealth.  Historians Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson have now added their scholarly weight to these claims in their new book, Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.  As they put it:  'Slavery had a long-term impact on the structure and nature of the British economy.'  Apparently, it encouraged 'industrialisation, financialisation, elite formation and embedded inequality'.  Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution consists, in the main, of an incisive and exhaustive working out of the many connections between the Industrial Revolution, the slave trade and the West Indian plantations.

Budget Deficit Forces San Francisco to Eliminate Reparations Office.  A crushing budget deficit has forced San Francisco Mayor London Breed to eliminate the budget of the Office of Reparations, which was considering lavish payouts to long-term black residents of the city, though it never practiced or allowed slavery.  The city's budget deficit exploded to $780 million earlier this year, amid San Francisco's struggle to recover from strict coronavirus closures and restrictions.  An exodus of work-from-home residents and taxpayers, coupled with a rise in crime, outdoor drug abuse, and homelessness, also chased away retail businesses.  Despite these challenges, as Breitbart News reported, San Francisco leaders were considering reparations for long-term black residents, and were floating sums in the range of $5 million, though these were not based on any precise mathematical calculations.

Black 'thought leader' condemns 'white people' as irredeemable bigots, suggests reparations aren't enough.  I had never heard of Yaba Blay until today, but she describes herself as one of the "foremost thought leaders" in fields like "Black racial identity, colorism, and beauty politics," or, simply, black cultural Marxism.  Needless to say, all Blay's scholarly pursuits yielded zero intellectual gains, reaping only supremacist views and hatred, a fact on prominent display in the video below:  [Tweet with video clip] [...] Many of us, like myself, don't actually harbor any guilt because we never owned slaves, and it's not like American slavery was some unprecedented system deserving of unprecedented political action.  Slavery has been around since the dawn of time, and every color person under the sun has been found under its yoke, including "white" European women who were traded across the Arab Muslim trade, with a majority suffering as sexual chattel instead of laborers.

Reparations are unconstitutional.  American leftists, in their mad dash to virtue-signal how cool they are on every trendy Civil Rights cause, have signed on to the Reparations movement.  But they seem to be forgetting something important in their rush to fix the wrongs of history: reparations are unconstitutional.  It is called a "bill of attainder" — basically where the Legislature acts as a court.  The bill of attainder is a law that 1) creates a class of people and 2) declares them guilty of a crime and 3) then punishes them based on that declaration.  This is exactly what reparations does.  So, when discussing reparations, we have to ask: does the law create a punishment?  The answer is a resounding "yes." Those pushing for reparations have made no secret that reparations would be a punishment.  They are going to take money (which is property) from one class of people and give it to themselves for the wrongs of the past.

Only 'White People' Ever Enslaved Others, Says Black Professor.  In a recent article, we considered the claims of Brittney Cooper, a professor at Rutgers University.  She believes that all "white people," whom she also refers to as "m------------" who are "committed to being villains" — in a word, racists — need to be "taken out."  One of her arguments is that, whenever non-whites try to have a "reckoning" with whites, the latter say, "It's just human nature.  If y'all had all of this power, you would have done the same thing," right? [...] This must be the professor's most ignorant of claims — which is saying much — that non-whites somehow behaved with more tolerance and civility whenever they landed on the shores of others.  While we don't necessarily have historical records of black sub-Saharans "sailing across oceans," we do know that they savagely warred on and enslaved one another.  It is enough to point out that, as Michael Omolewa, a Nigerian diplomat, once did:  ["][T]he bulk of the supply [of African slaves sold to Europeans] came from the Nigerians.  These Nigerian middlemen moved to the interior where they captured other Nigerians who belonged to other communities. ... Many Nigerian middlemen began to depend totally on the slave trade and neglected every other business and occupation.  The result was that when the trade was abolished [by England in 1807] these Nigerians began to protest.  As years went by and the trade collapsed such Nigerians lost their sources of income and became impoverished.["]  These are not just historical observations.  Despite Western efforts to abolish slavery, there are currently more than 50 million slaves — all of them in the non-Western world.

Any reparations paid today would be a grave injustice.  Consider California's proposal to pay millions of dollars to alleged descendants of slaves.  First, California was not a slave state.  Secondly, California has a huge population of Asians and Hispanics who were neither slave owners nor descendants of slave owners.  The vast majority of American whites before the Civil War didn't own slaves either.  Blacks were also slave owners, but there is no effort to trace their descendants to assign them guilt for their ancestors' sins.  Five Native American tribes owned Black slaves, but their descendants aren't expected to pay reparations today.  Such facts corroborate to the overwhelming evidence of their "grave injustice" to people today.

Native American groups join the call for reparations.  Native American groups are now joining the call for reparations centuries after hundreds of tribes had land taken from them by 'land-grab universities and colleges.'  An estimated 10.7 million acres of land was taken from 250 tribes following the signing of the Morrill Act by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862.  This law converted tribal lands into initial sites for land-grant higher education institutions in many states.

Author Douglas Murray Absolutely Destroys the Case for Reparations.  Author Douglas Murray eviscerated the case for reparations some on the left are pushing and said most people "are tired" of the "grievance competition" over slavery, which ended more than a century ago.  "All history has consequences and ramifications," Murray said during a panel discussion on "Piers Morgan Uncensored."  "If we were to play this fairly we would at least look at all of the countries around the world that engaged in a slave trade who are simply not interested in any form of reparations."  He went on to note the practice still exists in Africa today and that globally, there are more slaves now than at the peak of the transatlantic slave trade.  "So, some of us are simply a bit bored of hearing people ripping at closed wounds and then crying about their hurt, or their presumed hurt," he said.  "Nobody is alive who has actually suffered the hurt and nobody is alive who did the wrong."

California reparations task force meetings descends into chaos after failing to pinpoint number to pay black residents.  A final meeting of the Reparations Task Force meeting held by the California Department of Justice descended into chaos as members of the public lined up to have their say and demanded payments be made immediately.  Some of those attending caused a disturbance during the public comment section, demanding reparations from the board.  Several individuals became extremely passionate as they made their views known expressing their desire for reparations, shouting into the microphone that the time for restitution is 'now!'

Grab Your Wallets: The Reparations Game Is Rigged.  Two weeks ago, I participated in a debate on reparations hosted by the American Public Square and later televised by KCPT, the PBS station in Kansas City.  If I didn't know beforehand that the game was rigged, I did by the time the edited debate hit the airwaves. [...] I zeroed in on the price exacted by President Lyndon's Johnson's so-called "Great Society."  "The trade-off is this," I said.  "We'll give you Medicaid.  We'll give you food stamps.  We'll give you AFDC.  We'll target your income to your rent and housing, but the price you have to pay is get the old man out of the house."  I then cited the consequences of this trade off, which included a homicide rate in Kansas City an incredible 47 times higher than in the adjoining suburban county to the west.  When the moderator asked why I had cited homicide statistics, I answered, "The point of saying this is that the root cause of all of this is family breakdown."  By "all of this," I was referring to the seeming inequities — net wealth, income, home ownership, education, crime — that my fellow panelists repeatedly attributed to racism by an unspecified white "they."

Colorado councilwoman who advocated for reparations blown out in reelection contest.  A councilwoman in a Colorado district lost her reelection bid by a wide voter margin, only a month after a video of her advocating for reparations was shared on social media.  The vote tally for the election in District 9 showed incumbent candidate Candi CdeBaca lose to challenger Darrell Watson on Tuesday night, with Watson getting 60.71% of the votes while CdeBaca trailed far behind at 39.29%.  CdeBaca's 21.42% margin loss marked one of the biggest blowout losses in the last 10 years, according to KDVR.

It's Not Reparations Being Demanded; It's Something Quite Different.  Given that no one alive today was either a slave or owned slaves and most of the progeny of slaves are exponentially better off than they would have been had their ancestors not been taken to America in the first place, exactly why are reparations warranted?  In fact, they're not, and that's the point.  It's not reparations that are being demanded, it's revenge, which is a completely different thing altogether.

Why Are You Still a Democrat?  Slavery was the universal foundation of economies everywhere.  When Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" it sent an earthquake throughout the world.  Everybody knew that, eventually, slavery as an institution was doomed, especially in the United States of America.  When the Constitution was being developed, northern abolitionists didn't want to count slaves for purposes of determining the sizes of Congressional delegations.  After all, they couldn't vote for their representatives — and if they could vote, they would vote for abolitionists.  Slave-holding states feared that slavery might be abolished by legislation.  They wanted to count all slaves.  The compromise was the three-fifths rule.  It wasn't "blacks are only three fifths of a man."  It was "Hey!  They can't vote!"  That rule magnified the sizes of slave-holding states' Congressional delegations.  Rather than a zero-fifths rule, it was more than anything else the reason that slavery was ended by the Civil War instead of by legislation.

HUH? Biden Appointee Asks The UN For 5 Million Per Black In Reparations, And To End Slavery In America.  Howard Law Professor Justin Hansford addressed the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent last week and called for the establishment of a United Nations Reparations Tribunal that could order the payment of reparations to African Americans.  Professor Hansford objected that white lawyers and politicians have been allowed to control this debate in the United States for too long: [...] Professor Hansford is a scholar who has written extensively on critical race theory.  He has been an advocate for not only reparations but "police abolition."  [Video clip]

Reparations demands are spiking and Democrats have this astonishing reaction.  "It's time to pay."  Those four words from Missouri Democrat Rep. Cori Bush are being heard a lot by Democratic politicians across the country this month.  For Bush, the debt amounts to $14 trillion in reparations for Black Americans. [...] Reparations and sanctuary cities have long been the bread and butter of identity politics.  For years, Democratic politicians have campaigned on these "moral imperatives" in passing sanctuary laws and setting up reparation task forces.  It is the equivalent of a compounding interest on credit card debt.  Each election Democrats used these issues for short-term political gains.  Now those bills are coming due and Democratic leaders are balking.  President Joe Biden and Congress are in a potentially lethal game of chicken over the looming default over our debt.  It would not seem an ideal time to demand an additional $14 trillion, but Bush declared, "Black people in our country cannot wait any longer."  She was joined by members like Reps.  Barbara Lee, D-CA, Jamaal Bowman, D-NY, and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI.

The Left Has Pushed the Envelope.  California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit.  Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar "reparations" payout to the state's Black residents.  No one has any idea where the money for that would come from.  No one can define who would qualify.  No one can explain why a state that never allowed slavery eight generations ago now owes selected Californians billions of dollars it does not have.  One of the reparations board leaders asserts Blacks might be willing to accept an "installment" plan of payments.

What reparations really are about.  Fox reported, "San Francisco reparations task force member touts tax on billionaires to get $5 million per black city resident.  "Reparations advocates argue that San Francisco's government had 'played a role in undermining black wealth and actively displacing the city's black population.'"  The story said, "Reparations task force member Reverend Amos Brown told the New York Times, 'Of all these billionaires in San Francisco, you could establish a reparations fund' to pay millions to black residents."  Does that list of tax-for-reparations billionaires list include Robert F. Smith, who founded private equity firm Vista Equity Partners in 2000?  Jay-Z?  Rihanna?  Tyler Perry?  The Fox story continued, "California is one of multiple states negotiating over economic reparations for black Americans whose ancestors were victimized by the Atlantic slave trade and its legacy, despite the fact California was designated as a free state when it joined the Union in 1850.

The Absurdities of Our Age.  How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?  The state currently faces a $31 billion annual deficit — and it's climbing.  The state's $100 billion high-speed rail project is inert, a veritable Stonehenge of concrete monoliths without a foot of track laid down.  California's income tax rates are already the highest in the nation.  Its sales taxes, electricity rates, and gas taxes and prices are among the steepest in the country.  And for what?  Crime, homelessness, and medieval decay characterize the once great downtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  It is now not safe to walk alone in any major California city after dark.  Shoplifting and smash-and-grab theft are no longer treated as real crimes.  The result is the mass flight of brand stores from our downtowns and inner cities, with all the accustomed cries of "racism," even as racist public prosecutors pick and choose whether to indict the arrested on the basis of race.  California infrastructure, once the best in the county, is now among the worst.  Decaying and crowded freeways, inadequate water storage, and pot-holed streets are the new norm.  Once robust gas, oil, mining, and timber industries are nearly inert.  The state's public schools are dysfunctional.

Do Whites Also Deserve Reparations?  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?

Tampa Jumps Onboard The Reparations Train As A Black Fella Demands 3 Million Dollars For His Suffering As A Slave.  A Tampa, Florida, resident wants elected officials to forget about the "nonsense" of homelessness and violent crime, and to instead focus on what matters:  giving $3 million in reparations to every black person.  "All this nonsense, homelessness, and all this other garbage y'all talk about, police violence, and all this stuff, don't nobody care about that, though nobody real care about that — we care about our reparations, and we have to put white people on notice that we want our reparations," Tony Daniel told the Tampa City Council. "We want our reparations.  $3 million per person.  $3 million per person, right here in this city.  That's the only thing black people got to care about.  All this other nonsense you're talking about.  We do not care about," he continued.  [Video clip]

Democrats Are The Brainless Party.  The policies being pushed by the party aren't just brainless, they're dangerous.  Rep. Cori Bush, D-Missouri, this week introduced a Reparations Now Resolution that would provide $14 trillion in funds to descendants of American slaves.  "What we're talking about is freedom and equity and calling on this country to acknowledge the harm that it has inflicted," Bush said.  Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., tweeted in support of the bill saying:  "Reparations means equity.  Reparations means justice.  Reparations means dismantling the systems that have kept us marginalized."  Aside from the impossibility of figuring out how to divide the spoils, to say nothing of raising the money, a reparations bill would be massively divisive, given that 68% of Americans oppose it, including 58% of Hispanics and 65% of Asians.  Just 48% of rank-and-file Democrats back reparations.

The Editor says...
Representative Barbara Lee has been in the U.S. Congress for 25 years, yet she claims there are "systems that have kept us marginalized."  Cry on Oprah Winfrey's shoulder.

Squad Member Cori Bush Demands 14 Trillion From Whites In Reparations.  A number of House Democrats led by Rep. Cori Bush introduced a resolution Thursday to reignite a push for federal reparations that would amount to over half the U.S. GDP.  The resolution states that the U.S. has a 'legal and moral' obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of black people and calls for $14 trillion to be paid — 'at least the amount of the black white wealth gap,' Bush told DailyMail.com during a press conference.  The entire U.S. GDP was $25 trillion in 2022.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
If there's a "wealth gap," maybe there is a reason other than racism.  Maybe it's because some people make better decisions than other people.  Maybe some people are better at long-range planning than other people.  Maybe some people refrain from spending money on tattoos, lottery tickets, cigarettes and fancy fingernails.  Maybe some people work hard and stay out of prison for their entire lives!

California Dems sowed the reparations wind and are reaping the whirlwind.  One day, America's black citizens will realize that Democrats always make promises they will not or cannot fulfill.  The latest example is the reparations folly currently playing out in California.  Black Californians are beginning to realize they were watching Kabuki reparations theater. [...] Despite the task force only being advisory, blacks really believed that its recommendations would send money their way.  How much money is an interesting question.  Last week, the task force approved a comprehensive "reparations" plan.  It cited myriad "atrocities" on which it tried to put a price tag.  According to the task force, health harms from racism have cost individual blacks $966,921 in health value; "mass incarceration and over-policing" are calculated at $159,792 lost per year; housing discrimination requires $148,099 in compensation per person; unjust property takings can't even be reduced to a dollar amount; and the devaluation of African American business comes in at $77,000 per person.  The grand total is over $1.3 million per person.  Those were the big "harms and atrocities."  Others include "labor discrimination, segregated education, lack of representation in government, environmental harm, transgenerational harm, and other harms."  Only the first yielded a calculation, coming in at $35,742 per person.

The Editor says...
Someone else's racism does not affect your health, unless you allow it to.  The compensation for "mass incarceration" should require proof of incarceration and proof of innocence.  (If you're incarcerated, it doesn't matter how many others were, too.)  Housing discrimination has been illegal for years, so if you have such a claim you should have already filed it.  Over-policing never hurt a black neighborhood.  The devaluation of African American business has no bearing on someone who has never owned a business.  Above all, nobody is entitled to reparations for slavery if that person was never a slave.  No one is entitled to compensation for a lifetime of their own bad decisions.

Gavin Newsom Backtracks: Open to Cash Reparations for Slavery, After All.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) now says he is open to the idea of cash reparations for slavery, after he indicated several days ago he was opposed to the idea, which was recommended by his own task force on the issue. [...] Fox News Digital reported that Newsom was declining to back the committee's forthcoming recommendations, saying that confronting the legacy of slavery "is about much more than cash payments."  Now, however, after a predictable media storm and backlash from the black activists whose hopes he had raised with the reparations task force, Newsom is moving back in the opposite direction.

The Counterattack of Reason.  The nonsensical notion fanned by California's Governor Gavin Newsom for votes that a state which never had slavery should compel those who never owned slaves to pay those who never were slaves, seems to have hit the rocks of reality.  The reparations panel he installed to look into this was endorsing payments as high as $1.2 million for every black California resident.  At this point, looking at a huge budget deficit, not incidentally due to the Democrat mismanagement of his state, Newsom blinked.  It was reported that he denied he meant "cash reparations" and then, in the face of blowback from disappointed grifters, his spokesman denied that he meant what had been reported.

Reparations: A Slow Motion Riot.  The California reparations controversy continues to spin out of control as we head for either a major confrontation or hyperinflation.  It appears that Governor Gavin Newsom will reject the latest proposal, but expectations have already been stoked to the point where politicians will have no graceful exit. [...] Resist the temptation to feel secure if you do not live in California.  The reparations movement has metastasized throughout the United States.  A similar task force exists in Detroit that may soon become the bane of Michigan taxpayers.  At least 95 colleges now consider varying degrees of similar proposals for draining their own coffers.  Activists in Chicago push for one billion dollars in reparations related to recent "gentrification" issues.  A Duke University professor has advocated reparations nationwide totaling 12 trillion dollars.  His demand has since grown to 14 trillion dollars.  A Denver councilwoman has proposed reparations to be funded by a special tax on white-owned businesses.  The numbers are staggering.  More staggering is the callousness with which those that know better throw these numbers around with little regard for math, morality, or realism of any kind.

California Reparations Commission Demands Formal State Apology for Reagan's Use of 'Welfare Queen'.  As the power-drunk California Reparations Commission continues its ridiculous demands on the Democrat-controlled state to make amends for slavery and racism, the task force is now demanding a formal state apology for former Gov Ronald Reagan's use of the term "welfare queen."  Never mind that California never in its history allowed slavery.  Never mind that the task force claimed Reagan used the term while he served as governor from January 1967 to January 1975, but in reality, he used it during the 1976 presidential campaign after he left the governor's mansion.  And never mind that Reagan's reference to "welfare queen" referred to one person — a bi-racial woman named Linda Taylor, who was prosecuted for welfare fraud and reportedly abused the system.  Nonetheless, as reported by Fox News, the task force claims "welfare queen" is a racist term primarily used to denigrate single black women who live on government benefits.

The Editor says...
[#1] Reagan is dead.  Get over it.  [#2] Never apologize for the truth; especially the truth spoken by somebody else.  [#3]  Anybody who "who live[s] on government benefits" (other than Social Security payback checks) should be subjected to derision and mockery.

What do reparations repair?  Step One is to recognize that race itself is not the problem.  My experiences with black Americans have been closely comparable to those with all other races.  Some white people are obnoxious, insufferable, and even dangerous.  Likewise with black people, Asians, and others.  For the most part, however, Americans outside the major cities are polite, pleasant, and helpful, without regard to race.  In my travels through the rural Deep South, I have been greatly impressed by that.  Step Two is to recognize that fact, and to give it as much weight (actually, more) as the news coverage involving riots and proposed racial reparations.  Where racial tensions do exist, they usually involve political opportunism.  A generation of young Americans has been carefully trained to look for any hint of offense from others.  Race-related offenses are only a part of the dynamic.  There is a plethora of factions, including the highly active alphabetized identities of sexual proclivities, ethnicities, and ideologies.

Dems starting to discover that reparations demands are a political trap.  In California, which likes to see itself as a trend-maker for the rest of the nation, the Democrat-dominated Legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill, AB-3121, establishing a "Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans," effective October 2, 2020.  Nine members were to be appointed, 5 by the governor and 2 each by the leaders of the state house and senate.  But despite the law's mandate that "Members shall be drawn from diverse backgrounds to represent the interests of communities of color throughout the state," 8 of the 9 members were African Americans — which means that they also had a personal stake in the outcome of their deliberations.  Otherwise known as a "conflict of interest," as Daniel J. Flynn points out.  Is it any surprise, then, that the task force ended up with a set of recommendations that would bankrupt the state, costing an estimated $800 billion, two-and-a-half times the state's annual budget?

Reparations Derangement Syndrome.  A panel in California, where rotten public policy ideas metastasize like a fungus growing in dark, slimy conditions, has approved paying reparations to descendants of slaves.  It is impossible to overstate just how insane this is.  The reparations task force, appointed by Boy Gov. Gavin Newsom, voted Saturday to recommend the state pay out as much as $800 billion to the descendants of enslaved or free black people who were in the U.S. by the end of the 19th century.  That's 2.5 times the size of California's annual budget.  Recipients could rake in as much as $1.2 million each.  Or more.  Much more.  Because San Francisco's reparations advisory committee has recommended the city's qualified African American residents be given a $5 million lump sum.

California Task Force Approves 1.1 Million In Reparations Per Black Person, Black Complain They Want 200 Million Each.  California's reparations task force has approved recommendations which could give black residents $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and discrimination.  California's reparations task force has approved recommendations which could give black residents $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and discrimination.  [Video clip]

California reparations panel approves payments of up to $1.2 million to every Black resident.  The California Reparations Task Force formally recommended that the state offer payments of up to $1.2 million to every qualifying Black resident.  The task force held a public meeting in Oakland, California, on Saturday and voted on the final set of recommendations to be sent to the state's legislators.  The nine-member panel called on the state to offer its Black residents a formal apology in addition to the payments.  "Reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they have the potential to address long-standing racial disparities and inequalities," Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said after attending the meeting.

California Reparations: "Justice-Involved" Californians O.J. Simpson And Bill Cosby To Finally Get Their Just Deserts.  A California panel approved recommendations on Saturday that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to Black residents to address past injustices.  The proposals to state legislators are the nation's most sweeping effort to devise a program of reparations.  The nine-member Reparations Task Force, whose work is being closely monitored by politicians, historians and economists across the country, produced a detailed plan for how restitution should be handled to address a myriad of racist harms, including housing discrimination, mass incarceration and unequal access to health care.  Created through a bill signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in the wake of the nationwide racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the panel has spent more than a year conducting research and holding listening sessions from the Bay Area to San Diego.

California reparations task force votes to approve restitution plan.  California's reparations task force voted on Saturday in favor of a reparations program, the first of its kind in the United States.  The committee of nine members voted to give final approval a plan with detailed explanations for how restitution should be made to victims of systemic racism, housing discrimination, mass incarceration, and health care inequities.  The plan now goes to state legislature for approval.  If passed, it could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to black residents of the Golden State.

Activists demand higher payments from California reparations task force: '$200 million' per person.  Activists on Saturday demanded that the state of California pay millions of dollars to each Black resident in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery and subsequent discrimination, dismissing the mammoth proposals from California's reparations task force as too little.  The demands were made at a highly explosive official meeting of the task force, which was created by state legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020.  The committee was hearing comments from the public as it considers final recommendations to submit to the California Legislature, which will then decide whether to implement the measures and send them to Newsom's desk to be signed into law.  An activist identified as Reverend Tony Pierce was one of the most outspoken people at the gathering, making reference to the famous "40 acres and a mule" promise to former slaves when he took the podium.

California reparations panel hints at $1.2 million payments to each Black resident.  Economists advising California's task force for reparations have estimated that it will cost $1.2 million per Black resident, paid over a lifetime.  California is one of multiple states debating the feasibility of economic reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were victimized by the Atlantic slave trade and its legacy, despite the fact California was designated as a free state when it joined the Union.  The push for reparations gained major momentum in 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, but it remains an economically and culturally controversial topic.  California, which frequently makes national headlines for experimental progressive policies, has recently reached an economic estimate.

Dr. Phil says Duke University professor's call for $14 trillion in reparations would be an 'absolute disaster' for the nation.  Dr Phil on Tuesday warned an economics professor's plan for $350,000 in reparations to 40 million descendants of slaves would be 'an absolute disaster', arguing that giving a lump sum was not the best way to help anyone.  The television host on Tuesday invited on his show Duke University's William Darity, who co-authored the book 'From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century'.  Darity suggested the US government issue the funds in much the same way it sent out checks to millions of Americans during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, at a cost of $14 trillion.

Kamala Harris announces what amounts to a stealth reparations plan.  In a little-noted speech last week, VP Kamala Harris revealed that the federal government will be giving out gifts amounting to $1.7 billion dollars to "minority" businesses.  This amounts to a stealth reparations plan, as the recipients likely will be predominantly Black.  It is unclear where the money will come from, though there is still cash from Covid appropriations and the massive spending bills available.  Disguising the gifts, targeted on the basis of race, as loans that don't have to be repaid is particularly obnoxious.  What kind of lesson is it for budding entrepreneurs that you don't have to repay money that you borrowed — because you have to approved racial identity?

Medical Reparations Have Arrived.  The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) are implementing new policies to make skin color a crucial factor in who receives life-saving kidney transplants.  The shift is perhaps the most dangerous victory for wokeness in health care to date.  In the name of "equity," UNOS and OPTN purport to be expanding black patients' access to kidney transplants.  They essentially claim that the longstanding system for such transplants is racist, pointing to how black patients make up 30 percent of the dialysis population and transplant wait list but receive a smaller fraction of kidney transplants.  Activists assert that this disparity reflects bias on the part of treating physicians, particularly when referring black patients for early kidney care.

Reparations: The grift that keeps on giving.  Think of the absurdity and mental gymnastics of reparations.  Who gets them?  Who gives them?  What if my ancestors lived somewhere without slavery (like California, ironically), or what about Black people who came to the U.S. after slavery was abolished?  Or what about people who are mixed-race?  Does Barack Obama's White half owe reparations to his Black half?  Depending on how you define reparations, one could make a strong argument that reparations have been being paid for the last 55 years or so, since LBJ's so-called Great Society legislation.  How many countless billions have gone into programs designed, at least on paper, to help Black Americans?  Housing developments, affirmative action programs, equal opportunity programs, myriad social welfare and food assistance programs — all with the stated goal of helping people get a leg up.  Were those not reparations?  They were likely paid for by White taxpayers — and, ironically, also by productive, successful Black taxpayers.

The stupidest government idea ever.  The government is presently considering modifying the Census to identify recipients for reparations.  If the idea is operationalized, a possible future headline will be "2030 Census Shows America Has a Black Majority." That would confirm that this was the U.S. government's most brain-dead idea ever.  However, with a couple of tweaks, it could be a brilliant idea. [...] It's pretty clear that, in America, identity trumps biology, and people can change their identity on any given day, like the day the Census is completed.  It's not like this doesn't happen all the time.  The multiracial population jumped from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020.  The number of people who identify as American Indian or Native Alaskan jumped 75% between 2010 and 2020, and in the same period, the number of Latinos identifying as white fell from 26.7 million to 12.6 million.  Meanwhile, the white-identifying population fell by 31 million.  With all the white supremacy and white racism blarney, who could blame anyone for not wanting to identify as white?

The reparations bidding war has begun.  Reparations for slavery, arguably the daffiest idea in our nation's history, have entered the mainstream.  In California, it would be ordained that every resident with black skin shall receive "compensation" for something — at the outset $360,000 from the taxpayers, which include everyone with black skin.  Immediately, there were cries that it should be higher.  First $1 million, then $2 million and some prefer $5 million each.  California's profligate politicians already spend far more than the taxpayers give them, but that does not matter.  They clearly are assuming the federal government will bail them out of the fiscal difficulties they create.  This will help the cancer spread.  If we are paying for California, why not pay reparations in our state, too, every liberal in every state will ask.

A Pandemic of Cognitive Dissonance.  We're facing yet another pandemic.  It's not a viral outbreak.  This crisis is a mental disorder outbreak — rather like mass hysteria.  The outbreak has spread worldwide, but fortunately only affects those of a leftward political persuasion.  The condition is cognitive dissonance. [...] Condemning America for its past use of slavery while helping companies profit from the current use of slavery — and calling oneself woke for doing it — is an example of cognitive dissonance.

The Nightmare of Reparations.  The [California Reparations] Task Force is considering a payment of $360,000 each to 1.8 million black people in California.  The total cost would be $640 billion.  (California's total budget this year is only $286 billion — a number with which the Task Force is apparently unconcerned.)  Undoubtedly, many Republicans will argue that the proposal is "too high."  This argument will dominate the public debate, as it is the only anti-reparations argument that the national media will allow to break through the usual cloud of disinformation.  The result of such a debate will be a lower number (also unaffordable) that might be enacted as a compromise.  Try to imagine a number that would be affordable — either for California or the U.S. as a whole since the federal government is the ultimate source of payment.  The U.S. is over 30 trillion dollars in debt.  To make this proposal affordable, the payments would have to be reversed.  Instead of receiving money, the 1.8 million black people contemplated in California would have to pay to the U.S. government $360,000 per person per year for the next 50 years.  That would result in enough money to pay off the current U.S. debt.  Of course, that will not happen and the U.S. debt will never be repaid.  But it serves as a reminder that any amount of reparations would be too much.  There is no acceptable compromise.

Gavin Newsom is cornered by the reparations clown show he unleashed.  California's Governor Gavin Newsom finds himself in such an awkward position that he is refusing comment on a gathering storm that will not go away, and which has the possibility of turning his presidential ambitions to ashes.  Newsom is known to many as "Governor Brylcreem" for the large amount of greasy pomade he favors for his coiffure.  He will need all the lubricant he can come up with to slip through the trap he has constructed for himself. [...] Democrats totally control both houses of the legislature, and who among them would vote against reparations?  Blacks' share of California's population is well below the national average, but in a state utterly dominated by the left, it would take courage — and leadership from the governor — to go against the fad (and left wing obsession) of reparations.

'$5 million is too little:' Activists tell California reparations committee to aim higher.  Activists on Wednesday demanded that the state of California pay millions of dollars to each Black resident in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery and subsequent discrimination, dismissing the idea of payments of $5 million per person as "nothing" and "too little."  The demands were made at an in-person meeting of the California Reparations Task Force, which was created by state legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020.  The committee was hearing comments from the public as it considers final recommendations to submit to the California Legislature, which will then decide whether to implement the measures and send them to Newsom's desk to be signed into law.  The task force is considering a proposal to give just under $360,000 per person to approximately 1.8 million Black Californians who had an ancestor enslaved in the U.S., putting the total cost of the program at about $640 billion.

The elephant in the reparations room.  Of course, slavery was ended in the United States in 1865, one hundred and fifty-eight years ago, so no white person alive today in the United States is guilty of being a slave owner, nor are there any blacks alive today in the United States who have suffered as slaves, at least not in America, but let that pass.  That is not the elephant.  The elephant that no black activist is willing to admit exists is the fact that black slave owners existed.  And how can they admit that?  They are demanding millions of dollars for blacks in San Francisco, on the ground that blacks in San Francisco have suffered from slavery.  It doesn't fit the narrative to ponder that there were plenty of blacks back in the day who owned slaves.  It is inconvenient to bring up Anthony Johnson, father of American slavery, a black man who demanded that a court bind his black indentured servant, John Casor, a slave for life.  The court obliged Mr. Johnson, and American slavery was born.

Will We Go Gently Into That Good Night?  The latest outrage is brought directly to you from San Francisco (the wackiest, wokiest city in America) — the city "could become the first major US city" to fund slavery reparations, and their proposed plan would award $5 million to "each eligible black resident."  This is seriously being considered. [...] Ask yourself these two consequential questions:  [A} Who are these crazies being given serious time and consideration for these ridiculous ideas?  [B] Where are the half a trillion dollars to facilitate funding this idea to be found?  Obviously, these ill-gotten gains will be taken from the soon-to-be poor!  These people and millions more have no filter.  If they can think of it, they want it!  It would end right here except for one fact: they have the political power

California Reparations Board Seeks to Resurrect 1860s Agency That Helped Freed Former Slaves.  First, as we recently reported, San Francisco is poised to hand out $5 million in pretend "reparations" — taxpayer money — to every black resident of the city.  And California was never a slave-owning state, mind you.  Now, the California Reparations Task Force is recommending reviving a modern version of the Freedmen's Bureau — an all-encompassing agency created in 1865 to assist previously enslaved black people — to administer any benefits related to the aforementioned taxpayer handouts.  Crazy?  We're talking about the People's Republic of Woke California, what do you think?

CBS Cheers SF Reparations Proposal to Give Black Residents $5 Million, Guaranteed Incomes.  Amid the litany of weather reports and coverage of a U.S. drone being downed in the Black Sea after colliding with a Russian jet and recent woke banks going under, Wednesday's [3/15/2023] CBS Mornings made it interesting when they spent a few minutes fawning over San Francisco moving closer to offering $5 million, guaranteed incomes of $97,000, and homes for the price of $1 to Black residents as reparations.  This was despite the fact that, as they admitted, a Hoover Institution estimate found it could cost San Franciscans of other races (and presumably those in poverty) $600,000 in new taxes.  Talk about a case of mass racial arson.  But for the far-left CBS, such a move would be fantastic.

The Editor says...
I didn't know there were that many former slaves living in California.

San Franciscans line up at board meeting to support a reparations plan, and no one asks how the city will foot the bill.  San Francisco residents lined up at a city board meeting last night to share their full-throated support of a wide-eyed reparations plan that would award every black resident $5 million, wipe their personal debt, guarantee $97,000 incomes for 250 years and $1 homes.  But no one at the emotional meeting — where residents burst into song and begged to be made 'whole' — asked how the struggling, debt-addled city might pay for it.  Reparations are being considered in various Democratic cities around America as a means of providing compensation to the descendants of enslaved African-Americans.

If We're Doing Reparations, Here's Who Should Pay Them.  The Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist party, with six of the nine planks in its platform dealing with abolishing slavery, equal rights, civil rights, and voting rights in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, respectively.  The Democrats, on the other hand, had in their platforms in 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856 that they proudly supported and defended slavery and the right of a person to own another person.  They believed in it so strongly that when Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican ever elected, made it clear that he would rid the country of the scourge of slavery, the Democrats packed up their tents and seceded from the Union, causing a war that pitted citizens against each other, ending in almost 800,000 dead Americans.  If one dime of reparations is paid to family members of slaves who suffered under the iron rod of a political party that fought a war to keep those slaves in bondage, it should be paid by the Democrat party.

Race-Based Hatred Permeates the Black Population.  Throughout the south in 1860, upwards of 4-5,000 black families owned slaves and supported the Confederacy.  In 1655, Anthony Johnson, a Black man, was the first person, Black or White, to outright own an African slave in the colony of Virginia.  Further, Blacks during this period could and did own White indentured servants or de facto slaves.  Nor was the so-called "White race" exempt from slavery in the Americas.  During this same period of time, there were untold thousands of Irish slaves in the Americas as the British throughout the seventeenth century sold and transported vast numbers of Irish natives to the plantations in the West Indies and the colony of Virginia.  Self-styled modern historians and race provocateurs attempt to diminish this reality by referring to the Irish slaves in the seventeenth century as "indentured servants", but their situation and conditions meet the modern definition of slavery. [...] [B]eing a descendant of a slave does not qualify one for any special treatment or reparations as virtually every person alive today has an ancestor that was a slave.

Sacramento mayor to reparations task force: 'I wholeheartedly support reparations and I think everyone should'.  California's reparations task force held its second in-person meeting on Saturday, where members of the public were allowed to give comments as the state legislature considers whether to implement a reparations program for descendants of Black slaves, and what that program would look like.  Hundreds of passionate people spoke in the two meetings on Friday and Saturday, voicing their support for cash payments to Black Americans, or grants of land or other compensation.  Some called for a renewed Freedmen's Bureau — referring to the Reconstruction-era federal agency Congress tasked with providing food, medical aid, clothing and other needs to newly freed slaves and helping them find jobs.  Sacramento Democratic Mayor Darrell Steinberg was among those who spoke Saturday, declaring his wholehearted support for reparations.

California reparations panel RAISES amount it wants to give 1.8 million black people from $220,000 to $360,000 each.  Black Californians could be in line for $360,000 each as part of the state's plan to dish out 'reparations' to descendants of slaves.  Secretary of State Shirley Weber told a meeting today that California must 'admit its sins and change the narrative,' to pave the way for initiatives similar to ones already being considered in other states.  But there has been no detail about how the $650 billion project will be funded amid concerns over California's growing deficit which is expected to worsen due to a jobs blood bath in its tax-generating Silicon Valley.

Is This the Greatest Job of Political Trolling Ever?  On Tuesday, State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-11th district) filed SB 1248, gloriously titled "The Ultimate Cancel Act," which, in its ultra-sanitized summary, would call on the state of Florida to "immediately cancel the filings of a political party if certain conditions exist; requiring the division to follow a certain procedure; requiring the division to provide a specified notice to certain voters; authorizing a canceled political party to reregister with the Department of State; providing procedures for an organization to reregister as a political party."  Sounds fair enough, right?  But that's before the fun begins.  Later on, in the bill's text, we learn that SB 1248 would ask the state to "immediately cancel the filings of a political party, to include its registration and approved status as a political party, if the party's platform has previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude."  You know what that means, right?

No math was involved in San Francisco's reparations plan to grant black residents $5 million each.  In January San Francisco's African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) released it's plan for making things right.  The big headline to come out of the plan was a reparations payment of $5 million to each black San Franciscan. [...] If the requirements sound a bit confusing, that was my take as well.  In fact, it wasn't clear to me that you even had to reside in San Francisco or to have ever done so in order to be eligible for the payment.  That struck me as a wrinkle in the plan and maybe a sign that the authors hadn't been that careful in crafting it.  In any case, there was also another recommendation in the plan which seemed fairly significant but which didn't get as much media attention.  The AARAC proposal had an economic empowerment section which would require the city to supplement the income of all African-American households for the next 250 years.

Tennessee county approves $5M study on slavery reparations following death of Tyre Nichols.  The woke Board of Commissioners for Shelby County in Tennessee, which also includes Memphis, voted to approve $5 million to launch a feasibility study to examine reparations for the descendants of slaves as a number of members cited the death of Tyre Nichols as a reason for it.  The feasibility study aims to determine whether the county should "establish, develop, and implement reparations."  The commission has 13 members.  The eight black members all voted in favor of the study.  The five white members all voted against it or abstained, according to the Daily Mail.  The study is the latest in a string of reparation initiatives being pushed across the country.  It follows the killing of a black man named Tyre Nichols by five black police officers in Memphis in January.  Unbelievably, the commissioners in favor of reparations cited Nichols' death as part of their reasoning for the study.

The Dead End of Reparations.  [Scroll down] Americans do not learn about the history of law and the state and justice in public school, nor in college.  If you want to educate yourself so you can write what I have written here, you have to read the books and ignore the union teachers and the woke professors and tread where cupcakes fear to tread, outside the Overton Window.  But why, you ask?  Why, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, and fifty years after the abolition of racial discrimination, why is the New York Times poisoning us with a reactionary movement for "reparations?"  What is the point?  The point is that under the present regime of the Anointed, there comes a time when the Mascots fall away from a blind devotion to their masters.  It happened with the working class, left by their Anointed rulers to die of despair; it is presently happening with TERF women who really don't like men in the women's bathroom.  One fine day, the descendants of the African slaves may tumble to the truth that, to the exalted Anointed, they are just the Benighted in blackface.  Meanwhile, our Anointed ruling class is doing its level best — which admittedly is not that good — to keep its black Mascots all riled up and voting 90 percent for Democrats.

First, They Came for the Confederates.  Slaves certainly didn't "build this country" — America was nothing resembling the economic juggernaut that it would later become when slavery was summarily abolished in 1865, and one could hardly suggest with any seriousness that the agrarian part of the country where slaves existed was the most substantial driver of America's eventual economic and industrial might.  Furthermore, if the Founders were truly enthusiastic about exploiting slave labor as a profitable means of "building" their fledgling nation, their first actions might have been to proliferate the practice rather than legislating its limitations.  For example, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which created the legal structure for the eventual states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, included an absolute prohibition of slavery in the new territories — "and there was no objection, north or south," Robert Selph Henry writes in The Story of the Confederacy.  In fact, the very first Congress after the ratification of the Constitution included a provision allowing for federal enforcement of the Ordinance — the law passed without objection and was signed by our Virginian president, George Washington.  In 1808, the importation of slaves was likewise prohibited, as the path was made clear for this development in the Constitution.  Once again, the Virginians and Southern states didn't object to this impediment to the slave trade.  In truth, far from being a benefit to the states which allowed it, slavery was known to be a dreadful economic burden of which even plantation owners in the Antebellum South were keenly aware.

California's reparations proposals may carry a steep price for Democrats.  A long-awaited meeting of San Francisco's board of supervisors was set this week to discuss the recommendation of its African American Reparations Advisory Committee to give $5 million to each eligible Black resident as reparations.  The meeting was postponed, but the city and the state soon must make a decision on a bill that has come due for Democratic politicians.  The city council voted unanimously to create the reparations committee in 2020.  Even though California was a free state without slavery before the Civil War, the committee's "particular focus has been the era of urban renewal, perhaps the most significant example of how the City and County of San Francisco as an institution played a role in undermining Black wealth and actively displacing the city's Black population."  That could be viewed as only a partial payment for race-related injuries.

We Deserve Reparations From Stupid People.  The City of San Francisco, the bayside burg that gave us Nancy Pelosi and sidewalk toilets, is now proposing the ultimate in nonsense — a few million bucks of reparations for everyone whose grandparents came from the right continent at the right time.  Actually, it's more generous than that, because you may also be eligible if you were a victim of the Drug War — that is, if you were a scumbag drug dealer justly imprisoned for slinging poison before the narcotics were effectively legalized by the same leftists whose hometown proposes this giveaway.  Well, if a bunch of people who were never slaves should get free money from people who never owned slaves, I propose that the people forking over the dollars be the liberal San Francisco Democrats who never owned slaves.

If Reparations Are Owed, the Democratic Party Should Pay Them.  Let's analyze the issue of reparations from the standpoint of morality and practicality.  Most people believe that compensation for misdeeds should come from the people who caused the misdeeds.  For example, if John Smith and Joe Brown recklessly damage your car, you expect Smith and Brown (or their insurance companies) to pay for the repairs.  Normally, you would not expect the repairs to be financed by the entire town in which you live:  That would make no sense.  What if Joe Brown died shortly after the accident?  Would you expect his children or grandchildren to pay you?  Probably not.  Instead, your claim for compensation would be focused on the surviving reckless driver, John Smith.  We can apply this logic to the reparations issue.  Obviously, no person alive today existed during the slave era or as an adult in the subsequent Jim Crow or Ku Klux Klan eras.  However, there are certain responsible entities that existed then and now:
  •   The United State government
  •   Eleven slave states of the Confederacy plus four union slave states
  •   A handful of corporations with origins dating before the end of slavery
  •   The Democratic Party
I did not include the Republican Party for a very good reason:  It was formed in 1854 by a bunch of abolitionists for the express purpose of ending slavery, which was accomplished at enormous cost 11 years later.

California Secretary of State: We Can 'Lead the Nation' on Reparations.  California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley N. Weber said that the Golden State can "lead the nation" by passing reparations for the descendants of black slaves.  California entered the Union as a free state on Sep. 9, 1850.  The state has been considering reparations under a law proposed by Weber, then in the State Assembly, and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in 2020, during the height of the frenzy around the Black Lives Matter movement.  A committee was formed to consider proposals for reparations and to make recommendations to the legislature.  As Breitbart News has reported, reparations could amount to $230,000 per recipient, though some claim even that will not be enough.  The committee is due to report its final recommendations to the state legislature later this year for consideration.  California currently faces a budget deficit of roughly $22.5 billion.

How 'modern-day slavery' in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy.  Smartphones, computers and electric vehicles may be emblems of the modern world, but, says Siddharth Kara, their rechargeable batteries are frequently powered by cobalt mined by workers laboring in slave-like conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Kara, a fellow at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Kennedy School, has been researching modern-day slavery, human trafficking and child labor for two decades.  He says that although the DRC has more cobalt reserves than the rest of the planet combined, there's no such thing as a "clean" supply chain of cobalt from the country.  In his new book, Cobalt Red, Kara writes that much of the DRC's cobalt is being extracted by so-called "artisanal" miners — freelance workers who do extremely dangerous labor for the equivalent of just a few dollars a day.

White Supremacy, Racism and Malevolent Incitement.  All four races have enslaved, violently subjugated and exploited others in and outside of their racial group.  In fact, it is estimated that a virtually everyone alive today has an ancestor that was captured or sold as either coerced or chattel slaves.  Sadly, slavery still exists to this day in multiple countries in Africa as well as in India, China and Pakistan among other Asian countries, and across almost the entirety of the Middle East.  It is estimated that throughout the world today there are over 40 million human beings in slavery.  None of these countries or regions are populated or controlled by the Caucasian race or the nations of Western Civilization.  Further, by 1863 all Western countries and the colonies governed by them had abolished slavery in perpetuity and turned their attention to guaranteeing the rights of former slaves.  It is the only civilization, on a collective basis, to ever do so.  It is also the only civilization in the forefront of movements to end modern slavery.

The Left Is Fueling a New Racism.  I lived in pre-civil rights Atlanta where there were separate schools, separate bathrooms, and the baseball team was the Atlanta Crackers!  Today, it's more likely that leftist blacks are the ones who want separate schools, separate rights, and special reparations for their race.  As one anonymous post asserted, "Only in America can an ethnic group of black awareness month, black holiday, black only colleges, black only dating sites, and black only bars and clubs... and turn around and call everyone else racists!"  You don't have to look far to find evidence of extreme black racist demands.  In California, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every qualifying black California resident $5 million and absolve them of their outstanding personal debt.  This is madness.  California was a free state and did not condone slavery, but the committee is doing all it can to justify reparations.

More proof that the reparations hustle is all about greed and inciting race war.  Demands for "reparations" for the wrongs of slavery are poisonous, and can only lead to heightened racial conflict, which no doubt is the intent of some advocates.  But as official bodies like San Francisco's African American Reparations Advisory Committee proliferate, the greed underlying the victimology is becoming obvious.  The San Francisco body demanded an immediate transfer of wealth that would equal the wealth of the top 1½% of Americans to San Francisco blacks who met its criteria.  Now comes yet another race hustler with an equally if not more impractical demand.

If you give them an inch, will they not demand a mile?
'Breakfast Club' Race Hustler: Confiscate 25% of U.S. Economy, Redistribute to Blacks.  A racist in a tablecloth suit named Dr. Umar Johnson decreed on The Breakfast Club radio show recently that the American government must carve out a full quarter of all economic activity — in perpetuity.  "We get a 25% cut... every time America makes a dollar."  That would amount to approximately six trillion dollars annually.  He makes sure to emphasize this is a forever arrangement.  Specifically, he wants cash for the "psychological damages" wrought by slavery.  Nearly everything, apparently, counts as "psychological damage" to Dr. Johnson. "When you see a black man take the life of another black man, that's psychological damage [caused by white supremacy]," he explains.  I have previously elaborated on the logistical difficulties of administering such a program of reparations, such as determining who qualifies as sufficiently genetically black and the disproportionate historical impact of racism based on skin tone (called "colorism").  Another important consideration here is: what is the endpoint?  Does anyone seriously believe Dr. Johnson would be satisfied with a mere 25% cut of the pie?

U.S. government should pay $14 trillion in reparations to Black Americans, say authors William Darity and Kirsten Mullen.  To help close the racial wealth gap, the U.S. government should pay $14 trillion in reparations to Black Americans, according to William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen, authors of "From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century."  In an interview with CNBC, Darity, a Duke University professor, and Mullen, a folklorist and writer, said the federal government is financially responsible because it was culpable for the enslavement of Black Americans and legal segregation in the United States.  Mullen said "the federal government was party" to both the suppression of the Black vote and in some cases the destruction of Black people's property.  She added that "the federal government is also the only entity that has the capacity to pay the debt."  Darity and Mullen told CNBC that the cost of reparations would not need to be passed on to taxpayers.  "You don't necessarily have to raise taxes to undertake these massive expenditure projects," Darity said, citing the federal government's $4.6 trillion Covid-19 spending as an example.

The Quixotic Quest for Reparations.  A major justification for reparations is to equalize the racial wealth divide. [...] This wealth gap is massive and enduring.  According to recent Federal Reserve data, the average White family has eight times the wealth of the average Black family with the average Black family's wealth being 15% of what the average White family possesses.  Nineteen percent of Black families have zero or negative net wealth.  The gap extends far beyond income differences though this is significant.  Differences exist in inheritances, multiple savings and investment plans, plus how Whites gravitate toward investments that appreciate over time, especially home ownership and education. [...] Data also show that Blacks are less likely than Whites to save money — half of all Blacks have no retirement accounts.  Meanwhile, studies of all-too-common bankruptcies among super-rich professional athletes (many of whom are African American) revealed a weakness for conspicuously showing off, for example, gifting exotic cars to families and friends, over-the-top personalized jewelry, and hosting big-time nightclub extravagances.  Even a half-million-dollar windfall can vanish in a year or two, as these bankruptcies illustrate.

Reckless Reparations Reckoning.  Here are 10 reasons why the nation's — and especially California's — discussions of reparatory payouts are dangerous in a multiracial state, and why reparations are not viable either in an insolvent state or a bankrupt nation at large. [...] [#3] California is at the forefront of the reparation lobbying effort.  Yet it was neither a slave nor a Jim-Crow state.  On the eve of the Civil War, the federal census recorded only about 4,000 free black citizens residing in the free state of California, or about 1 percent of the nearly 400,000 residents in 1860.  The relatively new state remained part of the Union, in which no major battles of the war over slavery were waged.  The pathology did not exist anywhere in California and the population was overwhelmingly loyal to the Union.  In other words, reparations based on slavery is not a cohesive argument for the current-day 40 millions of California, in which over one-quarter of the residents were not even born in the United States. [...] [#9] There has not been slavery in the United States in some 158 years since the end of the Civil War.  If a generation can be defined as 25 years, there has not been a living American with personal experience of slavery in generations.

I'm all for San Francisco's reparations.  San Francisco's Human Rights Commission has laid a proposal on the table to pay reparations to African Americans in their city.  It's a modest proposal.  Only $5 million per black resident, provided they meet some modestly stringent requirements such as actually "identifying as black" and being actual San Francisco residents.  Having been built upon the California Gold Rush, the city is aware that people might flock to the city in search of a lucrative gold strike. [...] Other provisions include, on top of the $5 million one-time payment a supplementary income bonus to ensure that recipients meet the average median income of the region (currently $97,000 a year), and black residents are eligible to get this benefit for the next 250 years.  There are other provisions, but those are the biggies.  $5 million plus income supplementation for yourself and your descendants for 2 1/2 centuries.  I'm all for it.  100%.  San Francisco has a lot to atone for, and by all means, let's see justice done.  No justice, no peace!

Racial reparations solve nothing.  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.

SF Reparations Committee proposal demonstrates the greed and unreality behind demands for slavery reparations.  I am grateful to San Francisco's official African American Reparations Advisory Committee for the damage it has done to the notion that the current populace of the United States, none of whom were alive during slavery, owe some kind of debt to African Americans.  Its draft proposal recently released would elevate into the top 2% of wealth every African American resident of San Francisco who meets its criteria.  The notion that but for the "harms" it cites, including mortgage discrimination, the construction of public housing, and the "war on drugs," every African American would be rocketed into the ranks of the wealthiest Americans is patently absurd.  Add on the debt forgiveness it demands — the cancellation of mortgage, student and credit card debt — and the guarantee of at least area median income (currently $97,000 in the affluent Bay Area) regardless of any employment for two and half centuries, exposes it as a greedy fantasy of people who want unearned wealth.  On the upside, it doesn't propose the massive looting of other people's earned wealth to any African American who can move to the city.  The criteria:  ["]To qualify, people need to have identified as black on public records for at least 10 years and be at least 18 years old.  They also must qualify for two of a number of requirements, including having been born in the city or migrated to it between 1940 and 1996 and then lived there for 13 years.["]

Providence mayor thwarted in cash grab for reparations.  Mayor Jorge Elorza (Providence, RI) is an accomplished race baiter who never anticipated confronting charges of "racism" over his altruistic vision of launching a "truth and reparations commission."  The mayor is well-known for his ugly accusations against white constituents alleging their perpetrating "generations of pain and violence," but that's not his first line of offense.  The best way for whites to atone for their sins against people of color, according to Mayor Elorza, is to monetize their transgressions as far as the city budget will stretch.  That entailed a cash-grab of $10 million in a city budget already stretched to the limit.  Then the mayor encountered a stumbling block to what would have been a payout of $346.00 for each black resident in Providence.  Ironically, the funds could not be distributed on the basis of color because they had been earmarked from the federal government, which prohibits distribution of monies on a discriminatory color basis.

San Francisco reparations panel pitches $5M — each — to black residents.  A San Francisco panel studying reparations has proposed a one-time payment of $5 million to each black resident of the city deemed eligible as recompense for the "decades of harm they have experienced," according to a report on Monday.  "A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population ... and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy," the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee said in a draft report issued last month, Fox News Digital reported.  The committee also proposed wiping out all debts associated with educational, personal, credit card and payday loans for black households.

Why not fifty million?
San Fran's reparations committee proposes $5 million to each Black longtime resident, total debt forgiveness.  San Francisco's reparations committee has proposed paying each Black longtime resident $5 million and granting total debt forgiveness due to the decades of "systematic repression" faced by the local Black community.  The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee, which advises the city on developing a plan for reparations for Black residents, released its draft report last month to address reparations — not for slavery, since California was not technically a slave state, but "to address the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery."  "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," the draft states.

We Must Know the Past.  In America, many of our Founding Fathers were slaveholders, but they were also highly educated men who sought to establish a lasting democracy based on their realistic assessment of human nature.  No other world civilization has brought so much opportunity, safety, order, and wealth to the lives of its citizens.  For this we have Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and the other architects of our democracy to thank.  What our Founders established was a society in which individual rights were broadly protected and in which capitalism made possible an astounding improvement in the standard of living. [...] Is there any other way to interpret the meaning of "woke" than the relegation of large numbers of Americans to second-class citizenship?  What else is meant when California legislators speak of quarter-million-dollar reparations for every black citizen, to be paid for by the more affluent white and Asian population?  In effect, reparations amount to the seizure of retirement savings from hardworking Americans and its redistribution to others without regard for their refusal to work.  Reparations is an assault on the rule of law, which is intended to protect property rights and the safety and security of all Americans against unlawful seizure and the rule of the mob, but it is not just property rights that are at stake in the recent advancement of woke thinking.

A scholar is trying to give more dimension to Africa's colonial history.  For decades, American children have learned that, when the grasping, hate-filled Europeans arrived in North America, they were met by sweet, childlike Native Americans who experienced such genocidal hostility that they had to resort to brute force to defend themselves.  This Manichean history (good v. evil) denies the Native Americans agency and sophistication.  They were fully-realized people who engaged in the same behaviors as the Europeans (and often worse behaviors), except without the sophisticated weaponry.  It turns out the same is probably true of the colonial era in Africa. [...] History is interesting because nothing is all good or all bad.  Leftists, with their relentless demonizing of the West and their glorification of the non-West, not only make history boring, but they also set up unnecessary conflicts in the modern era while denying agency to both colonizers and colonized.

Reparations and 'The Woman King': Blackwashing Slavery.  When it comes to the absurdity of American taxpayers giving "reparations" to black descendants of slaves, it's hard to limit the number of objections.  These are the facts:  American slavery, though horrific, was legal.  It ended 157 years ago.  The government did not own slaves, the private sector did.  Most Southerners did not own slaves.  Nearly all slave owners were Democrats (so why should non-Democrats pay reparations?).  Hundreds of thousands of white Northerners lost their lives and suffered serious injuries fighting in the Civil War that ended slavery.  And that today, as conservative writer Michael Medved puts it, only about 5% of whites bear "a generational guilt" to slavery.  Then there's the role Africa itself played.

Why reparations now?  The absurdity of the concept of reparations for slavery, an institution that ended several generations ago, is beyond mind-boggling.  But there's a blatantly cynical reason for the sudden lurch in that direction: formerly reliable Black voters are now slipping away from the Democrats.  This also explains Biden's recently expressed profuse generosity towards the nations of sub-Saharan Africa.  What is also painfully obvious is the lame, demagogic pandering that is the Democrats' knee-jerk response, especially to a defecting constituency: just throw money at them and that'll keep 'em on the reservation.  Never mind the exposure to ridicule attached to redistributing money from people who never owned slaves to people who never were slaves, since the despicable practice was abolished over 150 years ago.  "Oh, the wealth and education gap that plagues the inner cities is the enduring legacy of slavery."  Even if this were true, just throwing money at the problem is of particularly dubious benefit.

Keywords:  Shakedown, extortion, menacing.
California activist Deon Jenkins threatens 'serious backlash,' demands more in reparation payout.  An activist warned California's reparations task force of "a serious backlash" if it does not honor his demands for a six-figure payout for eligible black residents.  Speaking at a meeting of the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans at Oakland City Hall on Wednesday, Deon Jenkins argued that every black Californian should receive a payment of around $800,000 to reflect average home prices in the state, KRCR reported.  "Either they're going to comply or it's going to be a serious backlash," Jenkins said in an interview following the hearing.

Black actor blasts $223,000 reparations payments suggested by California commission.  Actor Faizon Love has lashed out at the notion that black people in California will be given $223,000 in reparations, saying that the money will only be used to purchase luxury cars.  Love, 54, made the eye-opening response in an interview with YouTube channel Vlad TV as the debate over reparations for slavery in the Golden State continues.  The Meteor Man star said: '[...] That's another trick man, because that money's gonna go right back to Cadillac and right back to [Mercedes] Benz.'

The Editor says...
How true.  If you give random people $223,000 each, taken from someone else's money, they're likely to spend it foolishly.  Not just on a Cadillac, but on cigarettes, beer, tattoos, expensive sneakers, and lottery tickets.  The money will all be gone in a few months, and the cars will be junk in 15 years.

Business owner demands black people receive $350,000 EACH in reparations since 'we worked for free' during slavery.  A black California businessman demanded $600,000 from California taxpayers during the first meeting of the state's reparations task force on Wednesday [12/14/2022].  Deliberations began on how to quantify how financial compensation might be calculated and what might be required to prove eligibility.  One of those who spoke at the public hearing was 35-year-old entrepreneur and the first black professional tri-athlete, Max Fennell who said that every person should get $350,000 in compensation to close the racial wealth gap and Black-owned businesses should receive $250,000, which would help them to flourish.

The Editor says...
Nobody owes you any money for the work done by your ancestors.

Biden apologizes to delegation of African leaders for the 'unimaginable cruelty' of slavery and offers them $55 billion.  Joe Biden on Wednesday apologized for the 'unimaginable cruelty' of slavery, which he referred to as America's 'original sin', and pledged $55 billion in investment to the continent.  Speaking during a gathering of almost all African leaders in Washington DC — the first since Barack Obama convened a summit in 2014 — Biden expressed regret for the past, but insisted:  'The United States is all in on Africa's future.'  During a White House dinner honoring African leaders and their spouses, Biden addressed what he called America's 'original sin' — the enslavement of millions of people — and honored their descendants and the broader African diaspora community in the United States.

The Editor says...
Does this mean we're paid up now, and we can stop hearing about reparations?

NY lawmakers push for slavery reparations for black residents.  Some New York lawmakers are renewing the push for a state law that would lay the groundwork to pay reparations to black residents whose ancestors were enslaved.  Proponents gained steam after a task force in California last week recommended that the Golden State shell out $569 billion in reparations to slaves' descendents there, or $223,200 apiece, because of lingering housing discrimination practices.  A previously proposed New York measure called for creating a commission to study the impact of slavery and providing reparations but failed to pass the legislature.  It is now being revised, backers said.

The Editor says...
If someone is 1/16 or 1/32 black, is that black enough to get reparations money?  Is DNA evidence required before payments begin?

Sheila Jackson Lee Claims Reparations Could Have Prevented COVID Pandemic.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, claimed that if reparations for U.S. slavery had been implemented before the COVID pandemic, the virus may have been contained.  Jackson Lee made the speech on the House floor in an attempt to garner support for H.R. 40, which would establish a congressional commission to calculate the potential cost of reparations, the Daily Wire reported.  The congresswoman noted that COVID infection rates among minorities were higher than in majority-white areas.

MSC Cruises under investigation for using Cuban slave labor on its ships.  A complaint filed with the International Criminal Court has apparently led to an investigation MSC Cruises, an Italian cruise line.  Cubans who worked on MSC cruise ships say the cruise line was complicit with the communist Castro dictatorship, effectively buying them as slave labor from the Cuban regime.

Dems Stuffed Billions In Reparations For Black Farmers In 'Inflation Reduction Act'.  The Democrats' massive climate spending and tax bill gave the Department of Agriculture (USDA) $2.2 billion in loans to pay farmers, many of whom are black, who have previously been denied USDA loans due to discrimination.  The provision, which was backed by Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, is intended to provide financial assistance to farmers, ranchers or forest landowners that the department determines to have experienced discrimination in USDA farm lending programs before Jan. 1. 2021, according to the bill's text.  Although the funding could go to any farmer that the government has discriminated against, such as white women or members of the LGBTQ community, the money is primarily intended to rectify the historic denial of loans to black farmers, accordingto The Wall Street Journal.  Another of the bill's provisions will allocate $3.1 [sic] to help farmers of any race who are facing financial hardship and also have a direct or guaranteed loan with the USDA.

Sure, Let's Pay Reparations, but start from the beginning of the supply chain.  [Scroll down] [W]why is it that when the Left discusses reparations for slavery, which existed far before the African slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean, they always seem to be demanded of the American government — and, in this instance, the royal family?  If reparations were based on actual historical facts, a lot more than just white people and the U.S. government would need to pay up.

Republicans attack Matt Walsh for telling the truth about slavery.  One of the most pernicious things that has happened recently in America is the 1619 Project, an error-riddled "history" of the United States that presents our nation as one predicated solely on the evils of African slavery, beginning when Europeans first set foot on North American soil.  This original sin, says the 1619 Project, tainted everything that followed.  Therefore, only racists can love America.  Obviously, Democrats embraced this history, but, when commentator Matt Walsh discussed the larger history of world slavery, he learned that some Republicans don't want the truth to be put out there, either.  In 2019, Nikole Hannah-Jones, who knows nothing about history but a great deal about propaganda, working with the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, developed the 1619 Project.  The project essentially says that America's original, and entirely unique, sin of slavery is so deeply embedded in the warp and woof of this nation that America itself is irredeemably corrupt.  The purpose is to drive an immovable wedge between Blacks and Whites in America, preventing the national unity that gives a nation strength.

As many as FIFTY children as young as 12 'are found working at Hyundai supplier factory' in Alabama.  Migrant children have allegedly been working at a Hyundai supplier in Alabama after police launched a probe into the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl who ran away with a 21-year-old plant employee.  SMART Alabama in Luverne, an automotive parts manufacturer that has supplied parts for Hyundai since 2003, reportedly fired multiple underage workers — some as young as 12 — as publicity around the missing girl's case heated up.  A former employee alleged that as many as 50 underage workers were employed across various shifts when he was working at the plant.

Woke Hollywood Celebrates Slavers Because They're Black Women.  The left's obsession with centering everything on race and sex has reached a new and despicable low with an upcoming movie called "The Woman King." [...] Wow!  It's got everything!  Strong, black women and evil, white Europeans.  It's a leftist dream!  Except for the horrific reality of how the kingdom of Dahomey treated its neighbors on the African continent.  The kingdom built its legacy on conquest, waging endless wars against those neighbors.  Dahomey had to field the anomalous Amazonian army not because the kingdom had modern sensibilities, but because so many of its men were slaughtered in pursuit of expansion that it was forced to conscript women.  On top of that, the kingdom built its economy on slavery.  Yes, contrary to what the radical left tries to ignore, Africans were just as willing to participate in the slave trade as Europeans were.

Georgetown U.'s Road to Slavery Reparations Was Paved With Good Intentions, Leading to a Can of Worms.  In the annals of racial reckoning, Georgetown University's public atonement for its historical links to slavery has attracted special attention and generous praise. [...] But what began with a grandiosity of purpose as a model for racial reconciliation — including a Catholic mass of contrition in Washington in 2017 that featured official apologies for having "greatly sinned" — has veered off script, confounding the moral clarity of the present that seeks to correct for moral blindness of the past.  Georgetown officials assumed that the fate of the 272 sold slaves could never be known, rendering their descendants non-persons.  Turns out, the Maryland Jesuits were meticulous record keepers.  Historians and genealogists have scoured their remarkably intact archival records to find that that Jesuit slavery was more extensive than many had assumed.

If California Is Contemplating Reparations, Women Must Come First.  California, which was never a slave state, is now on a path to grant reparations to the descendants of slaves.  But if we're being fair, there's a group that deserves reparations first:  Women.  Women were America's first and last slaves.  Marriage turned women into freedomless, voiceless, chattel slaves, who needed permission to leave home.  A wife's assets, children, and body were her husband's property.  Spousal rape wasn't a crime.  Spousal rape laws were first repealed in 1975, and all states did so by 1993, but eleven still have loopholes or have not criminalized it.  If a husband wanted sex, a wife could be legally subject to corporal punishment for disobeying.  Laws permitted beating disobedient wives into the late 19th century.  Afterward, the practice persisted, and it was rarely punished.

Biden administration EPA nominee supports 'climate reparations'.  The Biden administration has nominated Howard University Environmental Law Professor Carlton Waterhouse to become assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Land and Emergency Management.  Waterhouse is a truly far-left radical and supporter of so-called "climate reparations."  He believes that the United States needs to be punished for having an advanced economy, as it must have become wealthy only at the expense of other countries.  At the American Climate Leadership Summit in 2020, Waterhouse, who also believes in reparations for Black people, stated:  "Climate reparations is really just calling for the equitable redress for the harm that has been caused historically.  That's what it's about — making amends."

Rep. Al Green makes push for National Slavery Remembrance Day.  Rep. Al Green is leading an effort to make 2022 the first year that would mark the anniversary of the first slave ships arriving in North America 400 years ago.  The Texas Democrat, who introduced a resolution last November, is hoping to renew the push as the country celebrates Juneteenth on Sunday, and the federal holiday on Monday.  "Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom.  Slavery Remembrance is a commemoration of slavery itself and it will help us to make sure that we don't see it sanitized.  We want to tell the truth about it," Mr. Green told The Washington Times.

Survey: More Than Half of Young People Want to Leave Africa.  A new survey of 15 African countries has found that more than half of young people want to leave the continent in the coming years, with the majority of those who emigrate expected to head to Europe.  The African Youth Survey found that 52 percent expressed a desire to move abroad in the next three years.  That number is significantly higher than a poll taken in 2020, impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which found that two thirds of young Africans wanted to stay in their home countries.

The 8 Most Insane Proposals in California's 492-Page Reparations Report.  Black Californians could enjoy child support forgiveness, free college, free health care, fewer police, and a long-term "truth and reconciliation commission" should Golden State lawmakers pass the proposals outlined this week by the state's Reparations Task Force.  Following a 2020 law to study the subject, a panel of left-wing academics and policymakers on Wednesday released their findings on how California can remedy the harm against the state's black residents caused by slavery and discrimination.  All black Californians are eligible for the benefits of the program if they can prove they are "descendants of African Americans enslaved in the U.S. or of free Black people living in the country before the end of the 19th century."  A new state agency, called the California African American Freedmen Affairs Agency, would provide genealogical tests for residents.

California to Release Massive Reparations Report.  California is set to release its highly-anticipated report on reparations on Wednesday, concluding the work of a statewide "task force" dedicated to discovering so-called "systemic racism" in the state and determining methods for redistributing wealth to black residents.  According to the Associated Press, the report is set to include such propositions as expanding voter registration, further restrictions on police and harsher punishments for individual officers, and making improvements to black neighborhoods.  It will also recommend the creation of a new office that would help black Californians prove their lineage to determine if they were descended from slaves, at which point they would be eligible for financial compensation.

Slavery still exists today in the Western Hemisphere.
Injunction filed in Mexican court to stop AMLO's purchase of enslaved Cuban doctors.  [Scroll down]  The qualifications of many of these doctors have been called into question many times in the past and investigations have revealed many of them are not qualified to practice medicine.  Furthermore, the doctors and nurses sent on these "foreign missions" are victims of modern-day slavery with their passports confiscated and are only paid a miniscule fraction of what the Cuban dictatorship collects from their sponsors.  On top of that, the Castro dictatorship uses these missions as an opportunity to send intelligence assets posing as medical professionals into those countries.  The entire operation reeks of human trafficking and corruption, yet has been able to continue functioning and earning billions of dollars for the Castro family dictatorship because almost the entire world has decided to look the other way.

Mexican court injunction against plan to employ Cuban doctors.  A judge in Mexico agreed Thursday to consider a preliminary injunction against plans by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to hire about 500 specialized doctors from Cuba.  According to a copy of the injunction, the government has not proved the doctors have the ability or training needed to practice in Mexico.  The plaintiffs in the case also argued that most of the doctors' pay might go to the Cuban government, not the medical professionals themselves.  The identity of those who filed for the injunction was not released.  But several professional and medical groups have criticized the plan, which was announced by the president May 9. [...] "The hiring is illegal, because it favors conditions of modern slavery and even human trafficking," it continued.

The Democrats' push for reparations will only make things worse.  Under the guise of remedying historical sins, the government is stoking racial divisions at every corner.  First, there was CRT, then equity, and now a revival of considering reparations.  The first time the government tried to pass H.R. 40 to sanction a study and develop proposals for reparations for African Americans was in 1989. The timing coincided with stagnating outcomes for African Americans.  Now, the House is trying again.  Then as now, the inquiry would prove more fruitful if the examination focused on government policy decisions, rather than investigating ties between stagnation, slavery, and post-slavery discrimination.

For reparations, here's how many minorities each white American has to support.  By 2030, of every 1,000 children worldwide, 15 will be U.S. whites (15/1,000).  Corresponding figures for all regions can be obtained from the U.N.'s World Population Prospects."  Thanks to Critical Race Theory, America's white children are being steadily enlightened about their "white privilege" (Peggy McIntosh, 1989).  Already, 62 percent of Americans demand that schools teach about systemic white racism.  White children are made aware of their historical debt — primarily, but not only, to black Americans.  Moreover, white kids are being encouraged to pay reparations to black Americans, three quarters of whom already count on such redress.  However, white children also hear debates about whether U.S. blacks are actually entitled to more aid than blacks in sub-Saharan Africa, who were robbed by slave traders of the progress — such as the largely missing industrialization — that their enslaved brethren could have brought about.

Harvard to Spend $100 Million to Study and Redress Its Ties to Slavery.  Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow announced Tuesday that the university will spend $100 million to study and redress its ties to slavery.  The funds will be put toward a "Legacy of Slavery Fund" to continue researching and memorializing the history, in part by working with descendants of black and Native American people enslaved at Harvard and their broader communities.  The announcement follows the release of a report from the Presidential Initiative on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery project, which Bacow commissioned in 2019.  "Harvard benefited from and in some ways perpetuated practices that were profoundly immoral," Bacow said in an email to the university's students, faculty and staff members obtained by the New York Times.  "Consequently, I believe we bear a moral responsibility to do what we can to address the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society."

Calls for Reparations Are Back, Again.  It's Still a Terrible Idea.  "Blacks already have been the first victims of the campaign to get reparations for slavery.  The longer this futile campaign goes on, the more additional blacks will be victimized."  So began a 2001 op-ed by noted economist and commentator Thomas Sowell, who happens to be black.  Sowell wrote the piece more than 20 years ago, but the topic of reparations is resurfacing again as a bad idea that refuses to die.  Just last month, California's reparations task force recommended reparations for all black Californians descended from slaves or from free black citizens prior to 1900.  A more extreme measure, which would have recommended reparations for all black Californians regardless of ancestry, was narrowly defeated — by a single vote.

Where Does The Reparations Scam Stop?  When attempting to predict the next wave of leftist insanity, it's always smart to look to California, the land where Babylon Bee-style parody five years ago is inevitably tragic reality now, and the absurdist parody being written today is likely just a few months down the pike, if not already there.  So naturally, in 2020 the land of fruits and nuts became the first state to establish a real-live "task force" to study the issue of slavery reparations.  That task force made news earlier this month by voting to limit any compensation plan to, according to The Guardian, "descendants of enslaved and free Black people who were in the US in the 19th century." [... T]he reason cited has nothing to do with sanity.  It's because leaving out, say, people who immigrated from Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries and never had anything to do with slavery supposedly "had the best chance of surviving a legal challenge" in a "conservative Supreme Court."  Take a moment to let that sink in.  If these nutcases could recreate some sort of permanent, race-based compensation system that leaves out all white people entirely, they most certainly would.  But they're dialing it back a notch because of that inconvenient Constitution and, presumably, laws passed in the 60s expressly to PREVENT the kind of chicanery they're trying now.

Regional Racism:  What It Is, and Why It's Getting Worse.  The idea that whites must endure classes in racial sensitivity and that they must pay reparations to blacks — such as the enormous racially targeted sums included in BBB — is predicated on the false view that whites, especially Southern whites, are responsible for income disparity among the races.  In fact, under 50 years of affirmative action, blacks have enjoyed enormous advantages over whites and Asians.  Yet, according to the latest numbers, high school graduation rates for blacks (79.6%) were far below those for whites (89.4%) and Asians (92.6%).  College graduation rates showed the same pattern, with 74% of Asians, 64% of whites, and 40% of blacks graduating, despite preferential treatment for blacks.  These low black graduation rates are not the fault of whites.  If anything, whites and Asians should be granted reparations to compensate for the effects of affirmative action.

Understanding the Progressive Mind.  Unfortunately, Republicans, and conservatives generally, are too polite, and therefore ill-equipped to confront the criminal nature of the Democrat Party and its government in Washington.  It's as though Republicans don't want to embarrass thieves caught in the act and hurt their feelings.  The harshest words Republicans will use to describe the Democrats' campaign to free hundreds of thousands of violent criminals and stimulate a national crime wave is that they are "soft on crime."  Democrats — progressives — are not soft on crime, they are pro-crime.  They regard it as "social justice."  Mobs of mainly black predators looting department stores in broad daylight is to them "reparations" — a socialist redistribution of income that provides "equity" to a group allegedly — but never specifically — oppressed.

California Task Force Votes In Favor Of Slavery Reparations.  Two years ago, far-left California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, established a task force with the assigned mission of examining slavery reparations.  From the beginning, it was clear that the outcome from the task force wasn't going to be if it would recommend reparations, that was a foregone conclusion.  The only question was to whom such reparations should be given.  On Tuesday, that task force finally made their recommendation, and they may also have given a hint that whatever steps were to be taken would only be the beginning.  After a lengthy debate and prior to holding the actual vote, the vice-chair of the task force, Rev. Amos Brown who is also president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, made the following plea:  "Please, please, please I beg us tonight, take the first step.  We've got to give emergency treatment to where it is needed."

The Editor says...
Reparations for slavery is not an emergency.

California Reparations Committee Can't Figure Out Who Qualifies.  California's state panel on "reparations" for slavery postponed a decision on who should qualify for compensation — whether only the descendants of slaves, or all people of color, based on the idea that the United States suffers from "systemic racism."  As Breitbart News reported in 2020, the Golden State, which entered the Union in 1850 as a free state, decided to set up a committee to study reparations in the wake of national protests and riots over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  When the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans launched in 2021, one member claimed that black Americans were treated as badly in California as they were in the South in the years after the Civil War.

TikTok Welfare Queen Demands Reparations Or Else Bad Things Will Happen To Whitey.  This is allowed on social media but giving 50 bucks to the Freedom Convoy gets your accounts seized and banned from social media.  [Video clip]

Black History Month Is Appropriate Time For The Truth.  Can there be a more appropriate time for the truth about Black history than this month?  Isn't it an apt time to bring to light the long-held omissions that have skewed not only genuine history by promoting half-truths but most, unfortunately, have harmed and skewed racial relationships?  Our history education, as it's generally taught from elementary to secondary classrooms, basically presents the institution of slavery as one of black and white with Black being the oppressed and White the oppressor.  However, that is not the total history or story of the tragic institution of slavery.  Before Africans set foot on America's shores, there was more than just Whites enslaving and oppressing Blacks.  The slave trade was multi-racial.

Biden's Federal Reserve nominee backed slavery reparations.  President Joe Biden's nominee for governor of the Federal Reserve has backed the idea of reparations, the controversial proposed policy of financial compensation for black Americans as a form of atonement for slavery and discrimination.  "Everybody benefited from slavery.  Everybody," Michigan State University professor Lisa Cook said in a September 2020 "EconTalk" podcast.  "So, I think that we absolutely need some sort of reckoning with that.  There are many proposals on the table to study the possibility of reparations, many economic proposals being put forward, and I think they should all be taken seriously."  In March 2021, Cook endorsed H.R. 40, a Hosue bill which would've created a commission to study the issue of reparations.  Biden said during the 2020 presidential campaign that he supports the study of reparations.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki doubled down on it last year when asked about H.R. 40.

Human-trafficking ring trapped hundreds of migrant workers picking onions for 20-cents per bucket in south Georgia.  A modern-day slavery ring has been busted in Georgia where workers were raped, kidnapped and imprisoned in squalid camps, according to prosecutors.  The crooks raked in more than $200 million by luring in over 100 desperate migrants from Mexico and Central America to the US, a federal indictment says.  At least two people died in the brutal conditions that saw workers forced to handpick onions at gunpoint for just 20 cents per bucket in sweltering heat, and another was repeatedly kidnapped and raped.

Interior secretary describes White House property as 'ancestral homelands'.  Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation's first Native American Cabinet official, tearfully described the White House grounds Friday as "the ancestral homelands" of two Native American tribes.  During an event with President Biden on the North Lawn of the White House, Ms. Haaland became choked up as she praised the president's action to restore territory of two sprawling western national monuments that had been reduced in size by then-President Trump.  "We are here today on the ancestral homelands of the Anacostan and Piscataway people, bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice," Ms. Haaland said.

Christie's To Auction Off A White Male Slave.  Iconic British auction house Christie's is set to auction off an NFT digital art piece of a white man being sold as a slave, with the artist describing the piece as a commentary on slavery's role in "developing capitalism."  White Male for Sale — a short video of a white man standing on an auction block in New York City — was created by 56-year-old American artist Dead Scott and will be auctioned by Christie's and the Cristin Tierney Gallery on October 1.  In an Instagram post advertising the auction, Scott boasted that he had "a prime white male of excellent quality" to sell.

The First Slave Owner in Virginia was Neither Jewish nor European.  There has been a growing belief in progressive circles of the 1619 Project ilk, that all Jews are of European descent and all Europeans who came to the Americas owned African slaves.  It's not based on history.  There is no basis for this belief other than a desire to believe it is true.  Racial justification is based on an old hatred that alters form while remaining hatred.  Jews, as historical records prove, are not of European origin, and most have no lineage in Europe, but that does not stop them from being classified as white by those who are inclined to base things on race.  So let's look at some authentic New World history to set the record straight.

Secretary of State Blinken is setting us up for paying reparations.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken is neither naïve nor stupid.  So why did he invite United Nations officials to investigate systemic racism in the United States?  It cannot be for the sophomoric reason he stated: [...] It is the responsibility of the American people and their elected representative, not the UN, to examine and improve, if needed, the human rights record of the US.  An April 2021 [poll] shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans and 90% of Republicans oppose the idea of providing reparations to the descendants of slaves, according to the results of a nationwide University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll.  So the Administration is seeking ways to affect the public's views:  bring in the UN and supposedly world opinion.

Jamaica wants £7 billion compensation from UK for Britain's involvement in slave trade over hundreds of years.  Jamaica is planning to ask the United Kingdom for compensation for the Atlantic slave trade in the former British colony, a senior government official said.  The Caribbean island nation will file a petition that could seek billions of pounds in reparations, pending legal advice, according to Olivia Grange, Jamaica's minister of sports, youth and culture.  She said the country hoped for 'reparatory justice in all forms' to 'repair the damages that our ancestors experienced'.

U.N. Rights Chief Demands Reparations for 'Slavery, Colonial Rule, and Racism'.  The U.N. human rights chief on Monday demanded comprehensive reparations be made to compensate countries that have suffered what she called the deadly legacies of slavery, colonial rule and racial discrimination.  Former Chilean Socialist President Michelle Bachelet presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council a report she hopes will change the definition of racism and highlight its impact.  It comes after her intervention last month calling on the world to immediately dismantle systemic racism against people of African descent and "make amends" to the oppressed while groups like Black Lives Matter should receive "funding, public recognition and support."

An Affront to the State.  Why is whiteness so reviled today?  It can't be slavery, slavery is still practiced in much of the Middle East, Africa, Asia and if one includes sex slaves and the like, worldwide.  Why is there not a big push to end ALL slavery of every type, instead of focusing on the history of the United States and the white people who founded it?  Because they are racist?  No.  Racism is practiced all over the globe, but America, one of the most diverse populations in the world, that has done the most to abolish it, is the focus of the attack.  In most nations, their racism isn't identified as such, because their populations are nearly 100% of a single race and the few who are not are openly treated differently and denied equality.  Sports figures advocate, promote and profit from some of the most egregious sponsors of racism and slavery on the planet today.  The entertainment industry is no different.  It is not just a curiosity, or an irony, it is the product of communist/fascism that is making its presence known and felt in America to the greatest degree.

Reparations Aren't About Fixing America's Past, They're About Destroying Its Future.  In 1865, a bloody Civil War left 620,000 white Americans dead.  In the current monologuing on reparations, no one on the left seems bothered to mention this. (Even when 620,000 black babies are murdered by black mothers every two years, no one on the left notices.) Even forgetting the sacrifice of so many white lives, the historically unprecedented release from bondage and eventual ascension toward becoming co-equal partners — despite being a racial, cultural, and ethnic minority — seems profound and sufficient enough.  You're welcome, black America, you're no longer enslaved and enjoy the same freedoms as whites in 21st century America.  Let's not pretend no redress has been made already.  We have had reparations in one form or another since the Confederacy's surrender.  Efforts to assimilate former slaves did not end merely at emancipation, nor even Reconstruction.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the back-to-back election of Barack Obama are two major examples of innumerable others that attest to the success of America overcoming its legacy of slavery.  Has this ever happened before in world history?  Unfathomably, renewed efforts to "repair" the long-ago damages to the black community have resurfaced with hitherto unseen momentum.  Black Americans who were never enslaved and white Americans who never enslaved them are suddenly the focal point of a country-ripping exercise in absurdity.

The Theology of Slavery as America's 'Original Sin'.  [Scroll down]  Since in the context of slavery no victims or offenders have been alive for several generations, attempts at achieving wholeness are as futile as the moral exercise is preposterous.  Proponents of reparations likely understand these arguments well enough.  The mythic "40 acres and a mule" was an unworkable romantic notion that implicitly paid homage to "The American way" — a mindset that "hard work will be rewarded" by allowing folks to "pull themselves up from the bootstraps."  It was actually a proto-socialist fantasy, the brainchild of well-meaning abolitionists and radical Republicans.  Redistribution of wealth was the byproduct, though, not the aim of the idea, which at least had the worthy objective of righting wrongs for real, living flesh-and-bone victims of oppression.  Modernly, the push for reparations seems coldly calculated as just one part of the bigger picture, with its express goal to redistribute wealth.  Because their argument fails on theological, moral and legal grounds, proponents realized it would be necessary to change the milieu.

Sticker campaign targets slavery roots in New York City.  A New York-based campaign is drawing attention to prominent New Yorkers whose names are emblazoned on streets, schools, and storefronts and who it says had ties to slavery.  The campaign — called 'Slavers of New York' — says there are at least 500 sites that feature the names of figures who owned slaves.  Many of the slaveowners date from the 17th century when New York was New Amsterdam, including colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant and the Cortelyou family.

The Rise of Equity Charges at Restaurants.  Jon Miltimore of Fee.org recently published an article on the expansion of 'equity' and 'living wage' charges at restaurants around the country and why many of the underlying economic assumptions made by these establishments are erroneous or performative.  A restaurant local to him, Broders', is one such place.  In a portion of his piece titled 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,' Miltimore walks the reader through its stated purpose and reasoning for these new, "inclusive" policies.

Restaurants Are Now Adding 'Equity' Charges to Customers' Checks to Fight Oppression.  Located in southwest Minneapolis, Broders Pasta Bar is a local gem. [...] On its website, Broders' has a notice to customers notifying them of a new 15 percent "benefits and equity" charge they've instituted.  They justify the charge, first, by explaining that "many states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit."  The restaurant's second justification is that many tippers are racist and sexist, according to uncited research.  "Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips," the statement reads.  "In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers.  There is gender bias as well."  The final part of the statement says the new policy stems from wider racial injustice and is not a substitute for gratuity.

The Editor says...
[#1] Why would anyone eat at a restaurant that assumes its customers are a bunch of racist oppressors -- and says as much on its website?  [#2] This new surcharge is partly in lieu of a higher minimum wage and partly in lieu of reparations for slavery.  You're paying for the effects of the socialist platform, whether it is ever enacted as law or not.  [#3] The restaurant management is overlooking the strong likelihood that the cheapest, stingiest, most miserly customers in town are themselves black.  Everything I've ever heard from restaurant workers I've known indicates that blacks are the worst tippers in any restaurant.

BET billionaire Robert Johnson calls for $14T in reparations — and wants a check too.  America's first black billionaire, Robert Johnson, is pushing hard for the government to pay $14 trillion in reparations — and he wants his check just like everyone else.  "Reparations would require the entire country to ... admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism," the Black Entertainment Television (BET) founder told Vice.  "And for that reason, black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth and therefore we as a country now must atone by paying black people of all stripes — the rich ones, the poor ones, and the middle — out of our pocket," Johnson told the outlet.  Johnson, who owns several homes and heads an asset management firm, insists that means money for himself and other rich and famous black Americans, naming Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

Massachusetts town votes to create $200,000 fund to pay reparations to black residents for slavery and discrimination.  A Massachusetts town has created a fund to pay reparations to black residents as communities and institutions across the country look to atone for slavery, discrimination and past wrongs amid the nation's ongoing racial reckoning.  The Amherst Town Council on Monday [6/21/2021] voted 12-1 in favor of establishing the fund and requiring a two-thirds vote of the council to authorize any spending from it, The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.  The town, which is located some 90 miles from Boston and has a population of just under 38,000, has yet to decide how a person would become eligible for the reparation fund, according to Athena O'Keeffe, Clerk of the Council.

Soros wades into reparations issue as donor.  Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is interested in funding a national reparations project for descendants of black slaves, according to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.  A new coalition of 11 mayors, headed by Garcetti, has founded Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equality, with the goal of expanding the movement throughout the United States and pressuring Congress to create a commission to study the matter.  Garcetti admitted that reparations will be expensive and cannot be borne by taxpayers alone, so Soros has stepped up as an interested donor, according to the Los Angeles Times.  The leftist founder of the Open Society Foundations has already donated $15 million to repatriate items stolen from African nations during the colonial era.

The Native Americans Who Owned Slaves.  Did you know that the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery did not apply to ALL slaves?  Most see slavery as a simple black-vs.-white issue.  But those who do may not realize that the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the southeast — Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole — also participated in the institution of slavery.  Because these tribes were located outside the sovereignty of the United States, constitutional amendments did not apply to them.  In the period before the arrival of the Europeans, the Natives practiced flexible forms of slavery that often allowed slaves avenues to freedom through intermarriage.  That all changed with the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced Native Americans to a system of permanent bondage based on race.  According to journalist Aliana E. Roberts, this switch occurred after the Yamasee tribe lost a war against the English Carolina colonists in 1717.  The Europeans began turning from Native slavery to African slavery, and the Native Americans followed their lead.

Appeasement never ends.
Rep. Omar Not Satisfied With Juneteenth Holiday; Calls For Reparations As 'Next Step'.  Now that Joe Biden has officially made Juneteenth into another federal holiday the activist left isn't going to take time off to savor their victory.  They have immediately mounted a push for the rest of their radical Critical Race Theory agenda.  As celebrations took place throughout the country for what many are calling the "real" independence day, there were calls to pass the Democrats' For The People Act.  It has been obscured as "voting rights" for blacks but would really end democracy as it has existed.  The bill is currently stalled in the Senate.

Appeasement only leads to more and greater demands.
Squad member Cori Bush now calls for reparations and 'black liberation' after House votes to make Juneteenth a 'National Independence Day' federal holiday.  Squad member, Rep. Cori Bush said on Wednesday night [6/16/2021] that black Americans now need reparations and 'liberation' after the House approved a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday known as 'National Independence Day'.  President Biden is set to sign the bill at an event with Kamala Harris on Thursday afternoon after it passed through Congress, with 14 Republican members voting against and saying it conflicted with July 4.  'It's Juneteenth AND reparations.  It's Juneteenth AND end police violence + the War on Drugs.  It's Juneteenth AND end housing + education apartheid.  It's Juneteenth AND teach the truth about white supremacy in our country,' she wrote in a tweet Wednesday night.  'Black liberation in its totality must be prioritized,' the Missouri Democrat encouraged.

New York moves closer to slavery reparations.  New York took a step closer toward reparations for slavery on Wednesday [6/9/2021].  The state Assembly passed a bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Charles Barron, that would set up a commission to study slavery and its impact on Black New Yorkers.  It would have the commission determine the amount of reparations and who should get them.  "Some people say, 'well I didn't oppress you, my European ancestors came at the turn of the century.  Why should I have to pay?' I don't care if you came here last night," Barron said.  "You benefited from the ill-gotten gains."

Ever Seen Anyone Destroy 'Reparations' in Less Than a Minute?  Here Ya Go.  As so-called "critical race theory" continues to be taught in various school districts throughout the country, outrage continues to grow as well.  More and more parents, lawmakers, and even school boards are digging deeper into the so-called "curriculum" and how CRT "education" is actually indoctrination — programming — of young white students who are told they are inherently racist solely because of the color of their skin.  White kids are taught that they will always be racist and the only way they can fight against their "white privilege" is to become proactively "anti-racist," which includes atoning for the sins of White America against Black America.  I'm not exaggerating.  Simply put, CRT is racist.  It is obscene.  It is child abuse.  Period.  And it is terribly wrong.  Then again, most Marxist ideology is.  Nearly a dozen state legislatures have either banned critical race theory indoctrination or are in various stages of doing so.  That list will grow.

Report: Biden Privately Discusses Slavery Reparations With Lawmakers.  Upon visiting Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Tuesday to commemorate the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, President Joe Biden appeared to be moving away from supporting potential slavery reparations.  According to a report by Politico, Biden discussed racism in his speech on Tuesday, but he did not mention the potential to create reparations for the massacre survivors or their descendants or acknowledge his support for H.R. 40, a bill that would address slavery and establish a commission to study reparations.

Black Lives Matter Activists Suggests Land Be Taken From 'Wealthy White Families' For Reparations.  Bree Newsome, a Black Lives Matter activist, went on a Twitter tirade about white people who allegedly stole land at some time in history from black people and she wants it back. [...] Imagine the government coming and taking land from white Americans and giving it to black Americans for things that happened hundreds of years ago.  How would this even be proven?  But it is an opportunity for all of the rich, white Hollywood celebrities who see themselves as allies to give some of their land and wealth.

Event Commemorating Tulsa Race Massacre Canceled After Survivors Demand $1 Million Each to Appear.  An event to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre was suddenly canceled after the three surviving victims demanded $1 million to appear and $50 million donated to a reparations fund.  Singer John Legend was to host the event with the keynote address given by Georgia race activist Stacey Abrams.  Other events associated with the commemoration will proceed as scheduled and Joe Biden will be in Tulsa on Tuesday.  Attorneys representing the survivors had originally agreed to a $100,000 appearance fee for each survivor and $2 million in reparations.  Then, suddenly, attorneys upped the appearance fee to $1 million and seed money for the reparations commission demand to $50 million.

Do Blacks Owe Other Blacks Reparations?  Buried by the flurry of Biden executive orders in the first few weeks, it is likely that many Americans missed the announcement that the Biden administration cleared a path to explore the issues of reparations.  It is equally likely that many Americans didn't have a chance to absorb each new development in this area over the past year as well, given the constant coverage of other events.  Among the forgotten or barely-covered pieces was California's first-of-its-kind statewide study into reparations for black Americans in early October of 2020.  The passage of local measures for reparations has already taken place in communities like Evanston, Illinois and Asheville, North Carolina.  The Biden administration's willingness to even discuss the matter should worry all Americans.  The California piece is particularly frightening, not least because it essentially codifies the leftist trope of systemic racism at a state level.

Blacks Enslaved and Colonized Blacks, Too.  The narrative today is that all of white America must practice penitence for the past sins of their forefathers.  Slavery is America's Original Sin, and it can be argued that Derek Chauvin was on trial for a lot more than just questionable policing.  He stood in for white America as a whole.  Now, it doesn't matter a whit that that many whites have no connection whatsoever to any of this.  In fact, it is estimated that 40% of Americans can trace an ancestor to Ellis Island, which was open only between 1892 and 1954.  But by the racist standards of the left, white skin is white skin, regardless of where it originated or when it arrived here.  Whether your ancestors got off at Roanoke or came from Estonia last week, you are white and therefore privileged, guilty, and whatever else.  Nor does it matter that black immigration to America since the Civil War tells a similar story.  At least 4 million black Africans have immigrated to the United States since 1980 alone, accounting for as much as 15-20% of the entire black population in the United States.

The Church of England has fallen for anti-Christian theories of race.  In its new report, From Lament to Action, the Church of England has decided to focus on race.  Now, there is no question that racism exists within all cultures, but the Judaeo-Christian tradition has always been opposed to it.  Christianity emphasises the common origin of all humans, made in God's image, and contemporary science corroborates this moral and spiritual insight.  The Church is right to set its face against racism.  Predictably, however, the C of E report urges an audit of monuments and an examination of the Church's complicity in the slave trade.  Why doesn't it celebrate the long tradition of those Christians who devoted their lives to abolition?  The Englishwoman St Bathilda, herself a former slave, and consort of Clovis II of France, campaigned against the slave trade and for the emancipation of slaves in the 7th century.  Charlemagne was opposed to slavery and, in the medieval Church, it was declared to be against divine law.  In England, St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, outlawed slavery in 1102 at the Synod of Westminster.

House committee approves Biden-backed bill to study slavery reparations — open your wallet.  On Wednesday [4/14/2021], the House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 40 which establishes a 13-person commission to study slavery reparations in the United States for the first time in history.  It passed with a majority of 25-17 votes.  The vote does not mean that the bill will make it to the House floor.  Should it proceed to a vote, the Democrats hold a very slim majority in the House and its passage is in doubt.  It is even more unlikely to pass the Senate.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) presented the legislation to the House committee.  She declared:  "No such bill has ever come this far during Congressional history of the United States."  The bill was initially introduced in the House in 1989.  But it never received a committee vote.

Biden's Team of Racists and Anti-Semites:  An Anti-American Coalition in the Heart of the White House.  What America did with the slave system it inherited from the British was end it.  America's abolition campaign began with its revolutionary proclamation that all men are created equal and have a God given right to liberty.  America began implementing this right in 1787, the first year of its existence, with the enactment of the Northwest Ordinance, outlawing slavery in a territory the size of the original 13 colonies.  Within twenty years slavery was abolished in all the northern states.  As for the "original sin" of enslaving the black Africans brought to this country, that properly is the achievement of the Africans themselves who then sold their brothers and sisters to Europeans at slave auctions in Ghana and Benin.  All forms of institutional and systemic racism including Jim Crow were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  In one of his first statements as president Biden claimed that "systemic racism" has been built into every aspect of our system."  This is a bald-faced lie.  The opposite is the truth.

Fixing Racism by Being Racist?  Racism is, by one definition, "A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."  History is replete with societies and cultures signing on to such thinking. [...] Here are several recent examples.  Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, one of America's most prominent teaching hospitals, plans on offering "preferential care based on race" and "race explicit interventions" as part of its new "antiracist agenda for medicine."  Such a program uses a "reparations framework" to allocate medical resources.  Reparations means that those who were never slaveholders are paying money to those who were never slaves, over injustices a century and a half ago, committed by people who may have no connection to the current reparation's participants.  In other words, using racism to combat racism.  How ironic that the vision of the Mass General Brigham health system is dedication to delivering medical care that is, among other things, "equitable."  Nothing promotes equity like a racist concept of "preferential care based on race."

House Democrats Schedule Debate and Vote on Reparations for Black Americans.  House Democrats scheduled a debate and vote on reparations for black Americans.  Democratic Chairman Jerry Nadler says the bill "is not intended to divide" America.

The Ties That Bind And The Anguished Cries Of Slavery.  [Scroll down]  Now to the heart of this paper, if slavery had been able to destroy the Black family, then Blacks in the West would be a lost cause.  However, this is not the case.  Many slaves survived slavery with their families intact; likewise, many Blacks survived Jim Crow with their families intact.  This was a powerful point made in Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and is often overlooked by many.  Slavery was unable to disfigure and dehumanize the slaves.  Why?  Because they held tight and fought to keep their families together.  For instance, some men and women, given the opportunity for freedom, chose bondage rather than to separate their families.  This showed the slavers that slavery could not detach humans from their humanity and their sense of duty to family.

Evanston, Illinois, Approves Nation's First 'Reparations' for Black Residents.  The liberal Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, officially approved the first spending for "reparations" for black residents on Monday evening [3/22/2021].  It is the nation's first reparations program, following an 8-1 vote by local aldermen in November 2019.  As Breitbart News noted at the time, the City of Evanston planned to fund the reparations with a new 3% marijuana tax: [...] On Monday evening, the Chicago Tribune reported, Evanston's city council finally approved the first payments under the program, targeted at black victims of past housing discrimination.

The Editor says...
What?  [#1] This has nothing to do with reparations for slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries.  There's a big difference between "housing discrimination" and slavery.  [#2] The three percent marijuana tax seems harmless enough, although it will soon be raised to ten percent, but what if the blacks are the consumers of most of the marijuana in Evanston?

I Don't Owe Reparations.  Reparations?  I've been paying them all my life through affirmative action, through high taxation, through the cost of policing and prisons.  Now, let me be clear.  I'm an immigrant's son.  I have never taken a nickel from a slave.  My family has never profited from slavery.  Black people did not build anything that my family profited from ever, despite what the leftist vermin want to want you to believe.  They're telling you we all benefited from it?  Now let's look into this reparations lie.  There are some rich white families who have profited from slavery and if people have grievances, that's who they should go to.  There are corporations who may have initially profited from slavery.  That's who they should go to.  The King of Spain profited greatly from slavery.  The Arabian Kings profited greatly from slavery.  Let them go to the King of Spain, and the Arabian Princes, and take the money from them.  Good luck.  But I, as an American, an immigrant's son, never kept a slave, never benefited from slavery.

Democrats Are Forever Slaves To Wretched Ideas.  A White House aide wants the president "to start acting now" on reparations without congressional approval.  But not even the consent of the House and Senate would legitimize reparations.  It's a policy so divisive, and so impossible to implement, that the idea, which is an ugly societal wedge of its own, needs to be dropped and never brought up again. [...] It's hard to imagine a federal statute that would be more divisive than one that forced today's Americans to pay for acts of those who have been dead in many cases more than two centuries.  Our nation has reached a frightful point at which neither racist nor bigoted Americans are smeared with both labels if they dare support the "wrong" ideas and political figures.  We've seen those who refuse to kneel to the woke ideology badgered and threatened in public by mindless rabble.  Under a reparations regime, a radical faction that already wishes to cancel, segregate, and sow discord, having amassed immense political power, would go to bloody war with those who don't agree with the agenda.

Reparations for ancestors of slaves?  The numbers don't add up.  House Resolution 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, got underway again in mid-February. [...] Of particular contention is the claim that white Americans are responsible for the "sin of slavery" and should be made to pay, in order to adequately address and resolve 400 years of racial injustice and inequality, while contending that 5% of all Americans currently residing in the United States are the ancestors white slave-owners in 1860.  Supporters argue that monetary reparations are necessary to correct economic disparity between black and white Americans, the disparity being the root cause of all systemic racism in the United States. [...] It is the widely held pro-reparations belief that a onetime monetary payment somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000, paid to 45 million black Americans, or an estimated $19-trillion "wealth transfer," will vanquish poverty among black Americans; erase past racial injustice; and, in their opinion, end systemic racism in perpetuity.  Numerous proposals are vague on how $19 trillion would be raised for reparation payments.

Chicago suburb set to be first in U.S. to pay reparations to black residents.  A Chicago suburb is set to become the first municipality in the U.S. to pay reparations for its black residents, pledging to pay out $10 million over the next decade.  The city of Evanston set up a fund in 2019 to pay for housing inequities by using a 3% tax on recreational marijuana sales.  The fund will help black residents with mortgage assistance and funding to complete home improvements.  Evanston officials are expected to vote March 22 on the distribution of the first $400,000 from the fund.  To qualify, residents must have lived in Evanston between 1919 [and] 1969.  But they can also qualify if they are the direct descendant of a black person who lived there during that period of time.

The Editor says...
Hold the phone, please.  I thought the issue under consideration was reparations for slavery.  How much slavery existed in Evanston between 1919 and 1969?

America Has Opted for the Same Lie Sold by Stalin, Mao and Hitler.  Consider how we are now being told that all white people are, by definition, racial bigots solely by virtue of their skin color.  And we are also now informed that all white people as a group are to be considered white supremacists who are committed to the perpetuation of an only recently discovered systemic racism that, in turn, was cleverly institutionalized by a Constitution drafted by white slave owners.  No longer is it defensible to assert that those men sought to create a unique nation where all men and women should be treated as equally under our laws as the God who created us all views them to be.  Instead, we are told that if we ever hope to arrive at the utopian society the "enlightened" elites claim to be achievable, white people just need to apologize for the "privileges" they have "usurped," make reparations for the damages they have inflicted and then just get out of the way ... or else.

Biden Admin Takes First Step Towards Reparations; "We Don't Want To Wait For A Study".  Joe Biden is preparing to alienate roughly 87 percent of the country in his pursuit of a blatantly racist and likely unconstitutional policy of providing 'reparations' for at least some blacks.  And yes, American taxpayers — none of whom owned slaves, was a slave, or even knew a slave — are going to foot the bill.  Biden plans to pursue a program to provide free college tuition to any student who attends a historically black college, specifically as a form of "reparations," The Daily Caller reported Monday [3/1/2021].

Reparations Don't Buy Justice, Dignity or Freedom.  My ancestors were slaves.  And my life as a young woman was a mess.  Was my life a mess because my ancestors were slaves?  I don't think so.  My life was a mess because I lived a wanton, irresponsible existence, defined by promiscuity, petty crimes and scamming the nation's well-meaning but totally confused welfare system to the greatest extent of my ability.  Did I need reparations to turn things around for me?  Certainly not.  I needed a wake-up call, which, to my great gratitude, I got, from a few church-going black Christians who told me the way I was living was unacceptable.

Reparations, or Just Revenge and Retribution?  As one can probably tell I've done a fair amount of family research into my ancestors, being able to uncover a great many details about my past family's past.  I've looked at military records, census documents, local newspaper archives, birth and death certificates, and wills.  I've dug as deeply as I could to try to uncover as much about my ancestors in order to share that family heritage with my children and grandchildren.  In all of my research, I have never discovered that anyone in my family, going all the way back to the late 1600s when they first arrived in America, had ever owned a slave.  Not a single one.  None of the wills that I've seen ever indicated ownership of any slaves being passed down to heirs on the death of the family patriarch.  No census documents listed any slaves owned by any Wilber household.  I'm pretty convinced that I can say with a fair amount of certainty that my family was not slave owners.

The Editor says...
The writer of the article above went to great lengths to prove his innocence.  Nobody in my family owned any slaves, either, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to document it.

The Reparations Solution:  The stark reality is that reparations for slavery have been used as a political tool by the Democrat Party for decades.  This is the ultimate irony because the Democrat Party was the party of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan, as noted [elsew]here.  And now they are all-in on disbursing other people's money to right the historical wrongs for which they themselves were primarily (but not exclusively) guilty.  Of course, this is of-a-piece with Democrats promising various constituent groups something for nothing.  Is that statement crass and unfeeling?  Let us examine the subject:
  •   Slavery ended in the US in 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment; at the time, there were an estimated 4 million slaves freed.
  •   No living person has been a slave or slaveholder (with the exception of modern human traffickers servicing sexual predators) -- certainly not in the sense of the slavery in 19th century America.
  •   The US was one of the first countries in the world to ban slavery, yet reparations-mongers seek to penalize innocent Americans while stigmatizing a country that actually ended slavery, which has been the scourge of mankind for thousands of years.
Despite the above points, white guilt continues to be a prime leverage point for the reparations-mongers.  That was how Barack Obama was sold to an unsuspecting nation.

Herschel Walker on Reparations: 'We Use Black Power to Create White Guilt'.  Heisman Trophy winner and NFL legend Herschel Walker testified against the Democrats' proposal to establish a commission to study and develop reparations proposals in the United States, citing his faith and telling the lawmakers that "we use black power to create white guilt."  The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties convened virtually on Wednesday [2/17/2021] to discuss H.R. 40, or Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's (D-TX) Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.

Jen Psaki:  Joe Biden Supports Study of Slavery Reparations.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday [2/17/2021] that President Joe Biden would support a study on whether descendants of slavery in the United States should receive reparations.  [Video clip]

Congress holds reparations for slavery hearing for first time since BLM protests rocked the nation.  Congress held its first hearing on reparations for slavery since the May 2020 death of George Floyd, which reignited the Black Lives Matter movement.  Members of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties met over Zoom Wednesday to discuss H.R. 40, which aims to 'establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery.'  Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who's spearheading the effort, argued her case with images, holding up pictures of a beaten slave and lynched black Americans.

'Equity': Reparations by Another Name.  Reparations for slavery, though largely disliked by the general public, garnered significant support among Democratic presidential candidates in 2020.  Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris openly supported the policy, as the New York Times noted in a feature piece that ran on February 21, 2020, headlined "2020 Democrats Embrace Race-Conscious Policies, Including Reparations."  Reparations, however, never polled well.  In a Reuter-Ipsos survey released in June, for example, only 20% of Americans supported the idea.  What's more, only a third of Democrats supported it.  Biden can read polls, so he waffled on reparations, promising instead to "study" the issue (a tactic he also employed in sidestepping the issue of court packing).  But the Left, always adept at verbal gymnastics, has merely responded by giving us reparations by another name:  "Equity."  And Biden is fully on board.

St. Paul to form reparations commission for descendants of slaves.  The city of St. Paul apologized for its role in institutional racism on Wednesday and agreed to form a new commission to study reparations for Black residents whose ancestors were enslaved.  The City Council voted 7-0 to form the St. Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission as a way to promote racial healing.  The resolution creating the commission also apologizes for slavery at Fort Snelling and the destruction of St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood in the 1950s.  Council Member Jane Prince, the resolution's lead sponsor on the council, partnered with Trahern Crews, co-chairman of the Green Party of the United States who heads up its national reparations working group.

Sheila Jackson Lee reintroduces bill for Slave Reparations after Study Finds costs could be $6.2 Quadrillion.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has reintroduced legislation that would fund a commission for studying and developing proposals for giving reparations to African Americans[.]  "The commission shall examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies," the legislation reads.  It would specifically examine the role of governments in supporting slavery, discrimination that freed slaves encountered, and the "lingering effects of slavery on living African-Americans and society."  [Video clip]

'Vote Reparations': Law School Prof Says Black Ballots Should Count Twice.  In case you haven't figured it out yet, so-called "social justice" efforts aren't aimed at righting ongoing wrongs of "systemic" inequality and racism because they don't exist.  Rather, those efforts are designed to enact official policies aimed at achieving vengeance against white people in America for things literally none of them have done to persons of color, ever.  Accepting that will help you understand such blatantly racist 'recommendations' that are supposedly designed to bring about 'equality,' when really they're just designed to cancel out the white majority (many of whom already vote with the left as it is).  Writing in the leftist bible The Nation, Brandon Hasbrouck, an assistant professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, actually proposed allowing black votes to count twice as a means of enacting "vote reparations."  Not even kidding.

He isn't kidding.  This isn't satire.
The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice.  Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes.  Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers.  But even with overwhelming Black support — 94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden! — the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.  One core problem is the Electoral College.  Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House.  By comparison, Georgia's Fifth Congressional District — which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black — has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state.  This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating.

The Editor says...
Incremental changes made by the left can only go in one direction.  If black voters are allowed to vote twice next year, they will never be restricted to a single vote ever again.  And as soon as the rest of the country gets used to the idea, the black voters will be allowed to vote three times each.  Then four.  Then, why not ten?  After that, why not allow only blacks to vote?

Churches across the US commit to paying millions in racism-linked reparations in bid to 'reckon with the wrongs and evils of our past'.  In the wake of the social justice movement and George Floyd protests, several US religious groups have declared they will devote millions to racism-related reparations, particularly among long-established Protestant churches that were active in the era of slavery.  Many of these churches are now weighing how to make amends through financial investments and long-term programs benefiting African Americans.  Among them are the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, which acknowledges that its first bishop in 1859 was a slaveholder, and a New York City Episcopal church, which erected a plaque noting the building's creation in 1810 was made possible by wealth resulting from slavery.

To All Those Who 'Vote for the Man, Not the Party'.  [Scroll down]  And since slavery, there has never been a time when the two major parties differed as much as they do today.  Therefore, the notion that one should vote "for the individual, not the party" has never made less sense.  It would be as if someone in the mid-1800s had said, "I strongly oppose slavery, but the Democratic candidate is a much finer and more likeable individual than the Republican candidate."  Fine Democrats who defended slavery did as much harm to blacks and to America as disreputable Democrats.  And elected officials vote with their party more often than in principled opposition to it, however fine they may be as individuals.  Nevertheless, a great number of Americans still vote for "the individual."

How many people lived as slaves in California?
California becomes first state to officially consider reparations for slavery.  California is the first state in the nation to consider reparations for those harmed by slavery and racial discrimination.  Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Wednesday that will create a task force to study the issue.  "After watching last night's debate, this signing can't come too soon," Newsom, a Democrat, said on a phone call announcing the decision.  The legislation, Assembly Bill 3121, calls for a nine-member task force to document the historical and present effects of enslavement on African Americans and "recommend appropriate remedies."  Those recommendations, including the possibility of "full reparations," will be presented in a report one year from now.

California bill to form reparations task force advances after 33-3 state Senate vote.  State senators in California overwhelmingly supported setting up a task force to study potential reparations for slavery in a bipartisan vote Saturday [8/29/2020].  The panel would study the effects slavery had on California and recommend to the legislature no later than 2023 what type of compensation would be appropriate, how it might be dispersed and who could be eligible to receive it.  The task force could also recommend other forms of redress besides money.

At Least 100,000 Victims of Modern Slavery Just in UK.  A new British report, "It Still Happens Here:  Fighting UK Slavery in the 2020s", by The Modern Slavery Policy Unit, a joint initiative led by the anti-slavery charity Justice and Care and The Centre for Social Justice, has estimated that "there could be at least 100,000 victims [of modern slavery] in the UK, with the actual number likely to be even greater".  According to the report:  "Many thousands of children, women and men of all nationalities and backgrounds — including a growing number of British citizens — continue to be trafficked and exploited for profit by ruthless criminal networks.  They are tricked, taken and coerced into sexual slavery, crime, hard labour and domestic servitude.  Forced addictions are increasingly used as methods of control".

Seattle BLM protesters to strangers: 'Give up your house.  Give black people back their homes.'  Last night a group of anti-gentrification protesters in Seattle marched through a section of town for a couple hours to complain that white people were living on stolen land.  Well, not stolen exactly.  They aren't claiming the black people who used to live in this neighborhood were pushed out at gunpoint.  But they are claiming that an injustice has taken place because white people are now living in new homes in this formerly black neighborhood.

Chicago BLM Organizer Defends Looting: 'That Is Reparations'.  Black Lives Matter activists in Chicago held a rally Monday evening to stand in solidarity with the dozens of individuals who were arrested after a night of mass looting and criminal activity, with one organizer brazenly defending looting as a form of reparations.  Activists gathered at the South Loop police station on Monday to stand in solidarity with over 100 people who were arrested after a night of violence, destruction, and mass looting erupted within the city.  As Breitbart News reported, the looting began after midnight and lasted hours.  Ariel Atkins, a Black Lives Matter organizer who spoke at the rally, said looting is not an issue and defended the criminal practice.

The Editor says...
If you have now received your reparations by stealing a TV, can we now assume you'll never steal anything again?  Oh, and what's your name, so we can keep a list of those who have been compensated for all their years of 19th-century slavery?

Do Blacks Owe Other Blacks Reparations?  The passage of local reparations in places like Evanston, Illinois last fall and Asheville, North Carolina more recently are worrisome on many levels, not least of which because they invite potential for inciting even further racial division.  Their passage also prompts the uncomfortable but entirely legitimately requisite questions of who is responsible for black enslavement in America and therefore who is responsible for paying?  A reading of the 1860 census reveals some fascinating details into the realities of slavery.  While it's universally known is that whites owned slaves in the early United States; almost universally unknown is that free blacks owned a fair number themselves.

Black Lives Matter's Symbiosis with White Supremacists.  [Scroll down]  Proposals for reparations to be paid by people who never owned slaves to people who never were slaves serves no purpose other than to set black Americans apart from other Americans and evoke resentment against them.  This nurtures rather than starves the very racism and animosity that the BLM movement and white supremacist organizations need to prosper or even survive.

Campus Activists Demand Free Tuition and Reparations.  Tulane University activists are demanding that the school offer reparations to the descendants of slaves who worked on the plantation that became campus grounds nearly 200 years ago.  Before the school's establishment in 1834 — created as a medical university in response to the cholera, yellow fever, and smallpox epidemics — the land was used as a plantation.  The school's Black Student Union (BSU) asked administrators to identify the descendants of the enslaved people who once worked on the plantation and offer them full tuition and more, according to a list of demands posted online.

The Editor says...
One might wonder what the White Student Union had to say about this.  But of course, there is no White Student Union, nor can there ever be such a group.

Nike [are] Other Global Brands [are] Complicit in China Slave Labor.  "Slave labor."  That is the term U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used on July 16 when speaking about China to television anchor Bill Hemmer on his Fox News show.  The polite phrase is "forced labor."  America's top diplomat, however, was dropping the diplomacy and employing America's most powerful weapon:  Unvarnished truth.  The unvarnished — and horrific — truth is that the Chinese party-state has institutionalized slavery, ramped it up to industrial scale, and offered slaves to foreign companies.  Moreover, compounding its crime, China picks its slaves from racial minority groups inside its borders.

If the Democrat-controlled cities do this, the mob wins.  Rioting works.
The timing is right for reparations': Cities propose reparations amid nationwide unrest.  Against the backdrop of protests across the country over police shootings of unarmed Black people and racial disparities, some mayors and local officials are proposing ways to examine the impact of slavery and help atone for it, including reparations.  From Providence to Asheville, N.C., local officials have proposed measures to begin to address years of what they call injustices in their communities.  The measures range from resolutions to support studying reparations to proposals funneling more funds into programs for Black communities.

America is Structurally Anti-Racist.  One of the emergent strategies on college campuses for destroying the United States is describing it falsely as a racist institution.  America is not simply "not racist."  America is the most important and successful anti-racist political project in human history.  We can grasp this important fact with an empirical analysis.  Initially, in the pathological dystopian academic tall tales, 'America is a uniquely evil nation founded in 1619 upon slavery.'  The New York Times backs this project proposing that the arrival of slaves in America proves that our nation is essentially dedicated to slaveholding.  This mythology works best when one imagines that slavery is peculiar rather than endemic.  But slavery is a normative feature of many human societies.  Slavery continues to this day and we would do well to ask Ghislaine Maxwell or the human traffickers at the Mexican border more difficult questions about its contemporaneous nature.

After Reparations Study Suggests $151 Million for Each African American, Experts Say Money Alone Isn't Enough.  While debates around reparations for the descendants of slaves often focus on costs of such action, advocates believe discussions must also address other efforts for systemic change.  Financial estimates are wide-ranging depending on how they are projected and thoughts on what exactly will, or even can be paid for are also divided.

All that rioting is paying off.
In historic move, Asheville approves reparations for Black residents.  In an extraordinary move, the City Council has apologized for the city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants.  The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. [...] The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments.  Instead it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.

Providence Mayor Launches Reparations Process.  Rhode Island's capital city is looking at providing reparations to residents of African and Native American heritage, Providence Mayor Jorge Elzorza announced Wednesday [1/15/2020].  The Democratic mayor signed an executive order creating a "Truth-Telling, Reconciliation and Municipal Reparations Process" that would examine the feasibility of providing reparations, which are typically direct cash payments to individuals.

Mayors endorse reparations that study pegged at $6.2 quadrillion.  A political organization for U.S. mayors has adopted a resolution in support of reparations for blacks, and while the mayors didn't address the cost, one study has suggested it could reach $6.2 quadrillion.  That would be 6,200 trillion.

The Editor says...
The black population of the U.S. is 47.8 million.  [Source]  $6.2 quadrillion divided amongst 47.8 million recipients would be $129 million each.  That's enough to buy a lot of tattoos, cigarettes and beer.  It's not going to happen.  This is just a shallow attempt to buy the votes of people who probably have no concept of what a quadrillion is, or how ridiculous it is to even discuss this level of spending.

Reflections on Southern Slavery and Leftist Slavery.  Under 400,000 slaves were brought to America.  Those enslaved African people represented only 3.6% of the transatlantic slave trade.  By the Civil War, there were under 4 million black slaves in America.  Over 20 million people were imprisoned by Soviet leftists in the gulag system.  While the peak slave labor population in the leftist slave camps was less than the peak slave population in the South, the death rate ranged from 5 percent to 25 percent depending on the period.  Under 2 million people died as a result of the brutal leftist system of slave labor camps and that was a fraction of the full number of people killed through various means by the Socialist system.  Gulag labor was murderous with prisoners sent to work in uranium mines or to labor outdoors chopping trees and digging canals in subzero weather with little food and less protection.  At one gulag, prisoners labored in uranium mines, breathing in radioactive dust, and dying within two years of cancer and leukemia.  The sick were then used for medical experiments by Socialist medicine before they died.

The History of Progressives and Slavery.  Progressives condemn Americans for their alleged role in slavery, but their own past is not as innocent as they believe, and they have some explaining to do about the present. [...] Perhaps the outrage is dependent on who is being enslaved.  Historically, progressives have had a favorable view of slavery under the right master and right name. [...] In October 1944 President Roosevelt announced, "The German people are not going to be enslaved - because the United Nations do not traffic in human slavery."  Yet the Treasury's Morgenthau Plan and the Yalta Agreement initialed by FDR contain provisions for slave labor.

Democrat congresswoman calls slave reparations a 'bold effort that people want to not do'.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee called on Democrats to mobilize together and advocate for passage of a bill to form a commission on slave reparations, calling it a "bold effort that people want to not do."  "You must as a community ensure that the Congress moves on H.R. 40 and that is call your members of Congress to ensure they are co-sponsors," she said on Friday [7/10/2020] during a virtual town hall on "Systemic Racism Beyond Policing."

Slavery Still Exists.  Where's Black Lives Matter?  If they did actually care about the lives of black people, Black Lives Matter would today be drawing international attention to statements made recently by the Mauritanian anti-slavery activist Maryam Bint Al-Sheikh of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA). According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Maryam Bint Al-Sheikh stated in a June 18 interview:  "Unfortunately, there is still slavery in Mauritania.  More than 20% of people in Mauritania suffer from slavery — a situation where a person owns another person and does whatever he wants with him at any given moment.  This situation exists here in Mauritania, unfortunately."  Al-Sheikh further explained that slaves are often even "bequeathed from father to son.  A person can own a slave and when that person dies, his children inherit the slave, who is later bequeathed to the grandchildren.  This thing exists in Mauritania, unfortunately."  Even worse, "anyone who speaks out is considered a criminal whose natural place in in jail.  Until not so long ago, [whoever spoke up] would have been killed."

Slavery [is] Rampant in Africa, Middle East; The West Wrongly Accuses Itself.  The United States abolished slavery 150 years ago, and has affirmative action for minorities.  It is the country that elected a Black president, Barack Obama — twice!  Yet, a new movement is toppling one historic monument after another one, as if the US is still enslaving African-Americans.  Activists in Washington DC even targeted an Emancipation Memorial, depicting President Abraham Lincoln, who paid with his life for freeing slaves.  Today slavery still exists in many parts of Africa and Middle East, but the self-flagellating Western public is obsessively focused only on the Western past of African slavery rather than on real, ongoing slavery, which is alive and well — and ignored.  For today's slaves, there are no demonstrations in the streets, no international political pressure, and virtually no articles in the media.  "We must not forget that Arab-Muslims have been champions in this field," Kamel Bencheikh, a Muslim poet, wrote in Le Matin d'Algerie.

The Reparations Fallacy.  Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said during a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives last week that "Black Lives Matter is a mandate from the people.  It's time.  Pay us what you owe us."  Pressley is a demagogue.  We are not living in a mob-run democracy of the "people."  We live in a constitutional republic.  Americans don't owe Pressley (speaking for "us") anything except her salary — even that's a stretch given her performance.

Global Slavery Index: 2018 Findings.  It is a confronting reality that even in the present day, men, women and children all over the world remain victims of modern slavery.  They are bought and sold in public markets, forced to marry against their will and provide labour under the guise of "marriage," forced to work inside clandestine factories on the promise of a salary that is often withheld, or on fishing boats where men and boys toil under threats of violence.  They are forced to work on construction sites, in stores, on farms, or in homes as maids.  Labour extracted through force, coercion, or threats produces some of the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the footballs we kick.  The minerals that men, women, and children have been made to extract from mines find their way into cosmetics, electronics, and cars, among many other products.

The Most Noble Experiment in Human History is on a Ventilator.  The only two major civilizations to abolish slavery are the United Kingdom and the United States.  You see, slavery still exists today.  There are over 40,000,000 enslaved people, 71% of whom are females. 25,000,000 of them are involved in forced labor.  With the exception of one Latin American country, this is taking place in Africa, eastern Europe, and Asia. [...] Slavery was not invented by Americans, and it didn't end when Abraham Lincoln closed the door to it here in the U.S.

The poison of reparations.  Reparations are a recipe for rancor.  Under the guise of settling a grievance, they intensify and often eternalize it.  They almost inevitably plant seeds of enmity that last for generations.  However large the cost, the victorious side eventually feels it settled too cheap.  And the side that humbly paid comes to recognize it paid too dearly and gained nothing more than a pause in the demands.  Reparations don't repair.  They turn the original grievance into institutionalized animosity.  The topic comes up because today's doyen of racial resentment, the New York Times's Nikole Hannah-Jones, says that monetary reparations are 'What Is Owed' to black Americans for centuries of slavery and 'slavocracy'. How the country as a whole will respond to this demand remains to be seen, but the furnaces of elite black grievance are hotter than they been since the April 1968 riots ignited by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the wells of white apology and guilt are in full flood.  Reparations are sure to be on the political agenda in the presidential election this fall, even if the word itself is avoided.

It Doesn't Matter Who Did or Did Not Own Slaves.  Ill-educated Black Lives Matter protesters are on a rampage tearing down monuments of American heroes that they believe owned slaves or were complicit with slavery.  Their rage is the consequence of allowing anti-American socialists and communists to dominate public education for decades.  Students have been filled with lies and distortions about American history.  It is good that properly educated adults have taken to the airwaves in an attempt to reeducate the dumbed-down mobs regarding the truth about America and her heroes.  I am a proud and grateful American who happens to be black.  And frankly, I do not care who did or did not own slaves.  What difference does it make that our founding fathers and other heroes were not perfect their entire lives?  Descent people learn, become more enlightened and evolve throughout their lives.

Modern Slavery and Woke Hypocrisy.  According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, there are an estimated 136,000 people living in modern slavery just in Britain.  Slavery in the UK takes the form of forced labor, and domestic and sexual exploitation.  Albanians and Vietnamese are among the groups that constitute the majority of slaves.  British news outlets have run several stories about the estimated thousands of Vietnamese, half under the age of 18, who are kidnapped and trafficked to the UK where they are forced to work as slaves on cannabis farms. [...] BLM may not care much about Vietnamese lives in the UK — after all, they are all about black lives, so how about black slaves in Africa?  There are currently an estimated 9.2 million men, women and children living in modern slavery in Africa, according to the Global Slavery Index, which includes forced labor, forced sexual exploitation and forced marriage.

In Defense of Thomas Jefferson.  Last week in New York City, the author of the Declaration of Independence became the latest target of the statue wreckers as elected officials formally asked Mayor Bill de Blasio to remove the statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall.  Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-Staten Island), representing the anarchists, said: "[Jefferson's] words are 'all men are created equal' but they were not matched by his action, which included the ability to sell, buy, mortgage and lease human beings."  Rose's argument, as so many others who have criticized America's third president for owning slaves, is trivial at best, since his positions on slavery underwent several evolutions.  Jefferson, in fact, always spoke out against institutional slavery throughout his political career.

Reparations and Rioters.  Somewhere along the way, outrage over George Floyd's slaying turned into a larger plea for more recognition of African-Americans in areas ranging from the arts to corporate boards to the big screen.  Demands for policing reform and greater accountability were only ploys to extract something more from society, like a diversion used in a casino caper.  The narrative of police punishment unfairly meted out on minorities became a tail used to wag the dog for a loftier goal.  That goal is vengeance mixed with monetary restitution.  In a word, reparations.

'Not enough to say sorry': British firms should pay reparations for slave trade, say Caribbean nations.  British financial institutions that benefited from slavery should go further than saying "sorry" for their role in slavery and commit to reparations by funding development in the Caribbean, an alliance of countries in the region has said.  The Lloyd's of London insurance market apologised on Thursday for its "shameful" role in the 18th-century Atlantic slave trade and pledged to fund opportunities for black and ethnic minority people.  The Bank of England also apologised for the "inexcusable" ties former governors and directors had to slavery and said it was "committed to improving diversity".

Slavery Reparations:  A Scam in the Trillions.  Calls for reparations go back many decades.  The core assumption has been the same from the start:  Living whites must make amends to living blacks by emptying their pockets, preferably with the federal government overseeing the transfers.  That the actual slaves and slave owners are long deceased makes no difference.  As advocates see it, all white wealth in this country, if indirectly, is morally tainted, a product of "white skin privilege."  Reparations are a turbocharged hybrid of affirmative action and the welfare state.  It's a shakedown from any angle.  Far from healing wounds, it will open them.  But reparations one day may become law.  A bill to that effect first introduced in Congress in 1989 (and reintroduced like clockwork thereafter) by the late Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., H.R. 40, is gradually gaining support.  Virtually nobody on Capitol Hill has spoken out against it.

Scott Adams has had a brilliant insight about the demand for reparations.  Whenever Democrats push race to the forefront of the news, reparations pop up.  The theory is that, because their forebearers were kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in America, blacks will never catch up economically to whites.  It doesn't matter that there are no slaves or slaveowners today; that most whites are not descended from slaveowners; or that racism impoverished, rather than enriched the South.  Scott Adams' brilliant insight cuts through all this:  The comparison isn't between black wealth and white wealth in America.  Instead, the comparison must be the difference between black's average net worth in America versus black's average net worth in Africa.

The Privilege Inherent in Reparations for Black America.  On Fox News recently, Bret Baier interviewed BET founder Robert Johnson, who has called for reparations for slavery.  Mr. Johnson has proposed $14 trillion for 40 million black Americans.  The potential for reparations payments would be a privilege for certain Americans at the cost to others who were not responsible for slavery.  There are the obvious problems with this ancestral blood-libel approach to groupthink slavery reparations.  The list of reparations issues is extensive, a few include the following.
  •   Africans were captured for the most part by other Africans and sold into slavery.  Would reparations be afforded to ancestors of these slave trade suppliers?
  •   Some Africans who live in America have no lineage to the slavery that occurred in this country.  Would reparations be afforded to these persons who are devoid of this ancestral blood-libel payment?
  •   Many Americans' lineage included ancestors killed or maimed fighting slavery, in particular in our country's civil war.  Should they be subject to a second ancestral blood-libel payment?
  •   Some Americans have ancestors or they themselves came to this country after slavery was abolished.  Should they be required to pay this groupthink blood libel?
  •   Some black Americans are financially successful, just like BET founder Robert Johnson.  Will financially successful black Americans be provided this reparations payment, or what is the income cutoff?
  •   Americans have bent their laws and constitution to accommodate the black American community, purposefully discriminated against others to benefit black Americans.  Have those who were sacrificed for this discrimination not already paid enough, or will they also pay this fee?
  •   Americans have provided directly and indirectly trillions of dollars of welfare payments, social program costs, policing, medical costs, etc., and lives sacrificed to violence, drug-related harm, etc., to support and assist the black American community, without the outcome apparently desired by some, such as Mr. Johnson.  Have these payments and human costs not been enough?

Garcetti:  LAPD budget to be cut by $150M to fund programs in black communities.  Amid nationwide protests ignited by the police-involved killing of George Floyd early last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that up to $150 million will be cut from the L.A. Police Department as part of relocating some $250 million from the city's budget to fund programs in communities of color.

The Editor says...
Programs? What kind of programs?  What does that really mean?

BET Founder Calls for $14 Trillion in Reparations to 42 Million African American Including a $350,767 One-Time Payment.  BET Founder Bob Johnson called today [6/3/2020] for a $14.7 Trillion reparations package for 42 million African Americans.  Johnson's plan will offer a $350,767 one time cash payment to every African American in the US today who are descendants of of slaves.

BET founder Bob Johnson calls for slavery reparations, says US will remain 'separate and unequal' without them.  Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson elaborated on his call for the payment of $14 trillion in reparations to African-Americans Monday on "Special Report."  Johnson told host Bret Baier that Americans must look at the passing of time in "total context."  "Part of that context is people have a right to protest when they see injustice.  That goes all the way back to Dr. Martin Luther King," he said.  "But on the other hand, we have to go to the root cause of people's protesting that leads to violence, whether it is agitated violence or just violence because people feel frustrated and bitter."

As Long As a Political Party Believes It Owns African-Americans, Blacks Will Not Be Free.  As long as Democrats define Blacks as their property — believing essentially that "You belong to us, or you ain't Black" — they will see the Black community in the same way that carpetbaggers saw the recently freed slaves a century and a half ago, as a hoodwinked population ripe for the pickings and who can be trained — and addicted — to rely on the Democrats for Big Government "largesse."  That "largesse" comes in the form of handouts: food stamps, welfare, the whole "Great Society" litany.  Yet, more than half a century since the Democrats' "Great Society" was unfurled, the situation has remained appalling in precisely the communities that it supposedly was targeted to help.  Look at history's lessons:  Payments to families based on their size induced many households to have more children than they were prepared to rear or support.  Reductions of government payments for two-income households induced men to abandon their homes, wives, children.  Boys thus grew up without fathers as male role models for waking up every morning, going to work all day, and staying up late at night paying bills.  Later, abortion on demand disproportionately reduced the Black population even in homes that could have afforded, loved, and reared one more child successfully.

Billionaire Steyer shakes up primary with slavery reparations plan.  For centuries, South Carolina's Charleston was the largest port of entry for the transatlantic slave trade.  Now, a billionaire activist named Tom Steyer is shaking up the state's Democratic primary by advocating slavery reparations for African Americans.  A California financier turned philanthropist and environmental campaigner, Steyer has poured tens of millions of dollars into the state ahead of Saturday's vote — with a single-minded focus on the black voters who make up 60 percent of its Democratic electorate.

The Editor says...
This was an act of political desperation, apparently, because he dropped out of the race the next day.

The Black Vote as Progressives Imagine It.  Likewise, just about every 2020 Democratic campaign promised to "study" the issue of monetary reparations to the descendants of slaves.  Before he dropped out, Cory Booker was the most forceful in his support for an outcome of that "study" that would support such a program.  Former Massachusetts Mayor Deval Patrick is prepared to "offer explicit support for federal reparations," according to Axios.  The traction these candidates have generated among African-American Democrats tells you all you need to know about how the party's primary voters respond to these overtures.  Despite being the primary beneficiaries of this proposal, a 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that only 52 percent of black respondents backed slavery reparations.  A 2016 Marist University poll showed 58 percent of African Americans would support such a measure.

Literally!
White Liberals Apologize For Slavery by Kissing Boots of Black Power Group Members.  A video shows a white couple bending down and kissing the boots of black power group members to apologize for slavery.  Yes, really.  The activist members appear to be from the Black Hebrew Israelites, an organization labeled an extremist hate group by some because of its inherent anti-white and anti-Semitic racism.  Two people who had expressed an affinity with the group were responsible for the December 2019 attack on a JC Kosher Supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey which left four people dead.

Steyer: U.S. reparations for slavery will help 'repair the damage'.  Billionaire and presidential candidate Tom Steyer reiterated his support Wednesday for reparations for African-Americans suffering from the legacy of slavery.  "We would retell the story over the last 401 years so everybody understands not just the legalized, institutionalized injustice in racism — which is definitely a huge part of this story — but also the contribution of the African-American community," Steyer said in an interview with Yahoo News' "Hot Mic With Brittany Shepherd."  "I don't think we can be the country that we want to be until we acknowledge the past and move to accept the mistakes this country made that are dramatic and obvious, and then repair the damage."

DC school promises to protect students from knowledge.  Although slavery has been a part of history since the dawn of man, Progressives have convinced themselves that it existed only in America and only as to blacks.  Combining this historic blindness with excessive deference to student sensibilities reached peak wokeness in a Washington, D.C. elementary school. [...] A real education would teach students that slavery has been an integral part of human existence since the dawn of time.  Indeed, it's so integral that it is still present today throughout the Middle East and Africa.  What makes Western civilization different is that the Enlightenment combined Judeo-Christian beliefs with ancient Greek reasoning to conclude that slavery is a moral wrong, a concept that culminated in America with a bloody Civil War.

Economic vs.  Cultural Marxism:  The Most Important Distinction.  [Scroll down]  If I am an individual, I had nothing to do with slavery, Jim Crow, waging war with the American Indians, or anyone who did anything hundreds of years before I was born.  However, if my individuality is abolished, I am not a unique individual with specific characteristics.  I can be broken down into an abstraction designated by those in power. [...] These third parties are the politicians, academics, movie stars, and athletes.  These people are using Marxism, many without even knowing it, to advance certain peoples and ideas, while simultaneously penalizing others for issues they are not responsible for.  This is possible only by abolishing individuality.  In a world with individuals, we are responsible only for our own actions.  In a world without individuality, we, as individuals, can be held accountable for the actions of others.  It does not matter if these crimes and abuses were committed by the dead against the dead from hundreds of years before either party was born.

AP-NORC poll:  Most Americans oppose reparations for slavery.  Few Americans are in favor of giving reparations to descendants of enslaved black people in the United States, a poll shows, even as the idea has gained momentum among Democratic presidential contenders.

The South Has Already Paid Reparations.  Ignored among current reparations discussions is the fact the South has already paid them — if not for slavery, then for losing the Civil War.  For at least 25 years after the war, over half of the federal budget was devoted to three items:  interest on federal debt; budget surpluses applied to debt retirements; and Union veterans' pensions.  None benefitted former Confederates even though they had to pay their share of taxes to fund them.  If the Confederacy had been an independent defeated foe, such payments would have constituted reparations.

$27M for slavery reparations 'not enough,' Princeton seminary students say.  They want $120M more.  Princeton Theological Seminary pledged last week to use $27.6 million of its endowment to pay reparations for the school's historic ties to slavery, believed to be the largest amount ever paid by a school to atone for benefiting from the slave trade.  The school's black student association says it's "a great start, but not enough."  The Association of Black Seminarians at Princeton Theological Seminary — a student group that helped raise the slavery reparations issue at the school — plans to call for at least $120 million more in slavery reparations along with money for current African-American students and other changes, the association's president said.

Slavery Is Alive and Well.  The zealots in the media refuse to speak of the few southern farmers who owned slaves, and the few ship captains who transported slaves, and the few chiefs who sold their own people.  They insist on collective guilt, demanding that all whites wallow in shame and never look any decent person in the eyes and feel like the scum of the earth for being white.  Sorry, but I have no guilt for slavery.  Consequently, I will not pay a dollar of reparations because of those blacks who are full-time victims wallowing in self-pity looking for lifetime handouts.

Time to Set the Record Straight on Slavery.  Slavery in America ended with the Civil War, which cost more American lives than any other war in U.S. history.  With the complete dismantling of postwar discriminatory practices by 1964, and continual efforts to boost the affluence of minorities, talk of slavery and reparations should be a thing of the distant past, but a race-hustling industry has kept it alive by misinforming successive generations of students and indoctrinating minorities to hate everything American, while (mostly white) leftists constantly agitate to sow and inflame racial division.

Slandering the American Founding.  Well, it's settled.  Everything we thought we knew about the American Founding is wrong.  The real Founding is not the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or even the drafting of the Constitution in 1787.  Instead, it is 1619 when the first slaves arrived in the settlement of Jamestown.  Thus sayeth the 1619 Project of The New York Times, which seeks "to reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."  Of course, the 1619 Project merely regurgitates what has become the mainstream view of today's Democratic Party.  For instance, Beto O'Rourke said recently that "this country ... was founded on racism, has persisted through racism and is racist today."  Bernie Sanders said earlier this year that the United States was "created" in large part "on racist principles."  How did this calumny take root?

Which black Americans should get reparations?  While polls show the majority of Americans oppose paying monetary reparations to the descendants of slaves, support for such measures has doubled since the early 2000s.  A 2002 Gallup poll found just 14 percent of Americans support cash reparations for slavery.  When Gallup polled again earlier this year, support had jumped to 29 percent.  Even with an increasing number of people open to the concept of reparations, a crucial question looms over the debate:  Who would be eligible to receive the payouts?

Reparations or Liberty?  Among many telltale signs of the tectonic fissures dividing the nation, perhaps the most telling is the near universal call by prominent Democrats and others for reparations.  This refers to a compensatory payment made to the descendants of African slaves brought to America through the Atlantic Slave Trade.  It is unworkable, but it speaks loudly of the state of our politics and culture.  Proponents of reparations argue passionately of the stain of slavery, the long, dark shadow cast by this cruel institution across the American soul. [...] But there are counter-arguments.  We begin with the obvious: slavery ended in America 150 years ago by something known as the Civil War; roughly 750,000 soldiers died in that cataclysm, a great and bloody cleansing of the nation over that mortal sin.  Furthermore, no one alive today in America is a slave or slaveholder, and sons and daughters are not responsible for the sins of their parents, let alone of distant ancestors from more than a century ago.

Sure Democrats Will Lose in 2020, But They Are Dangerous Now, And Must Be Stopped!  Slavery existed in some form in nearly every society on the planet until the primarily European and American abolitionist movements that began world wide change.  Nations in Central and South America continued to practice race-based slavery after America declared it illegal.  In India, portions of Southwest Asia, and Africa — to this day — slavery based on ethnic and religious prejudice continues to be perpetrated.  In America you have individuals who have made it to the top of every industry of every race and background.  We are the least racist nation on the planet.

The Democrat debate was terrifying.  Who are these people?  [Scroll down]  The American Revolution was fought to free the American colonies from the tyranny of and taxation by England.  That same liberty-loving spirit led to the Civil War; freedom-loving Americans fought to end slavery.  The Republican Party was founded to do exactly that.  Any faux historian that says different is lying.  America was founded in 1776, its nationhood cemented with the ratification of the Constitution in 1788.  Legitimate historians are rare these days; nearly all have been politicized by academia and its power to persuade, and by its love of Howard Zinn's slanderous and wholly inaccurate version of US history.  The NYT's silly claim that we have been a nation since 1619 when, according to them, the first slave arrived in the New World is utter nonsense.  Academia is now, with a few exceptions, thoroughly corrupt, committed only to the leftist indoctrination of the unsuspecting young.

O'Rourke: USA Should Date Its Creation to 1619 When First Slaves Came, Not to 1776.  Asked why he is the most qualified candidate to address the nation's racial "divide," Beto O'Rourke slammed President Trump as a white supremacist and said the United States should mark its founding, not on July 4, 1776, but on August 20, 1619, "When the first kidnapped African was brought to this country against his will."

The Editor says...
Slaves were not "kidnapped Africans."  They were sold into slavery by other Africans, after losing inter-tribal wars.

Houston Hatefest:  Dems Go Nasty.  Democrats onstage in Houston aspire not so much to govern America as to punish it.  Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke called racism not only "endemic" to America but "foundational."  He explained, "We can mark the creation of this country not at the Fourth of July, 1776, but August 20, 1619, when the first kidnapped African was brought to this country against his will and in bondage and as a slave built the greatness, and the success, and the wealth that neither he nor his descendants would ever be able to participate in or enjoy."

How To Replace Howard Zinn's Communist Account Of U.S. History For American Kids.  [Scroll down]  "Land of Hope" is published in a year in which hatred of America seems bigger than ever.  To take a recent and prominent example, The New York Times, once the United States' paper of record, has newly released the "1619 Project," named after the year in which African slaves first arrived on American shores.  The project purports to be a work of history:  "aim[ing] to reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."  But it is better described as anti-history propaganda.  To take just one demonstration of this, its premise and name fully ignores that Native Americans frequently enslaved each other on this continent long before Europeans arrived.  It also sidelines the fact that most of the African slaves brought to the Americas were sold by enemy African tribes, who also routinely held their fellow man in slavery going back centuries.  Native Americans held black slaves.  African Americans held black slaves.  The whole world has held slaves.

Why The Case For Reparations Would Be Immediately Thrown Out Of Court.  The three areas of tort law are intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability.  Think of this as an attack, a slip and fall, and a dangerous consumer product, respectively.  Someone can be liable for harming another person under one of these three theories, because they either intentionally, recklessly, or negligently acted badly toward the victim.  The obvious problem already is discerning which theory we could even use for reparations, with no living person intentionally, recklessly, or negligently causing harm.

Reparations for slavery emerge as issue among Democrats running for president.  When University of Connecticut professor Thomas Craemer first began researching reparations for slavery, most mainstream white politicians weren't talking about the issue.  Now, more than a dozen years later, the idea that African Americans should receive restitution for the grievous legacy of enslavement and racial discrimination is sparking a political debate that is helping to shape the 2020 presidential race.

A blatant attempt to revise history:
New goal for New York Times: 'Reframe' American history, and target Trump, too.  Perhaps when you think of the founding of the United States, you think of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers.  Now, the New York Times wants to "reframe" your understanding of the nation's founding.  In the Times' view (which it hopes to make the view of millions of Americans), the country was actually founded in 1619, when the first Africans were brought to North America, to Virginia, to be sold as slaves.  This year marks the 400th anniversary of that event, and the Times has created something called the 1619 Project.

West African slavery lives on, 400 years after trans-Atlantic trade began.  As the world marks 400 years since the first recorded African slaves arrived in North America, slavery remains a modern-day scourge.  Over 40 million people are estimated to be trapped in forced labor, forced marriages or other forms of sexual exploitation, according to the United Nations.

Marianne Williamson pitches half-a-trillion dollars in slave reparations to raucous applause.  Self-help author Marianne Williamson defended her support of slave reparations by arguing Americans owe descendants of slaves trillions of dollars and should pay at least $100 billion to make amends.

Black Folks Don't Need Reparations; We're Doing Well On Our Own.  There must be another election coming up, because Democrats are once again shamelessly pandering to black folks.  Their latest ruse is reviving the idea of reparations — literally, race-based transfer payments from white Americans to black Americans.  Can you believe that's really a legislative priority for Democrats at a time when African American unemployment is hovering at record lows?  Nevertheless, 64 House Democrats are co-sponsoring a bill that would establish a commission to work out the details of a national reparations policy, and the House Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing to draw public attention to the effort.

Vermont's governor calls his own state's people irredeemably racist.  Vermont's culture is one of dairy farming, verdant mountain scenery, maple syrup, and small-town hospitality.  Both the governor and the gubernatorial hopeful who may oppose him next year openly characterize Vermonters' culture as innately racist.  Scott praised Donovan's Report declaring Vermont a "White Supremacy Culture" and proudly signed a law March 29 that will create a school curriculum designed to "change the underlying culture of our state."  Like all states, Vermont has racists.  But slavery was never legal in Vermont, being banned in the first state constitution in America.

McConnell on his family's past:  Like Obama, my family owned slaves, and like Obama, I oppose reparations.  Is it true that Obama's ancestors owned slaves?  It is — more than one ancestor, in fact.  It may also be true, though, that not only was Obama descended from American slaves, he was descended from the first American slave.

Nigeria: Islamic Jihadists, their Christian black slaves, and the West's deafening silence.  Among the most disturbing aspects of the long-running civil war in Nigeria has been slavery.  Conflicts between the Muslim majority and the 40% Christian minority have led to the growth of terrorist violence in which the taking of Christian slaves has become a source of compensation for Islamic fighters.  The recent rise of jihad organizations like ISIS affiliate Boko Haram has been the main source of contemporary slave raids.  The most infamous incident of a slave raid was Boko Haram's abduction of 276 Christian schoolgirls in the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014 which inspired Michelle Obama's "#BringBackOurGirls" hashtag.  Most slaves are young girls, kidnapped and kept as the concubines of the Islamic soldiers.

Barack Obama's Family Owned Slaves, But He Opposed Reparations Just Like Mitch McConnel.  With NBC News doing the bidding of hucksters, conmen, grifters, and charlatans to attack Mitch McConnell over slavery, it is worth remembering that Barack Obama's ancestors owned slaves in Kentucky and the media did not make it a big, sensational story that he opposed reparations.  That's right, Obama opposed reparations.

2020 Democrat Candidates' 21 Most Insanely Scary Proposals.  [#5] Slavery Reparations:  Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Pete Buttigieg all support forcing American taxpayers to pay slavery reparations.  This proposal will cost us anywhere between $9 and $17 trillion — that's "trillion" with a "T."  And that is just reparations for slavery.  Reparations for Jim Crow will be next.

When Will Race-Baiting Kamala Harris Acknowledge She Is A Descendent Of A Slave Owner?  Last week, at the Democratic debate in Miami, Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala [D-CA] stirred up a racial hornet's nest against former Vice President Joe Biden for his past pandering to segregationist senators decades ago.  "I do not believe you are a racist and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground," Harris said, publicly chastising Biden at last week's debate, "but it's personal and it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States Senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country."  Harris' months-in-the-making, made-for-TV attack on Biden is largely seen as an attempt to lure black voters away from the Democratic frontrunner and to tarnish his image.  To date, however, no one has asked Harris about her own Jamaican family tree, which reportedly goes back to Jamaican plantation and slave owner Hamilton Brown.

The Most Fundamental Problem with Democrats' Push for Reparations.  Recently, we witnessed a farce on Capitol Hill when a number of black activists suggested that white American taxpayers should pay monetary "reparations" to black American descendants of the ancient institution of slavery.  And now, several leading Democratic candidates for the presidency have voiced their support for "studying" such reparations.  This is a curious choice by these candidates, considering that a recent poll by Rasmussen shows that only 21% of likely American voters support redistributive measures to pay reparations to descendants of slaves.  Of course, the value in supporting reparations is not in the popularity of this unique issue, but the political currency which comes with virtue-signaling one's progressive bona fides.

The spoiled 'protected group' brats of America.  Some African-Americans demand the right to roll white people in the name of "reparations" for a slavery that disappeared more than 150 years ago, a slavery that absolutely no American alive today experienced or played a part in.  Bloated crime statistics from Democrat-run ghetto cities suggest that it is America that deserves a rebate for the billions of dollars wasted trying to "help" a protected class that refuses to wean itself off welfare checks.

Slavery reparations could carry a $17 trillion price tag.  A new bill would calculate potential costs of reparations — and by Yahoo Finance estimates, these could reach as high as $17.1 trillion.  Last week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held the first hearing in a decade on H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.  The bill was first introduced in 1989 by former Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). Conyers reintroduced the bill each year until his retirement in 2017 — and each year, the bill languished in Congress.  The bill's focus was not to pass reparations, but to research the impact slavery had on black Americans and develop proposals for redress.

The Truth about Reparations.  When the issue of reparations arises in national discussion as it now seems to every few years, and articles like this one appear, commentators and posters who don't favor the idea still put forth a common sentiment that goes something like this:  "I don't like the idea, but if paying a few billions of extra tax dollars to black people will end this, I'd do it."  Here's the bottom line — it won't.

The Call For Reparations Isn't About Justice, It's About Power.  You might think it insane for the 2020 Democratic candidates to push reparations going into the election cycle, especially since it polls so low among Democratic voters.  But for them it is not about winning over Americans who are on the fence.  The entire point of the debate is to ratchet up racial tension and drive a wedge into our national life.  That is another way of saying reparations aren't really about the past at all.  They're about the future.

America Elected a Black President; We Don't Need Reparations.  The left went into a predictable hissy this week after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments about his opposition to reparations for slavery.  "We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a Civil War, by passing landmark civil rights legislation.  We've elected an African American president.  I think we're always a work in progress in this country."  While the liberal media has been desperate to accuse McConnell of calling Barack Obama's presidency reparations for slavery, if you watch the video, it's clear that what McConnell was saying — that the election of Barack Obama was a symbolic moment in the progress America has made over the last 150 years.

The House Democrats stage a reparations circus.  There are actually things Congress could be doing, you know.  Things which are of more value than putting on demagogic expositions like allowing Sheila Jackson-Lee, the utterly moronic Democrat congresswoman from the slums of Houston, to stage a hearing on the urgent necessity of paying reparations to the black community for slavery.  This wasn't a hearing to discuss a true reparations plan, mind you.  No, what Wednesday's circus involved was a hearing to talk about creating a commission — surely a blue-ribbon outfit that will be! — to create a study of whether reparations would be practical.

Reparations: Democrats Scam and Insult Blacks Again.  Please stop telling black Americans that we are crippled, inferior and are helpless children who can only succeed via government handouts, lowered standards and special concessions.  Just stop it!  The Civil War effectively ended slavery in 1863.  After eight years of Americans making a black man the leader of the free world, Democrats are absurdly claiming blacks are suffering the negative repercussions of slavery and deserve a check.  These people (Democrats) are evil, divisive, race-baiting and race-exploiting con artists.

Conservative Black Activists Call Reparations Proposal [an] Unnecessary Divisive 'Sham'.  Members of the Project 21 black leadership network said that the legislative proposal to study giving reparations to descendants of slaves is a "sham," calling the idea both unnecessary and divisive.  The proposal in question is Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's (D-TX) bill HR 40, which would set up a commission to study reparations strategies.  The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on the bill on Wednesday [6/19/2019].

Burgess Owens:  Democrat Party should pay reparations to black Americans.  Retired NFL player and author Burgess Owens is blasting the Democrat Party for its dark past of suppressing black Americans.  During the House Judiciary hearing on slavery reparations Wednesday [6/19/2019], Owens said if any modern Americans should be held responsible for the evils of slavery and forced to pay restitution for it then it should be the Democrats.

Black intellectuals surprise Democrats by telling them who owes the tab on reparations.  House Democrats thought they had an easy issue for rallying the black vote:  bringing up reparations for slavery as an election issue and holding congressional hearings.  What better way to rally coveted black voters than to hold out a big pile of reparations money along with lot of talk about victimization derived from evils committed in the past?  It didn't work out the way they thought it would.  A large number of Black intellectuals and pundits weighed in, not just at the hearing, but on Twitter and beyond, making a hash of the Democrat "narrative."  Quillette columnist Coleman Hughes, who's a Black Democrat, argued in testimony that the whole thing was insulting to black people and a distraction from the issues Black people face today.

NFL Legend Burgess Owens Says Democrats Should Pay Reparations.  NFL legend and Super Bowl Champion Burgess Owens, does not agree with the Democrats about much.  However, he does agree with them about reparations, except he believes the Democrats should be the only ones who have to pay them.  During stirring testimony in front of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Reparations, Owens blasted the Democratic Party "for all the misery" they've brought to blacks; citing everything from the party's support of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, and abortion.

Former NFL Star Burgess Owens Pummels Congressional Democrats' Call For Reparations .  Democrats in Congress are once again attempting to use race to divide and conquer in a move that has nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with increasing their own power and influence over the American people.  Watch and listen as former NFL star Burgess Owens, the descendant of slaves breaks down the hypocrisy and dishonesty of these Democrats and gives them all a much-needed history lesson.

Black NYT Writer Mocks Blacks Testifying Against Slave Reparations:  They 'Have No Apparent Qualifications Other Than Being Black'.  A black writer for The New York Times, apparently incensed that other blacks might not support the move toward reparations for American slavery, ripped the black witnesses testifying against reparations, tweeting that the witnesses "have no apparent qualifications other than being black."

Multiculturalism Is a Nation Killer.  The civil rights movement started out with demands for basic human dignity.  Once those were met, it legitimately demanded equality of opportunity, and once that was achieved, it demanded preferential treatment where equality of opportunity was redefined, in Orwellian fashion, as equality of result.  Flush with success, it now demands reparations where those who never were enslaved will receive compensation from those who never owned slaves, all in the name of virtue and justice.  By nature, humans are tribal.  Tribalism is the easiest way to organize people and mobilize them politically.  Until very recently, America was a multi-ethnic society with a dominant culture.  That culture is breaking apart as we become more tribal, and we begin to think of ourselves in terms of tribal loyalties, as reinforced by political elites.

To Pay for Reparations, Will Democrats Sue Themselves?  Slavery in America ended more than 150 years ago.  Neither former slaves nor slave owners are alive today.  Furthermore, columnist and radio host Michael Medved says that only about 5 percent of whites have any sort of "generational" connection to slavery.  "The importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence, and slavery had been outlawed in most states decades before the Civil War," wrote Medved in 2007. [...] Finally, what about the role of the Democratic Party in slavery, Jim Crow and the resistance to ending them?  Republican President Abraham Lincoln, elected on an anti-slavery platform, signed the Emancipation Proclamation and led the North in its victory over the South at the cost of at least 620,000 soldiers dead on both sides.  Democrats opposed the 13th Amendment, which freed the slaves, the 14th Amendment, which conferred citizenship on them, and the 15th Amendment, which gave them the right to vote.

Reparations for slavery remains divisive issue for US, remarks by Booker, McConnell suggest.  Comments from two U.S. senators — one a Democrat and the other a Republican — appeared to illustrate Tuesday how far apart the two parties are on the proposal of reparations for the descendants of American slaves.  U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., one of three African-Americans in the U.S. Senate, is expected to argue Wednesday [6/19/2019] that the nation hasn't fully come to grips with "the racism and white supremacy that tainted" the nation's founding, according to remarks prepared for his scheduled Wednesday appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.

Here's why reparations have suddenly become a hot button issue ahead of the 2020 presidential race.  The topic of reparations for slavery has emerged as a major issue since the start of the year as Democratic presidential candidates gear up for 2020.  On Wednesday [6/19/2019], the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties will hold the first hearing in more than a decade focused specifically on reparations.  The legislation, introduced earlier this year by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, would establish a commission to study the impact of slavery and lingering discrimination against black Americans, as well as propose reparation recommendations.  While Lee's bill isn't the first focused on reparations (former Democratic rep.  John Conyers of Michigan had proposed a similar bill for decades, up until his 2017 resignation) the idea has only recently gained traction in mainstream politics, with 2020 hopefuls now beginning to weigh in on whether they support reparations for black Americans impacted by the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination.

Beto O'Rourke says white Americans don't know the full story of slavery, continues to support reparations.  Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke took an unconventional approach to reaching out to African-American voters Friday, meeting with a small group representing a community of slave descendants in South Carolina and saying white Americans do not know the full story of slavery.  O'Rourke spent Friday [6/14/20919] at a Baptist church in Beaufort, S.C., where the former Texas congressman met with leaders of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, a culture of coastal slave descendants whose separation from the mainland allowed them to retain much of their African heritage, including a unique dialect and skills such as cast-net fishing and basket weaving.

Black Community Leader Points to NFL Millionaires to Prove Slavery Reparations Idea is 'Fools Gold'.  Woodson Center founder and president Bob Woodson criticized the concept of slavery reparations, calling it "fools gold" that will do nothing to help the black community in the long run.  During a Friday night [6/14/2019] appearance on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Woodson bolstered his point by bringing up an uncomfortable fact about once-rich NFL players, that the vast majority are broke within three years after ending their football careers.

Reality is Not an Option.  If the left has its way, and all the white people in America are made to pay reparations for the chattel slavery of bygone days, will Rachael Dolezal, who pretends to be black, pay her share — or will she reap the benefits of her self-defined identity?  Can one "feel like" a black person for tax purposes alone?  Can one self-identify as handicapped for the convenient parking spaces?  It is fortunate that one's self-identification as either competent or incompetent has not yet achieved the much-coveted protected status.  I dread the day when I will be treated by a physician who simply "feels like" a doctor.

House panel to hold hearing on reparations for slavery next week.  A House panel will hold a hearing next week on the topic of reparations for slavery.  The House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties is set to hold a hearing June 19 on legislation that would establish a commission to study the consequences and impacts of slavery and make recommendations for reparations proposals.  The hearing is titled "H.R. 40 and the Path to Restorative Justice."

Minneapolis' Sacred Stupidity.  [Scroll down]  Which brings us to Minneapolis, the hometown of the illustrious illegal immigrant and tax-evading congresswoman Ilhan Omar.  And one Jacob Frey, the Democrat mayor of the City of Lakes, who thought it a wonderful idea to commemorate the 400th anniversary of black slaves arriving at the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia by holding something the city's "Racial Equity Coordinators" call "400 Years of Resistance and Liberation.  Remembering, Recovering, Reimagining — Sacred Conversations with City Staff."  There were never black slaves in Minneapolis, unless perhaps some were brought by recent Somali immigrants to that city given that black slavery is alive and well in Somalia (perhaps Rep. Omar might speak on the subject with more expertise than your author).  It would appear more appropriate that Minneapolis celebrate its historical status as a refuge for escaped and freed slaves in the 19th century, but that isn't the kind of thing that would hook in the rubes, is it?  So instead we must have Sacred Conversations.

Segregation Comes to Minnesota.  It has often been observed that progressives are re-segregating some areas of the country, especially college campuses.  But Minnesota has never been segregated, so our progressives are boldly venturing to segregate our citizens by race for the first time. [...] But the project is risible in other ways.  [#1] Why is the City of Minneapolis (incorporated 1867) commemorating the 400th anniversary of "African people being brought to Jamestown, VA"?  Is there some relevance here that escapes me? [...] [#2] The City's assertion that Africans were "forced into slavery" upon their arrival in Virginia is false.  They were enslaved in Africa; sub-Saharan Africa had a slave economy at that time and for centuries after.  As of 1619, slaves had been an important commercial commodity in much of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for 2,000 years.  But slaves have never been bought or sold in the State of Minnesota.  [#3] Meanwhile, most Africans have come to the United States voluntarily as immigrants, not as slaves.

Reparations and Diversity Are Not the Path to Equality.  The revival of reparations talk signals an opportunity for a serious discussion of the revival of republican self-government or strong citizenship.  Instead, we get the blithe attitudes of Democrats and the grumbling about handouts from Republicans which signal the bipartisan lack of seriousness — a deficiency also characterizing disputes over immigration and "diversity."  The best opportunity for a serious discussion took place at Georgetown University, which had been shocked to discover the 1838 sale of 272 slaves who were owned by its predecessor, Georgetown College.  Genealogists were able to track down some current descendants of those who were sold to Southern plantations in Louisiana and elsewhere.  Records remain of the contemporary debate over the sales and accounts of the dividing of families[.]  So here was a clear case of some physical connection between a wrongful deed and a living person with some connection to it.

Should Cory Booker Pay Slavery Reparations to Himself?  Senator Cory Booker has promised to introduce a bill to study a proposal for slavery reparations.  The bill will be a companion to a bill by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee who had once declared on the House floor, "I stand here as a freed slave." Since Sheila also believed that there are two Vietnams, that the Constitution is 400 years old, and that Neil Armstrong planted a flag on Mars, that may have been metaphor or the addled understanding of a woman who confused Wikileaks and Wikipedia.  Booker, who claims to care about the victims of sexual violence, might have been dissuaded from backing a bill introduced by a politician who was recently forced to resign from chairing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation after firing a woman who was raped by one of her subordinates.  But Senator Booker has never found a principle that he wouldn't passionately embrace and betray.

On Reparations:  Part I.  Do you think there should be white privilege tax?  If there was one, who should get the money?  When Fox News asked these questions in man-on-the-street interviews awhile back most of us thought it was a joke.  Including Fox.  Times have changed.  These days it looks like you can't be a serious contender for the Democratic nomination for president without endorsing reparations for slavery.

The Free-Stuff Primary:  What Democrats' Promises Will Cost.  More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, only former Rep. Beto O'Rourke has declined to join every major candidate in supporting the establishment of a commission to study possible government reparations to descendants of former slaves.  Even Sanders, though initially hesitant to back payments, said that as president he would sign legislation that creates a commission. [...] For Marianne Williamson, the self-help/spirituality guru, New York Times best-selling author and long shot presidential contender, reparations mean money.  Williamson told CNN in January that $100 billion should be paid in reparations over the next decade in the form of economic stimulus and infrastructure investments.  She did not say where the money should come from.

She gets $288,620 in reparations!
Muslim Couple Who Enslaved African Girl for 16 Years Get Just 7 Seven Years in Prison.  U.S. District Court Judge Reid O'Connor sentenced defendants Mohamed Toure, 58, and Denise Cros-Toure, 58, of Southlake, Texas, to seven years in prison each and ordered them to pay $288,620.24 in restitution.  A federal jury convicted the defendants of forced labor, conspiracy to commit alien harboring, and alien harboring on Jan. 11 following a four-day trial.  As a consequence of their convictions, the defendants, who are citizens of Guinea and lawful permanent residents of the United States, may lose their U.S. immigration status and be removed to Guinea pursuant to law.

America's first slave owner was a black man.  Prior to 1655 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants.  All masters were required to free their servants after their time was up.  Seven years was the limit that an indentured servant could be held.  Upon their release they were granted50 acres of land.  This included any Negro purchased from slave traders.  Negros were also granted 50 acres upon their release.  Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola.  He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619.  In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm.  52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack.  He married a female black servant while working on the farm.  When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a "free Negro" and ran a successful farm.  In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants.  In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant.  Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time.

A Few Humble Thoughts.  First of all, about reparations, the notion of paying money to black or partially black Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors from Africa.  It's a beguiling idea.  Slavery was so hideous a crime and caused so much pain and suffering that something should be done about it.  But we face a lot of problems in the concept of reparations.  For one thing, there were a fair number of black people who emancipated themselves through superhumanly hard work, then used their savings to buy slaves.  How do we assess their liability?  For another, the conditions of slaves varied wildly.  Some were house servants and lived halfway decent lives.  Others worked like myrmidons in sugar cane fields and were literally whipped to death if they faltered.  How do we account for this kind of difference in degree of suffering?

Some Things to Ponder.  Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential elections are calling for reparations for slavery or for the study of reparations.  Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge.  Slavery was a gross violation of human rights.  Justice would demand that slave owners make compensatory payments to slaves.  Since both slaves and slave owners are no longer with us, such punishment and compensation is beyond our reach.  So which white Americans owe which black Americans how much?  Reparations advocates don't want that question asked, but let's you and I ask it.  Are the millions of European, Asian and Latin Americans who immigrated to the U.S. in the 20th century responsible for slavery?  What about descendants of Northern whites who fought and died in the War of 1861 in the name of freeing slaves?  Should they cough up money for black Americans?

National Reckoning, My Eye.  Okay, sports fans, get your wallets out and start giving.  That's the latest brainstorm from a New York Times columnist who makes however unconvincing a case for reparations to black people.  For slavery, that is.  And that means you, whitey — or brownie, and I guess that goes for yellow ones also.  He wants these reparations to be legislated into law, and everyone except African-Americans has to pay.  His idea is hardly original.  Race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris, even Jesse Jackson, have been dropping heavy hints for years.  Black Americans want money, and the rest of us have to give it to them, "punto basta," as they say in the land of pasta.  The media has managed to impose a kind of groupthink that tells us that America is rife with racism and bigotry, but looking around and watching television, the only racism I seem to notice nowadays is the one against whites who go to church and raise law-abiding families.

Booker announces legislation to pave path for slavery reparations.  Sen. Cory Booker announced a bill Monday [4/8/2019] to form a commission to recommend reparations for slavery, taking the reins of one of the most intriguing and controversial agenda items from the 2020 campaign.  Mr. Booker becomes the highest-profile lawmaker to sign onto reparations legislation, saying it could solve persistent racism and discrimination that have been built into the system for decades, leading to disparate outcomes for all black Americans.  "This bill is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country," he said.

Slavery reparations hustle and 'Blame Whitey' mania is a scam, says former ACLU leader.  Democrats are trying to bribe black voters again by dusting off the old leftist talking point of promising Slavery Reparations.  Not surprisingly, the reparations talk is heating up just as we approach the 2020 elections.  However, black activists warn black voters to not fall for the "Blame Whitey" hustle because no one is getting reparations.  It's merely a scam to con blacks into voting for Democrats.

'Reparations' is a recipe for strife, not justice.  Reparations for slavery used to be a fringe idea, but it's gaining traction among mainstream Democrats.  Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee has sponsored a bill to study the question, and she has garnered support from Democratic presidential hopefuls Cory Booker, Liz Warren and Beto O'Rourke.  At The New York Times, David Brooks now backs it.  Which just goes to prove that there's nothing so ill-considered that it won't be taken up by a liberal.

The Cruel Joke of Reparations.  This reparations scam is a cruel joke perpetrated on a community of people by suggesting free money might be coming.  None of these Democrats can explain how this would be accomplished, who specifically will receive payment and how much.  These race hustlers know they don't have to bother with details on something they know will never happen.  Just making the claim gets your book stamped by the NAACP.  Nothing energizes the black electorate more than by teasing them about reparations for slavery.  These race pimps know that many unsuspecting black people who don't see this con job are caught up in the politics being played by them and believe they might get free money.  However, after the presidential primary election cycle ends, the idea of reparations gets put away in the closet for another four years — just long enough for everyone to forget and then get hoodwinked at the next presidential primary.

Ocasio-Cortez calls for 'agenda of reparations' as 2020 Dems get on board.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called Friday for "examining and pursuing an agenda of reparations" as part of a lengthy list of proposals delivered before an Al Sharpton-sponsored conference in New York — touting a controversial policy that's increasingly gained support from the 2020 field of Democratic presidential candidates.  Speaking about her cornerstone Green New Deal, which would entail a massive government-led overhaul of the economy and U.S. energy usage, the freshman Democrat also said the plan does not "shy away from bold conversations of health care, housing and education as human rights, of living wages and dignified work, of policy that isn't just drafted with the next election in mind but also with the next generation in mind."

Beto O'Rourke:  As President I Would 'Absolutely' Sign Slavery Reparations Bill into Law.  Wednesday [4/3/2019] MSNBC played a clip of 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Beto O'Rourke at the Nation Action Network's convention.  O'Rourke was asked if he would sign Sheila Jackson Lee's bill which would consider reparations proposals for Africans-Americans.

Reparations for Slavery are Unworkable and Unjust.  Reparations for American slavery are a misbegotten idea, unworkable and unjust, but every now and then they come back into vogue as a political talking point.  In 1969, the radical civil rights activist James Forman made headlines when he seized the pulpit of New York's Riverside Church and issued a "black manifesto" demanding $500 million in reparations for African enslavement.  Thirty years later, Randall Robinson, founder of the black social-justice organization TransAfrica, revived the reparations movement with his bestselling book The Debt:  What America Owes to Blacks.  Now progressive Democrats, or at least some of the ones running for their party's 2020 presidential nomination, are going through another such phase.  Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, California Senator Kamala Harris, and former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro have all indicated in recent weeks that they support some form of reparations to benefit the descendants of American slaves.

Beto O'Rourke confronted by black voter on opposition to reparations.  Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke was confronted by a black voter for his opposition to "traditional reparations" for slavery.  "Why should I, as a black man, vote for you when you oppose reparations?" O'Rourke was asked at a campaign event at USC on Friday, which was posted online Wednesday [3/27/2019], according to Mediaite.  A day after O'Rourke announced he was running in the Democratic primaries earlier this month, the Associated Press reported he was not in favor of compensatory payment to descendents of slaves.

Princeton Seminary students ask for reparations for school's history linked to slavery.  A group of black seminarians is seeking amends for the Princeton Theological Seminary's founders' and early faculty's ties to slavery.  The Association of Black Seminarians posted a petition online earlier this month as a response to a report that detailed the seminary's history with slavery, which was released last year.  So far, the group has collected more than 400 signatures on the petition, which asks for $5.3 million annually to fund tuition grants for black students and establish a Black Church Studies program.

Bernie vs.  Ta-Nehisi.  [Ta-Nehisi] Coates, a college dropout and semi-employed journalist, improbably rose to being the decade's most celebrated left-wing intellectual by embodying the comic-bookish spirit of the age.  As progressives become more demographically diverse, the ideas that appeal to them become more regressive.  Coates, who went from receiving the MacArthur genius grant for his denunciations of escalator racism to writing the Black Panther comic book for Marvel, epitomizes the essential childishness of the woke.  In contrast, Bernie, the 77-year-old socialist, wishes everybody would just shut up about Coates' divisive issue of reparations and get back to talking about nonracial kitchen-table issues such as Bernie's Medicare for All.  Look, Bernie tries to hint to Democratic voters, blacks will do well on average out of my programs, but that's not what's going to get me elected president.

Warren calls for 'full-blown conversation about reparations'.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave her most detailed answer to date on the question of reparations for black Americans as a means of addressing centuries of slavery and legal discrimination.  In a CNN town hall on Monday night in Jackson, Miss., Warren became the first 2020 presidential candidate serving in the Senate to endorse a House bill that would create a commission to study reparation proposals.

Reparations Going Mainstream Democrat, But They Still Won't Work.  Reparations for black Americans for their experience of slavery used to be a fringe issue for the left.  Most Americans thought it unfair to penalize people for the sins of their great-great-grandfathers.  Few thought the idea practical or affordable.  Then Ta-Nahesi Coates argued for them in a major article in the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic.  Suddenly the issue went mainstream for liberals.  But not too mainstream.  It still wasn't practical or affordable.  Suddenly liberals had to manage to look sympathetic to the idea without actually endorsing it.  Sevearal major Democratic presidential candidates found a way to do that.  They don't necessarily endorse the traditional form of reparations.  They do want to create programs that would effectively advantage blacks over whites in government aid.  It's a new form of reparations.

The Editor says...
Advantage is not a verb.

A Progressive Political Agenda for Slave Reparations.  [M]uch of humanity is descended either from those who were slaves or who owned slaves.  Few nations evolved untouched by the practice.  Go back to the beginning of time and virtually everyone alive today probably should receive or pay — and perhaps both simultaneously — reparations.  There is a lot of ancient injustice to redistribute.  But that's hard to do at either the global or the national level.  All those responsible for enslaving people far and wide are dead.  All those who bought and sold people are but dust.  All those who established legal codes allowing human chattel are long gone.  Not a single perpetrator stands among us, ready to atone for his or her sins.

To Pay for Slavery Reparations, Will Democrats Sue Themselves?  Slavery in America ended more than 150 years ago.  Neither former slaves nor slave owners are alive today.  Furthermore, columnist and radio host Michael Medved says that only about 5 percent of whites have any sort of "generational" connection to slavery.  "The importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence, and slavery had been outlawed in most states decades before the Civil War," wrote Medved in 2007.  "Even in the South, more than 80 percent of the white population never owned slaves.  Given the fact that the majority of today's non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today's white citizens — perhaps as few as 5 percent — bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor."

Castro says he supports financial reparations for African-Americans — separating himself from other Dems.  The issue of reparations for African-Americans has come front and center among the nascent Democratic presidential field, with candidates supporting ideas on everything from free college tuitions to handing out checks for the family members of former slaves.  Julián Castro, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, said on Sunday that he was not ruling out direct payments to African-Americans for the legacy of slavery — in a move that separates him from his fellow Democratic challengers.

Warren Revises Position on Reparations, Calls for 'Conversations'.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) on Friday [3/8/2019] called for dialogue about reparations for black Americans impacted by slavery, marking an apparent shift from her previously stated support for the payments.  "So, what I have said and will say again is I think it's time for us to have the conversation," Warren said when asked by CNN reporter MJ Lee about reparations, NTK Network reports.  "We need to address the fact that in this country, we built great fortunes and wealth on the backs of slaves and we need to address that head-on, we need to have that national conversation."

I Have Some Questions About The Democrats' Reparations Plan.  Senator Willy Brown Side Piece and Senator Panders With Wolves have decided to so something even Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit never dared — they've come out in favor of reparations.  "Reparations" is, of course, the notion that a bunch of people who are not guilty of slavery owe money to people who were not slaves for some reason that never quite gets explained but that you're racist for wondering about.  This horrific idea is, not shockingly, really unpopular with the majority of people who did not do anything wrong but are expected to cut a check.  It is, however, really popular with the leftist activists driving the out-of-control clown car that is today's Democrat Party.

The Reparations Primary.  Paying reparations for slavery is a terrible idea because there is no one to pay reparations and no one to pay them to.  There are not any slave-owners left among us and haven't been for some time.  There aren't any liberated slaves, either.  Slavery was a terrible crime and, like all such enormities, it was carried out by real people who inflicted unconscionable suffering on real people — specific people, individuals.  Our progressive friends like to talk about their high regard for "diversity," but they are blind to the real thing:  Neither the white population of the United States nor the black one is homogenous; relatively few living white Americans are the heirs, however distant, of slave owners, and a significant and growing population of black Americans has no link to antebellum slavery at all.

Socialism talk will sink Democrats:  How left-wing overreach could backfire big-time in 2020.  If Americans are not about to embrace socialism, they certainly are not about to support reparations.  This proposal, which seems to have come out of nowhere, has the support of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro and Marianne Williamson.  This supposed redress for slavery — nothing can redress slavery — polls abysmally.  Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose making payments to descendants of slaves, and 72% oppose paying reparations to African-Americans in general.  Among whites, 81% oppose payments to descendants of slaves.  At the moment, these proposals are reassuringly vague:  Who would benefit?  Just the descendants of slaves?  All African-Americans?  What about the very rich?  As you can see, this can get a bit complicated. [...] It may prove hard to convince a low-paid Walmart worker that he or she owes something to the descendants of long-ago slaves.  I pity the politicians who venture into that argument.

Elizabeth Warren says reparations for Native Americans should be 'part of the conversation'.  2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., expanded on an already-radical proposal on Friday, telling reporters that Native Americans should be "part of the conversation" on reparations for African-Americans — a move that threatens to bring back her own history with Native Americans.  Taking questions from reporters ahead of a Democratic Party fundraiser in Manchester, N.H., Warren, she said that America has an "ugly history of racism" and outlined her ways to tackle it — including the possibility of reparations.

Inside The Country Where You Can Buy A Black Man For $400.  Few places could be further from the promised land than current-day Libya, where tens of thousands are detained indefinitely, spend years working for arbitrary sums or without pay altogether, and are at constant risk of being kidnapped, sold, and auctioned from one militia to another.  In a country where chaos is the rule, some experts argue that such treatment doesn't amount to slavery, a view that downplays the racism underlying the situation.

Reparations for Slavery:  Just More Symbolism over Substance.  Senator Elizabeth Warren, formerly promoted by her employers as a woman of color, has 'fessed up to being as white as Rachel Dolezal waltzing with the ghost of George Plimpton as snow falls gently on Vienna, has endorsed the payment of reparations to African Americans, a position held by Senator Kamala Harris but forsworn by other Democrats, Barack Obama notable among them, and rejected by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Brooklyn socialist who represents Vermont in the Senate and who is seeking the Democratic nomination even though he does not belong to the party.  This is, needless to say, another case of symbolism-over-substance Democratic politics.  Democrats who [cared] about the lives of black Americans have had a great many years to do something about the schools in Philadelphia or the police department in Chicago, the so-called war on drugs, and a passel of economic policies that help to keep blacks poor — including such Democratic favorites as the Davis-Bacon Act, which explicitly was designed partly for that purpose — "superabundance of Negro labor," and all that.

Georgetown students may pay reparations for slavery with new student fee.  Georgetown University students will soon vote on whether they want to tax themselves to benefit the descendants of slaves sold by the university in the 1830s.  Its student government recently authorized a campus[-]wide student referendum on whether to establish a fund for the families of the 272 men, women and children sold by Georgetown in 1838.  If approved, the semesterly fee would begin to be collected in the fall of 2020 and start at $27.20 per student "in honor of the 272 people sold by Georgetown," states the student government resolution approving the referendum, a copy of which was obtained Wednesday [2/6/2019] by The College Fix.

The Editor says...
Who gets the money?  If it goes to Georgetown University, doesn't that reward the perpetrators?  How does that repair anything?

Kamala Harris Will Run on Reparations for Slavery.  Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said in an interview Monday with "Breakfast Club" that she supports "some type of" reparations to black Americans for slavery. [...] Harris said "America has a history of 200 years of slavery.  We had Jim Crow.  We had legal segregation in America for a very long time.  The Voting Rights Act was only strong for 50 years and then they wiped it out with this United States Supreme Court in the Shelby decision, to the point that 22 states immediately thereafter put in place laws that one court found were crafted with surgical precision to have black people not be able to vote."  Those were all Democrat policies!  Democrats should pay the reparations.

Oprah's Spiritual Guru Running for President.  Oprah's spiritual adviser launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in Iowa this evening, saying this morning that her aim is to fix the "amoral economic system" and prompt "a moral and spiritual awakening in the country." [...] Williamson is proposing a $100 billion, 10-year reparations program for African-Americans that "is not symbolic at all" but would be applied to economic and educational projects by a council.

Malian slaves risk lives to end centuries-old institution, see hope in Trump.  Hamey Coulibaly's neighbors threatened to kill him when he publicly renounced his slave status in September, forcing the father of seven to flee his home in Troukoumbe, a village in the southwestern part of Mali.  He now lives in hiding in the West African country's capital.  "How long this suffering will continue?" he said.  "I'm worried about the future, about my relatives living in humiliation in my village because I decided to stand against slavery.  Only God can help us."

Muslim Couple Convicted of Enslaving 5-Year-Old in Texas.  Immigration enriches us by bringing customs such as Islamic slavery to America.  This isn't the first such case.  It won't be the last.

Son of legendary Marxist African independence leader Sekou Touré convicted of enslaving a girl in Texas.  This story exposes multiple lies of the Left about slavery, intended to aggravate race relations today.  Were it not for ideology and ignorance, this story would have featured huge headlines and prominent placement in news broadcasts.  I am so old that I remember when Sekou Touré was hailed as a liberator of his people and force for bringing the blessings of Marxism to the oppressed masses. [...] Slavery still exists — even in America! — and white people generally have nothing to do with it, as inconvenient as that is to American racial victimology mongers, who often urge African-Americans to reject Christianity as the religion of their former slave-masters.

Texas couple convicted of keeping African girl as slave for 16 years.  A couple who enslaved a West African girl at their home in Texas for 16 years have been convicted by a federal jury.  Mohamed Touré, the son of Guinea's first president Ahmed Sékou Touré, and his wife Denise Cros-Toure arranged for the child to travel to the US when she was only five years old.  They forced her to cook, clean and look after their biological children without pay, beat and whipped her and called her a "dog" and a "slave".  The girl eventually managed to escape from the house in Southlake with the help of concerned neighbours in 2016.

Dems are definitely back:  Jackson Lee pushes HR 40, a reparations bill that would rev up racial division.  If there's any doubt Democrats are back in control of the House of Representatives, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, is quick to jog your memory with HR 40, a bill that would study the issue of reparations for slave decedents.  Though she's quick to remind you that the bill is not calling for cash payments.  Yet.  "I think the more I educate about what the bill is, it's a commission to study the issue of what was the economic impact of the work of slaves and how does it translate in the 21st century," Lee said in a recent interview.  "And what we want to do is to build a narrative, a story of the facts and, out of that, to be able to assess how we repair some of the damage."

Congresswoman Hopes Reparations Bill is Path to 'Repair Some of the Damage' Caused by Slavery.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) told PJM that the federal government should conduct a study of reparations for descendants of slaves to be able to determine the best way to "repair some of the damage" that slavery has caused to the African-American community.  Jackson Lee became the lead sponsor of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned from Congress.

Reparations: Who Should Pay?  But let's for a moment pretend that the whole idea of reparations for blacks, but not all the other groups who've been discriminated against, like, say, the Irish, makes sense.  The first question is, who should be paid?  Obviously not blacks like Obama, who have not a drop of slave blood.  The government would have to spend a fortune to find out what percentage of slave blood black Americans had to see how much each was owned.  But it's worse than that.  If someone is 50% white and 50% black slave ancestry, how much does white privilege offset the debt owed due to slavery?  Leftists will argue that since blacks have suffered persecution after slavery ended, all blacks should be reimbursed.  That's an interesting point, so long as we ignore all the other "types" of Americans ranging from the Irish to the Japanese who have been persecuted, [...]

Cynthia Nixon ignites outrage for saying marijuana could be 'form of reparations' in black neighborhoods.  Cynthia Nixon took heat Monday from black leaders over her comments that creating a legalized pot industry in New York could serve as a form of reparations in black communities.  Nixon on Saturday told Forbes magazine "now that cannabis is exploding as an industry, we have to make sure that those communities that have been harmed and devastated by marijuana arrests get the first shot at this industry."

Former New Black Panther Chairman: 'You Don't Like Us, Mr. Trump?  Then Hand Over the State of Florida'.  Malik Shabazz, former chairman of the New Black Panther Party and president of Black Lawyers for Justice, called on President Trump to provide reparations for slavery or designate territory solely for African-Americans. [...] "We want land.  We want our own.  You don't like us, Mr. Trump?  Break us off some of this territory.  You don't like us, Mr. Trump?  You don't want to be around us?  Then hand over the state of Florida," he added.  "You don't want to be around us — make a trade.  Give me Georgia.  Give me Alabama.  Give me South Carolina."

The Editor says...
You are free to purchase land in Florida with your own money.  The land will not be given to you just because you demand it.

Dream Democrat Agenda Includes Reparations.  A wealthy Democratic donor club plotting the future of the liberal movement hopes to be fighting for reparations by 2022, according to a document obtained by the Washington Free Beacon from the Democracy Alliance's spring conference this week in Atlanta.  The desire was stated in the invitation for a Monday reception during the annual spring gathering, which was attended by top Democratic Party officials such as DNC chairman Tom Perez, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, and Reps.  Raul Grijalva (Ariz.) and Mark Pocan (Wis.).  The reception, "Way to Win: 2022 Victory Party," was presented as a look forward at what's possible if Democrats can be effective in coming elections.

Black man demands free Starbucks coffee as 'reparations' — white barista immediately complies.  "I heard ya'll was racist, so I came to get my free coffee," Sharpe says in the video to the white barista taking his order. [...] "That's what I'm talking about!  This is justice," Sharpe says sarcastically.  "This is justice.  This is what I'm talking about."  The barista went onto to offer his choice of milk and flavoring.

Maxine Waters promises reparations in 'stump speech for 2020'.  If Democrats win back the House in 2018, Maxine Waters is promising financial reparations for black Americans.  During an appearance in Selma, Alabama on Saturday, Waters appeared alongside CNN commentator Angela Rye.  Waters took her time to — what else — attack President Trump, criticizing him for his alleged connections to Russia.

Waters promises 'reparations' if Dems take over in 2020.  How radical can the Democrats get if they take over the government again?  What used to be an extreme position — reparations to black people for slavery — is now entering the mainstream of Democratic party thought and could become a reality once the Democrats regain power.  Reparations have been mentioned since the end of slavery, but in recent years, it has been elevated to a serious issue by liberal Democrats.  Rep. Maxine "Mad Max" Waters, appears to want to make it a cornerstone of a run for the presidency in 2020.

How Progressives Use Race as a Weapon Against Our Country.  The actual enslavement of black Africans was carried out by black Africans, who sold them to Muslim Arabs, and only later to white Europeans in the Atlantic slave trade — a trade that began in 1526 and lasted for 300 years.  In other words, Americans generally did not "enslave" black Africans but bought African slaves from their black African masters.  They then transported them in the Middle Passage to the continental United States. [...] America — the United States of America — did not sustain 400 years of slavery as was long claimed by her attackers, or 246 years of slavery, as [Randall] Robinson claimed.  It was only 78 years from the founding of America in 1787 with the signing of the Constitution, to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory abolished the hateful institution.  Thus, historically speaking — accurately speaking — black Africa enslaved blacks, and majority white America liberated blacks.

Slavery still exists today, and it's ugly.
African slaves cut open for their kidneys in Libya's burgeoning organ trafficking market.  The investigation into Libya's seedy underbelly, where men and women are sold off to the highest bidder, has earned international condemnation, with demands for a swift investigation into the human rights atrocity.  Now, a Ghanaian lawyer claims trafficking in the country is being used to facilitate the illegal sale of human organs and encourage a lucrative "red market".  In an interview with TV3's New Day, Bobby Banson said that he had viewed a number of videos of interviews with people who found themselves trapped into slavery with at least one person revealing he was aware that body parts of others were being harvested.

Kuwaiti Muslim Cleric:  "Slavery should be celebrated as one of the virtues of Islam'.  "Slavery has always been a part of Islam and Muslims should not try to deny this because when women and children of the enemy are taken as slaves, they are treated well.  ("Well" as in getting repeatedly raped by gangs of Muslim men?)  Best of all, these infidel slaves are forced to convert to Islam which will save them from the hellfire."

Libyan Markets Sell Slaves for $800 Apiece.  Slavery is alive and well in certain corners of the world, from North Korea's big-money "labor export" racket and brutal work camps to Libya, where CNN discovered slave auctions hawking migrant workers for $800 apiece.

Africans are being sold at Libyan slave markets.  Thanks, Hillary Clinton.  Black Africans are being sold in open-air slave markets, and it's Hillary Clinton's fault.  But you won't hear much about that from the news media or the foreign-policy pundits, so let me explain.  Footage from Libya, released recently by CNN, showed young men from sub-Saharan Africa being auctioned off as farm workers in slave markets.  And how did we get to this point?  As the BBC reported back in May, "Libya has been beset by chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011."

We must let go of the grudges from slavery.  The greatest threat to a healthy black culture and consciousness today is an inability to see beyond slaveholding.  When we carry resentments in our hearts over generations, these resentments hurt us.  Dwelling on slaveholding creates a desire to get back at others, to lash out.  One feels entitled to destroy institutions due to the original sin of slavery.

Star Parker Gives Powerful Testimony Comparing Abortion To Slavery.  On Wednesday [11/1/2017], Star Parker, columnist and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) testified before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice regarding H.R. 490, otherwise known as the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017.  [Video clip]

Snapshots From A Muslim Photographer:  Islam Rejects Racism? (Part 2).  Carlos Khalil Guzman takes no notice of the Arab Slave Trade, where Arab cruelty toward black Africans was so obviously in evidence.  What does he know about this traffic that involved, over 1300 years, 100 million black Africans?  That trade began earlier, and ended later (and only under Western pressure), and claimed many more victims, than the Atlantic Slave Trade.  The Arab trade consisted mainly of capturing black boys in the bush and castrating them on site, then herding them to the slave markets of Islam.  Only about 10% survived both the castration and the difficult journey, according to Jan Hogedoorn in his study "The Hideous Trade."  Estimates of the numbers involved are that 17 million Africans made it alive to be sold as slaves; if we take the estimate of Jan Hogedoorn that that represented 10% of those originally seized, that would mean, if only black boys were taken, 170 million black Africans were captured by African slavers.

Blacks, Crime, and the Bended Knee.  Whites comprise about 75 percent of America's population and they have had just about enough of the offensive accusations, protests, and moral outrage directed at them.  Yes, blacks were brought here centuries ago as slaves, but America did not originate slavery nor do we still practice slavery, as do parts of Africa and Muslim nations today.  In fact, America fought a civil war to end slavery.  It's been over 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, thus, the fate of today's blacks rests not upon yesterday's slaveholders, but upon today's failed black leadership who have intentionally kept America's blacks on an imaginary plantation through the indoctrination of victimhood.

Will The Left Start Calling For New York To Be Renamed?  Ever since the Charlottesville protests, the Left has ramped up their crusade against Confederate monuments and street named after Confederate generals.  Using their logic, they should be calling for renaming the leftist mecca of New York, whose namesake is derived from a slave trader.  The Daily Caller reminded everyone that New York is named after the former duke of York, James Stuart, who would eventually become King James II.  James formed the Royal African Company (RAC), which eventually "became the largest single company involved in the slave trade," according to a 1999 UNESCO paper.  The RAC traded an average of 5,000 slaves per year from 1680-6 and a total of 30,000 from 1680-1700.  The company remained in the slave trading industry until it moved to trading gold dust and ivory in 1731.

When Haters Hijack History.  [General Robert E.] Lee and his immediate family opposed slavery.  His wife and mother-in-law were active in a pre-war Christian Southern movement to liberate slaves, relocating them to Liberia.  Lee's wife and daughter set up an illegal school for slaves at Arlington Plantation, teaching them to read the [B]ible.

Whose Side Is He On?  I wonder how many of the counter-protesters at the Charlottesville event even had any idea who Robert E. Lee was.  He was a major hero of the Mexican-American War.  He fought for the Confederacy against the Union, but at the time he did it, it was not illegal.  Slavery was — while 100 percent evil — completely protected by law as of 1861.  When Lee went to work to defend his native Virginia, he was not violating any law.  In fact, at no time did the Supreme Court rule that secession was unconstitutional.  To the contrary, when the Supreme Court moved towards declaring secession lawful, President Lincoln, in violation of every lawful principle, threatened to have Roger Taney, the Chief Justice, arrested and jailed.

Functional Illiterates Trying to Erase History.  Robert E. Lee, before the outbreak of the war, was overwhelmingly regarded as the finest military mind in the U.S. army.  Winfield Scott offered him command of all Union forces at the outbreak of hostilities.  But he chose allegiance to his state of Virginia, rather than the Federal government.  He didn't fight for slavery.  He freed his slaves.  He was fighting for states' rights.  He was an honorable God fearing noble man.  Stonewall Jackson was an extremely religious man who waged war with a passion, but also taught Sunday School to slaves.  Lee and Jackson must be viewed in the context of the 19th century rather than being judged by the standards of the 21st century.  The vast majority of Confederate soldiers who did the fighting and dying during that war didn't own slaves.  They weren't fighting to maintain slavery.  They were fighting because a foreign army had invaded their land.  In 1860 this nation was more an amalgamation of states than a centralized government.  States still had a tremendous amount of power and leeway to run their states the way they chose.  The ever increasing power of a central authority occurred during and after the Civil War.  The South were not the bad guys.  Their leaders, generals and soldiers were not evil.  They were Americans.

The Erasure Of The Southern Heritage.  Before the war between the states, the understanding that it was a war "against the United States of America" presupposes the outcome of the war.  Or in other words, membership is said states was seen as the right of association, and secession was seen as the exercise of that right.  Furthermore, no one I know who really understands the war between the states thinks that it was fought over slavery.  In order to understand the thinking at the time, one must understand that slavery was on its way out, would not have lasted, and was effectively obsolete given industrialization.

In Sudan, enslavement of non-Muslims is openly practiced, even today.  True Islamic Values include enslavement of non-Muslims.  Sudanese soldiers capture women and children, considered war booty, and turn them into slaves, sexual and otherwise.  [Video clip]

Slavery, White Guilt, and the Politics of Absurdity.  Over a hundred million white Americans trace their ancestry to immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, which didn't open until 1900.  Most white Americans are descendants from people who came to these shores long after slavery was extinguished.  The indictment of all white people for the evil of slavery because they share skin color with slave owners is an indulgence in absurdity.  We are told not to judge all Muslims as terrorists or all blacks responsible for the crimes of individual blacks.  Yet, for whites, the collective guilt is unending.  It is propagated in our universities under the now theological dictates of white privilege and white guilt. [...] Without powerful African kings who were all too willing to sell the people they vanquished to the Europeans, it is doubtful there would have been a trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Wisconsin students group demands free tuition for black students.  The student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said on Wednesday [2/15/2017] that black students should be offered free tuition and housing because blacks were legally barred from education during slavery and university remains out of reach for black students today.  The Associated Students of Madison said in a resolution that suburban high school students are over-represented.  The group said consideration of ACT and SAT scores in applications upholds "white supremacy" because it restricts opportunities for the poor.  The college has proposed measures aimed at improving diversity.

Slavery and Non-Consensual Sex OK, Says Muslim Georgetown Professor.  That slavery and non-consensual sex can be okay is not a sentiment you expect to hear from someone employed in politically correct academia — but it obviously is acceptable when a politically correct kind of person says it.  This appears the case with Georgetown Islamic Studies professor Jonathan Brown, who stated in a recent talk that it's "not immoral for one human to own another human."  A 39-year-old convert to Islam, Brown reportedly expressed the above beliefs in a Feb. 7 lecture at the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia.  Titled "Islam and the Problem of Slavery," the professor apparently believes there's only a problem with slavery when it's not governed by Islam.

Not So Fast, UN: The US Owes No 'Reparations' to Blacks.  A thumbnail review of the real history of slavery is in order here.  First, to be clear, there is no doubt many injustices and human tragedies have occurred throughout our history because of slavery; but that is true everywhere slavery has occurred. [...] Slavery became a worldwide phenomenon during the Middle Ages.  The modern slave trade began and expanded early in the era, but the practice existed in some form or other from time immemorial.  Under the Roman Empire, it was not a black-only phenomenon, but universal.  Nevertheless, before the first millennium A.D., Middle Eastern Muslims were selling goods to African kingdoms.  Those kingdoms were paying for those goods with human capital — their own people, black people.  Though Christians became involved in the slave trade somewhat later, Arab Muslim traders were probably first to hold blacks as slaves and as they ceded global dominion of the slave trade to Europeans later on.  They also are estimated to have enslaved over a million European Christians in the "barbary states" of North Africa.

Slavery: Racially Incorrect Facts.  One glaringly inconvenient truth that, odds are, few folks of any race are aware is that the very first legal slave owner in America was one Anthony Johnson — a black man.  More specifically, Johnson was an Angolan who himself had been an indentured servant in the colony of Virginia before he became a tobacco planter himself.  One of the African indentured servants who worked Johnson's 300 acre plot of land was John Casor.  When Casor had completed his seven year term of service to Johnson, he asked to be freed.  Johnson refused. [...] Casor became the first legally recognized slave in the American colonies.  Johnson, then, was the first slave owner.

Obama's 'Confident Ignorance' At Root Of His Failure.  His statement in "Dreams from My Father" about how white men went to Africa to "drag away the conquered in chains" betrays his ignorance of African history.  The era of the Atlantic slave trade and the era of European conquests across the continent of Africa were different eras.  During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, most of Africa was ruled by Africans, who sold some of their slaves to white men.  European conquests in Africa had to wait until Europeans found some way to survive lethal African diseases, to which they lacked resistance.  Only after medical science learned to deal with these diseases could the era of European conquests spread across sub-Saharan Africa.  But the Atlantic slave trade was over by then.

Another overview:
The Scapegoat for Strife in the Black Community.  No one wanted to be a slave.  But their rejection of slavery as a fate for themselves in no way meant that they were unwilling to enslave others.  It was just not an issue — until the 18th century, and then it became an issue only in Western civilization.  Neither Africans, Asians, Polynesians, nor the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere saw anything wrong with slavery, even after small segments of British and American societies began to condemn slavery as morally wrong in the 18th century.  What was special about America was not that it had slavery, which existed all over the world, but that Americans were among the very few peoples who began to question the morality of holding human beings in bondage.

The Myths of American Slavery.  [Scroll down]  So how are 21st Century citizens of the United States obliged to "finally wrestle" with, in this case, the long-ago deaths of Africans who were enslaved by other Africans, forcefully driven for many miles through a Mozambique port and on to a Portuguese slave ship bound for Brazil, while the descendants of all those who actually participated in this event are allowed to be wistfully unconcerned and guilt-free?  You see, Mr. Bunch is wrong on one key point.  Slavery is not everybody's story — it must remain exclusively a story for the United States and its people.  Only we are required to bear the indelible stain of this country's original sin — and it appears those who entered or will enter here assume this mantle of guilt themselves a century-and-a-half after the institution of slavery was ended.  It is a scab that must be picked at incessantly — not out of any real concern for those who suffered centuries ago, but to gain political advantage today.

Report of 45.8 Million Enslaved People Underestimates Problem, Offers Wrong Solution.  The Australia-based Walk Free Foundation released its annual Global Slavery Index on May 31, stating that an estimated 45.8 million people live in modern versions of slavery.  The organization said that its latest figures are about 28 percent higher than its last estimate two years ago.  A commentary on the report in the New York Times observed that its definition of slavery differs from the historical one — in which people were held as legal property.  Modern slavery, notes the Times, "is generally defined as human trafficking, forced labor, bondage from indebtedness, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation."  The Walk Free Foundation's report said more than half of those living in what it defines as "modern day slavery" are in five countries:  India, with 18.35 million, China, with 3.39 million, Pakistan, 2.13 million, Bangladesh, 1.53 million, and Uzbekistan, 1.23 million.  The report also found that North Korea, which is ruled by an oppressive communist regime, has the highest per capita level of modern slavery, at 4.37 percent of its population.

Why we should welcome a real trial about slave reparations.  For the past fifteen or so years, there has been a movement among some liberals to require that the descendents of former slaves be paid for the suffering of their ancestors.  Conservatives have railed against this transfer of wealth, saying (rightly, one should add) that a person or entity cannot be held responsible for the actions of another person who has been dead for over 150 years.  Lloyd's of London was sued in 2004 by a group of descendents of African slaves, and the British court system ruled against their claim.  There have been other claims made by the descendents of African slaves.  All of these have been laughed out of court.  Conservatives also claim (again, correctly) that offering reparations helps to keep poorer African-Americans in a perpetual state of victimhood.  But conservatives should not only welcome the concept of a reparations trial, we should also be championing it.

Blacks and the Confederacy.  Last July, Anthony Hervey, an outspoken black advocate for the Confederate flag, was killed in a car crash.  Arlene Barnum, a surviving passenger in the vehicle, told authorities and the media that they had been forced off the road by a carload of "angry young black men" after Hervey, while wearing his Confederate kepi, stopped at a convenience store en route to his home in Oxford, Mississippi.  His death was in no small part caused by the gross level of ignorance, organized deceit and anger about the War of 1861.  Much of the ignorance stems from the fact that most Americans believe the war was initiated to free slaves, when in truth, freeing slaves was little more than an afterthought.

Why is an NHS trust offering reparations for slavery links?  As many as one in seven Scots may be languishing on the NHS backlog.  As Scottish Labour never tires of reminding voters — especially those who happen to live in the Rutherglen constituency — that means everyone must surely know someone who is waiting months for treatment.  So the decision by NHS Lothian to spend taxpayers' cash on "a programme of reparations" to Jamaica and Africa will raise more than a few eyebrows, especially among Edinburgh residents enduring painful delays for a knee or hip operation.  Why must today's hard-pressed taxpayers foot the bill for this blatant act of virtue signalling?  Hundreds of years ago a surgeon who owned a slave plantation in the Caribbean made a bequest to the Royal infirmary of Edinburgh.  Accountants, presumably contracted at great cost, have since been spending a lot of time and effort on calculating how much that bequest is now worth.  And we are all to believe, unwaveringly, that the £39.1 million figure they came up with is entirely accurate.

Harris, Warren:  Yes, we support reparations for black Americans.  I feel like this will be a good, productive conversation for the country to have next summer amid the toxic atmosphere of a presidential election, with Trump leading the anti side of the argument.  Maybe it'll help crack Elizabeth Warren crack five percent in the South Carolina primary, though.  That's what's important.

Texas: Muslim couple indicted on charges they enslaved African girl for 16 years.  The son and daughter-in-law of a former West African leader have been indicted on charges that they enslaved a girl from their native country while living in Texas.

Couple indicted on charges they enslaved African girl for 16 years.  A Texas couple accused of forcing an African girl to work as a domestic slave for 16 years — allegedly while calling her a whore and "a little nothing" — were indicted Wednesday on a litany of federal charges, including forced labor.  Mohamed Toure and Denise Cros-Toure, both 57, of Southlake, were also indicted by a jury on charges of alien harboring for financial gain and conspiracies to commit forced labor and alien harboring, Justice Department officials announced.  The couple was charged in August after arranging for the girl — who didn't speak English — to travel alone from her village in the Republic of Guinea to their home in January 2000.  Toure, the son of Guinea's first president, along with his wife, then forced the girl to work as the family's domestic slave, including cooking, cleaning and performing yard work, federal prosecutors allege.

Baltimore Professor:  White People Need To Personally Give All Their Money To Black People.  So here's what you should do.  Take that extra savings you have, or money you were saving for a family trip to Disney World, and give it away.  Not to starving children or to the Red Cross, though.  You're supposed to find a black person, any black person, and deposit that money directly into their bank account.  Solely because they are black.  Does that sound racist in and of itself?  Your white privilege is showing.  Now, lest ye think we deserve a boatload of hatemail for suggesting such a thing, we direct you to the source of this utter lunacy:  Lawrence Brown.  Mr. Brown is an assistant professor in the Public Health Department at Morgan State University in Baltimore.  This leftist activist teaches that black Americans require reparations, that America is still segregated, and black Americans continue to suffer from the historical trauma of white supremacist America.

Democrats — Still the Party of Slavery after all these years.  If one were to listen only to contemporary civil rights leaders in this country, one would come away with the impression that slavery was a uniquely American sin.  You also would get the clear impression that it was eradicated by the Democrats over the ongoing objection of the Republicans, but that is another story for another day.  Slavery as an institution still exists today, although its practice is mostly restricted to Islamic cultures.  It also has taken many forms throughout history.  In czarist Russia for example, serfs were regarded as being "part of the land."  If a parcel of land or an estate changed hands between owners, the serfs who lived upon and worked that land went with it.  They were not legally allowed to leave and go elsewhere, and rarely permitted to seek other occupations.  Regardless of the details of how slavery was legally managed from one culture to the next, the defining principle was always the same:  as a slave, your labor belongs to someone else, and can be compelled.

New York Times Sunday Op-Ed Praises 'Black Lives Matter,' But What Exactly Does BLM Praise?  Often times, BLM supporters say that individuals who promote radical economic ideas such as total reparations, free college for all minorities, and other quasi-socialist-communist policies are simply fringe elements of the group.  They do not represent the whole.  They assert that the group is primarily focused on anti-police violence[.]  But according to the Movement for Black Lives website, this could not be further from the truth.  The core element of this group is a desire for an overbearing federal government focused on wealth redistribution.  The Black Lives Matter movement website is very explicit in calling for large government programs that provide all costs covered for education, not just to black lives but to illegal aliens as well.

Professor: Some Calls For Reparations Don't Go Far Enough.  A British professor argued in a Monday [8/28/2017] op-ed that many of the calls for reparations don't go far enough when addressing the history of slavery.  Birmingham City University Associate Professor Kehinde Andrews wrote in a Guardian op-ed that proposals for free college education for black people and canceling debt in third world countries aren't good enough calls for reparations.  "In many ways the calls for reparatory justice do not take go far enough.  Caricom includes a demand to cancel third world debt, and the Movement for Black Lives for free tuition for African Americans," Andrews wrote.

Black Lives Matter Unveils List Of Demands To White People:  Give Up The Home You Own.  Black Lives Matter activist Chanelle Helm released a list of "requests" to white people in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month.  Helm, the so-called "cofounder and core organizer of Black Lives Matter Louisville," explained in an article published at Leoweekly.com the things she says need to "change."

Michael Eric Dyson Calls for Whites to Have an I.R.A. — 'Individual Reparations Account'.  Professor Michael Eric Dyson thinks that white people should have an "Individual Reparations Account" to make donations to black institutions and individuals.

Sheriff Clarke:  For 8 Years Obama Has 'Rubbed White Peoples' Nose in the Stain of Slavery' — He Can't Let Go.  In reference to the horrendous number of homicides in Chicago and President Barack Obama's pracice of dividing people by race, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said Black Lives Matter never marches in Chicago and Obama, for eight years, has been rubbing "white people's nose in the stain of slavery" because he cannot let the issue go, and wants America to wallow in racial division.  On the Dec. 28 edition of Hannity, guest host Kimberly Guilfoyle said, "Sheriff Clarke, always great to see you, too.  We have numbers here.  Chicago murders since 2009 — 3,904 lives lost, and these numbers come from the Chicago police department.  It's unbelievable.  It's a war right here on our streets in this country."

Obama: I Can't Pursue Reparations Because It's Politically Infeasible.  President Barack Obama said in an interview published Wednesday that reparations payments for black Americans could be a good idea but simply aren't politically feasible.  Speaking with The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, Obama said that it's easy to make an argument for reparations for black Americans because of past sins like slavery and Jim Crow laws.

Black Activists Launch Monthly Fee System For Whites To Pay Blacks.  Liberal black activists have launched a monthly "subscription box" designed for white people "to not only financially support Black femme freedom fighters, but also complete measurable tasks in the fight against white supremacy."  The subscription service is called Safety Pin Box and was launched last week.  Wearing a safety pin has recently become a symbol within the liberal community for one to show solidarity with minorities.

DNC Chair Favorite Keith Ellison Supports Bill To 'Study Reparation Proposals'.  Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota is making headlines after announcing his bid for chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  Ellison already has strong support from Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Harry Reid.  Some have said Ellison's own identity as an African-American and a Muslim would be a strong statement for the Democratic Party under the upcoming Donald Trump administration.  He previously advocated for, and is reportedly a "passionate supporter" of H.R. 40:  Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, co-sponsored by Michigan Rep. John Coyners Jr.

Democrats and United Nations catch reparations fever.  In Obama's post-racial utopian America, racial tensions have reached levels not seen since the 1960s, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Democrats and their globalist buddies at the United Nations.  Earlier this week, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent released a report advocating that the United States provide reparations to African-Americans due to a history of slavery in America, and how that links to present so-called injustices against black Americans.

U.S. owes black people reparations for a history of 'racial terrorism,' says U.N. panel.  The history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans, argues a recent report by a U.N.-affiliated group based in Geneva.  This conclusion was part of a study by the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body that reports to the international organization's High Commissioner on Human Rights.  The group of experts, which includes leading human rights lawyers from around the world, presented its findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday [9/26/2016], pointing to the continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history.

UN Panel:  U.S. Owes Black People Reparations for History of Slavery.  A United Nations-affiliated group in Geneva is calling for the U.S. to give African Americans reparations for the country's history of slavery, according to a recent report by the group.  The group's statement was part of a study by the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a group that reports to the international organization's High Commissioner on Human Rights, The Washington Post reported.  The group of experts, made up of leading human rights lawyers from around the world, presented its findings about the link between the U.S.'s history of slavery and present injustices, such as the recent police shootings of African Americans to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday [9/26/2016].

Black Woman Launches 'Reparations' Website For Guilty White People.  A new website allows non-white people to ask for and receive "reparations" from white people, more often than not in the form of a financial windfall:  free laptops, tuition for Ivy League schools, an engagement ring and credit assistance are a few examples of reparations requested, offered or already paid out on the site.  Reparations.me, founded by a black woman named Natasha Marin, has a Craigslist-like layout where non-white people post their requests for reparations from white people.  White people can fulfill requests as well as post their own offers of reparations.

BlackLivesMatter Walrus Admits She Only Wants Their Money.  Want to know what the BLM thugs think about their white allies?  This one says she only wants to use white allies to drain their bank accounts, says that every single possession or cultural aspect whites own was stolen — she claims that literally everything white people have should be given away to blacks.

Activist Demands Reparations for All 'Fat, Black' Women.  According to a piece on an "intersectional feminist media" website, "fat, black" women are owed reparations due to the "trauma" that comes with being one. [...] It's important to note that [Ashleigh] Shackleford is not just some random basement blogger.  She is also the creator of an organization called Free Figure Revolution, and a respected feminist activist who speaks at a whole host of progressive conferences and events.

The Editor says...
If this woman is fat and black, whose fault is that?  Who is supposed to write a check for reparations that are allegedly owed to her?  Should the reparations check include a few extra bucks for those who are ugly and stupid, too?

The American descendants of African slaves are way ahead of their cousins who stayed in Africa.
Witchcraft threatens Malawi albinos with extinction:  UN expert.  Malawi's estimated 10,000 albinos face "systematic extinction" if they continue to be murdered for their body parts for use in witchcraft, a UN expert warned Friday [4/29/2016].  Ikponwosa Ero told journalists at the end of a 12-day assessment in the country that the situation "constitutes an emergency, a crisis disturbing in its proportions".  Her call for action came as a court in Malawi slapped a 17-year jail term on two men arrested last week for murdering a 21-year-old albino woman.

Sanders Says He'll Apologize For Slavery.  He Should Start By Apologizing For Socialism.  [Scroll down]  Sanders thinks he has a shot at the nomination if he can just pry enough black support away from Hillary.  So he'll say anything, including imputing pro-slavery motivations to his opponents.  In reality, of course, the president apologizing for slavery 150 years after its conclusion only exacerbates racial tensions by reinforcing the notion that America is irredeemably racist; Sanders' protestations that he wants to "wipe the slate clean" are nonsense.  Teaching yet another generation of young black people that America was born in sin and raised in evil and bears a stain that will never be washed away — all of that will do nothing to empower individuals to take responsibility for their own lives.  But Sanders doesn't want individuals taking responsibility for their own lives.  It's government's job to take responsibility for everybody's life — to seize from them their property and their labor for its own ends.  Which, come to think of it, sounds a lot more like involuntary servitude than freedom.

Danny Glover: 'Societies Must Apologize' for Slavery with Reparations.  Actor and activist Danny Glover called on international leaders to "apologize" for the enslavement of African-Americans in the past through reparations for descendants.  "I call upon you today as policy representatives and socially conscious citizens, public servants of our countries guided by personal ethics, religions, faith and/or official oath of office to avow a commitment to democracy, justice, equality and human rights.  The call today for reparatory justice for Afro-descendants is an imperative for expanded democracy and spiritual and material well-being.  It is a test case for human decency that conforms to the accepted standards of morality," Glover said in a speech before the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) on "Reparations for Slavery and the Genocide of Native Peoples."

Sanders: 'Yes' I'd apologize for slavery and I'd make reparations by investing in low-income communities.  Bernie Sanders committed tonight to formally apologizing for slavery on behalf of the United States if he becomes president.  Sanders told heavily black audience that Tindley Temple United Methodist Church, 'There's nothing that anybody can do to undo the deaths and misery, how many people we don't even know who died on the way over here in the ships.'  But the United States has to make an attempt to 'wipe the slate clean' by acknowledging the truth, he said after an audience member asked him point blank if he'd offer a presidential-level apology and he said, 'Yes.'

$8.3 Trillion in Reparations.  It is a given that blacks receive government checks at a higher rate than the rest of the population.  It is also a logical given that this is unfair to the rest of the population as this makes the rest of the population at least "part time slaves" to blacks (though anybody paying taxes is a slave to anybody else collecting a government check regardless of race). [...] The math is actually quite simple.  According to the Daily Kos of all people, blacks account for 32% of welfare recipients while only accounting for 12% of the population.  You would then think they receive thrice the amount of money they should, but it is not proportional math that is required here, but a "premium" calculation.  In short, blacks are entitled to 12% of the social spending budget, but receive an additional 20%.

Bernie Sanders confronted by supporters demanding slavery reparations as he courts the black vote.  Bernie Sanders was repeatedly pressed to endorse reparations tonight by his own supporters at a 'Black America' community forum.  'I know you're scared to say 'black,' I know you're scared to say 'reparations,' panelist Felicia Perry said, then told him, 'Can you please talk specifically about black people and reparations?'  Sanders replied, 'You and I may have a disagreement on this,' but 'it's not just black.  This is Latinos.  There are areas of America, more rural areas where its whites, OK?  As he talked about income inequality and poverty in the 'African-American community an audience member interrupted to urge him to use the term 'black.'  'I've said 'black' 50 times.  That's the 51st,' Sanders declared.

UN group recommends 'reparatory justice' for African Americans.  A United Nations working group visiting the United States walks away "extremely concerned about the human rights situation of African Americans," members said in a preliminary report released Friday [1/29/2016], in which they urged the US government to address the legacy of slavery with "reparatory justice," a national human rights commission, and ongoing criminal justice reform.

The absurdity of demanding reparations for slavery.  Slavery was the normal form of social organization from the discovery of agriculture onwards.  It may have been common among hunter-gatherers long before that, but the evidence is inconclusive.  What we do know is that ownership of human beings is at least as old as civilization.

Progressive Chomsky calls for reparations to blacks, Native Americans, Iraq.  Stating flatly that the oppression black slaves faced has not changed in 400 years, progressive hero Noam Chomsky said that the time is now to pay descendants reparations for using Africans to build up the U.S. economy.

Somewhat related:
Woman Asks 'White Friends' to Pay for Her Therapy to Deal with Stress from Racism.  A 29-year-old Thai-Cambodian woman has launched a fundraiser asking her "white friends" to pay for her therapy — claiming that they owe it to her because stress caused by racism is why she needs it in the first place.  Rinna Rem is from the Portland, Ore., area and suffers from a chronic illness that affects the heart and connective tissues called "Marfan syndrome."  According to Rem, the condition is much worse for her because of all of the racism.

We used to count black Americans as 3/5 of a person.  For reparations, give them 5/3 of a vote.  Thanks to a compromise between Southern slaveholders who wanted enslaved blacks counted in the population, for the sake of boosting Southern congressional representation, and Northern whites who didn't, the framers enshrined the three-fifths clause in the Constitution.  This agreement set the census value of a slave as 60 percent of the value of a free person.  Even after the 13th Amendment neutralized the political (and moral) compromise by abolishing slavery, Jim Crow laws, which contravened the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equality, stopped blacks from voting.  The just answer today is to invert that ratio.  If black Americans were once counted as three-fifths of a person, let each African American voter now count as five-thirds.

The Editor says...
Yes, anyone who was ever a slave and was counted as three fifths of a person should qualify for 5/3 votes.  No such person is still alive today.  This sort of idea only appeals to those who turn to the government to solve all their real and imaginary problems.  If your great-great-grandfather was a slave, how does that make your life any more difficult, and does it diminish the value of your vote?  Is that more of a limiting factor than your absentee father?  A greater problem with this idea makes the whole thing impossible to implement:  There are very few U.S. citizens who are genuine African-Americans, that is, a person who was born in Africa and now lives here.  There are those whose ancestors lived in Africa, but who have never lived in Africa.  Most so-called African-Americans have never been to Africa, know nothing factual about Africa, can't name half the countries in Africa, and don't even know which African country their relatives came from.  Reparations is a can of worms we need not open, since there is no shortage of divisive controversy already.

I've Had Enough: How About You?  I am tired of slavery.  My family never owned any, I never lived through it and no one alive has either.  If there are reparations to be paid, they won't get a dime from me.  The first slaveholder in America was a black man and the slaves were rounded up by blacks in Africa and sold to him by Muslims.  Ask those people to pay.

Slavery still exists in other parts of the world.
Selling Women in the Islamic State Caliphate.  The Islamic State recently sold 42 Yazidi girls to its jihadist fighters.  However, they have been sold for different prices in different places, mostly very cheaply.  In order to highlight how poorly the Islamic State values women, Clarion Project presents some prices of consumer goods in the United States by way of comparison.  The 42 Yazidi girls were sold by ISIS in Syria.  The prettier the woman, the more expensive she is.  Blue-eyed girls are priced higher than less 'exotic' girls.

Ills Of Blacks Due To Government, Not Racism.  Hustlers and people with little understanding want us to believe that today's black problems are the continuing result of a legacy of slavery, poverty and racial discrimination.  The fact is that most of the social pathology seen in poor black neighborhoods is entirely new in black history.

Reparation Movement Is Getting Out Of Hand.  Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens thinks suspected terrorists housed at Guantanamo are entitled to "reparations."  It's part of a long emerging line of claims from the left that's toxic for society.  Stevens is not alone in thinking the U.S. did something wrong for its long war on people trying to kill us, and that taxpayers need to shell out.  State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf left the door open to U.S. reparations for Gitmo's finest at a press conference last Friday when asked about claims that four of the six ex-inmates now walking free in Uruguay have made against Uncle Sam for their detention.

John Paul Stevens says some Guantanamo Bay detainees should be given reparations.  Retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens said this week that the government should compensate detainees still being held at Guantanamo Bay even after authorities determined that they did not pose a threat to the United States.  Stevens's call to give reparations to dozens of detainees at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba comes as the Pentagon is racing to move these inmates ahead of possible congressional action that could restrict transfers.

Baltimore High Schools Coordinate "Unity Riot" — Social Media Plans For Students To Converge On Downtown.  White Homeowners around the Baltimore community are now subject to home invasions by mobs of blacks seeking reparations.

Obama Set To Push For 'Slavery Reparations' In 2016.  New reports have suggested that Obama is preparing to push for slavery reparations in 2016.  This shocking plan was revealed by Fox Business News host Charles Payne during Thursday's [4/16/2015] episode of Making Money.

Fox Business Network's Charles Payne: Obama Will Push for Slavery Reparations in 2016.  During a segment on his Fox Business Network show Making Money, host Charles Payne said that he thinks Obama is making ready for a big push to pay billions in slavery reparations in 2016.

Caribbean Calls for Slavery Reparations Summit.  Representatives from the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission and the U.S. National African American Reparations Commission plan to call for a Global Summit of Reparations Commissions for 2017 to discuss demands for redress of the crimes of slavery and segregation.  The Institute of the Black World 21st Century said Tuesday the call emerged from last week's International Reparations Summit in New York City.

150 Years Later, Democrats Are Still Fighting Efforts to End Slavery.  The Democratic Party is the Party of Slavery.  They are the party that decided to secede from the Union.  They are the party that started a Civil War over the right to treat people as property.  They are the party that, once their side lost the war, set up structures to keep American citizens from exercising their civil rights.  And now, 150 years after the Civil War, the Democratic Party is at it again.

Islam's Greatest Contribution To The United States Was Slavery.  Our dear leader loves to talk about how Islam has been in the fabric of our nation since its birth.  My Colleague Ted Shoebat has talked about the Barbary Pirate wars, but prior to the American Revolution the Arab Muslims of North Africa biggest economic trade was to supply Slaves all over the world of which about 5% of all African slaves ended up here in the USA/Colonies with the majority going to Central and South America as well as slaves in the Middle East and India.  Obama obvious hates those white rich land owners, the founders of America who enslaved Black people and were evil, but he conveniently omits the suppliers of the slaves were mostly Arab Muslims, and still today the overwhelming majority of slavery that is prevalent today is promoted and controlled by Muslims.  The ugly head of sex slavery is now prevalent with ISIS, but is is rampant and has been even before this but rarely covered by the media.  Muslims prior to the industrial revolution never provided squat to the fabric of America, you cannot find anything they did to contribute to America's greatness.

'Debunking the progressive myths'.  Also, though I knew there were some, there were actually thousands of black slave owners (in fact the first slave owner in the colonies was black) and in states like Louisiana, the number of black masters equalled the number of white slave owners.  In addition, many countries over history have endured slavery, but we are the only one to have fought a war to end it, a war that resulted in the death of 350,000 Northern soldiers.  Mr. D'Souza does a masterful job of debunking the progressive myths that paint the noble concept that is America as a force of evil that must be destroyed and reinvented in the progressive image of equality.  The truth of our history — a truth that is no longer told in our schools — is presented.

Slavery did not begin or end in the United States.
A Map of the World's Slave Workforce.  According to a new estimate, there are 30 million forced laborers in the world.  Some reports show they're involved in making everything from iPhones to chocolate.

The Race Card Is Still Maxed Out.  An 1866 report compiled under the direction of Provost Marshal General James B. Fry estimated that 279,689 men in the Union forces died during the Civil War.  The toll was raised to 360,222 by the late 19th century, when widows and orphans brought forward information when applying for pensions and survivors' benefits.  By 1870, the Census Superintendent, Francis Amasa Walker, was arguing even that number was too low because many of those discharged died shortly after the war, as a result of war-related diseases and wounds. [...] For those with an ongoing agenda, such numbers apparently have nothing to do with "America's maturation," but I'm guessing that more than a few descendants of people who gave their lives to re-constitute a slave-free union, might be a tad dismissive of a multi-generational shakedown.  For me, it's a much simpler issue:  legions of Americans with no relationship whatsoever to slavery paying off people who were never victims of it, is absurd.

Taking Reparations Seriously.  [Scroll down]  Well, if the model is retribution — punishing wrongdoers — then reparations are clearly a non-starter.  The wrongdoers are dead, to start with.  Then, there's the little matter of the Civil War, which meted out quite a bit of punishment to the slave-owning portion of the country.  The statute of limitations isn't terribly relevant given that we're not talking about crimes that violated a statute in the first place; nonetheless, we are ultimately talking about harms that were inflicted generations ago.

Yes, I Blame White Liberals.  To all you liberal college professors and intellectuals who say blacks are still suffering the psychological repercussions of slavery, please knock it off.  You evil race hustlers are all about exploiting the goodness and fair-mindedness of the American people.  Slavery happened a gazillion years ago.  Get over it.

Author: Slavery Gives Us 'Responsibility' To Not Ban Flights From Liberia.  David Quammen, an author of multiple books on science and diseases, including "Ebola," and "Spillover," argued against a ban on flights to Liberia by stating the US has a "responsibility" to the nation "given the fact that this is a country that was founded in the 1820s, 1830s because of American slavery" on Thursday's [10/2/2014] "AC360" on CNN.

Why Reparations Wouldn't Work.  Reparations probably wouldn't accomplish what they're meant to do:  Place black Americans on a permanently raised economic plateau, one near that of white Americans.  Statistics about the economic disparities of these two groups are grim, and shocking:  As of 2012, for instance, the median household net worth of white Americans was more than twenty times that of blacks.  Median adjusted household income for blacks is only 59 percent of that for whites.  The reparations plans that have been suggested, however, would work a lot like lotteries.

Dallas County commissioners unwittingly back slavery reparations.  The Dallas County Commissioners Court declared Tuesday that African-Americans deserve reparations for slavery, even though most commissioners didn't seem to know that they were doing so.  The issue arose in a resolution written by John Wiley Price, the county's only black commissioner.  Described only as a "Juneteenth Resolution," it was approved unanimously.  Other commissioners admitted after their meeting Tuesday [6/17/2014] that they hadn't read the document before voting for it.  Commissioner Mike Cantrell, the court's lone Republican, later changed his vote to an abstention.

The Editor says...
I don't believe for one second that the Dallas County commissioners voted "unwittingly" for reparations.

Reparations and the Great Unmentionable.  Call it American history à la carte.  Over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the magazine's national correspondent, has written a long and instructive piece titled "The Case for Reparations."  In which Coates supports Congressman John Conyers's H.R. 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.  Let me start here by saying I don't doubt Mr. Coates's sincerity.  And since one of his objectives is doubtless to launch a serious discussion on the issue of race and specifically the issue of reparations, I'm happy to oblige.  This is a long and serious article.  Yet for all of the facts and passion, Coates never gets around to the Great Unmentionable. [...] What is the pattern here — a very telling pattern?  Everything was perpetrated by some vague "Mississippi" or, when named, a collection of people with titles like "governor" (Vardaman) or "senator" (Bilbo and Calhoun) or "Red Shirts" or "Klansmen" or just plain "Woodrow Wilson."  The Great Unmentionable in the Coates article is... the Democratic Party.  Progressives. Democratic political fortunes were built on racial politics.

A Call To Reparations Is A Dangerous Call To Victimhood.  Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay, The Case for Reparations, has been published to great fanfare.  By journalistic standards it is a massive tome which does not deliver on the promise of "groundbreaking" original content.  Nevertheless, in light of the noisy discussion the article has generated, it is worth examining the article's actual content and considering its merits. [...] One major problem with Coates' essay is that he says very little about reparations as such.  His focus is almost entirely on documenting injustices done, and instilling an appreciation for black Americans' contributions.  As interesting as that might be, it sheds almost no light on the weirdness of trying to make up for centuries of oppression through one grand act of expiation.

Reparations and the Moral Repugnance of Collective Guilt.  You've no doubt seen Ta-Nehisi Coates' 15,000 word article in The Altantic, making the case for slavery reparations.  I've always enjoyed reading Coates — a brilliant writer, and not one to march in lock step with anyone.  But Mr. Coates has gone off the rails with his advocacy for reparations.

Resuscitating Reparations Rhetoric.  Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic cover piece last week, "The Case for Reparations," is an attempt to bring back a soggy and discarded set of ideas, dressed up to look like new.  The article is the latest installment of the intellectual left's current flavor of the month:  the idea that historical injustices run so deeply in our society that only their victims can fathom just how profoundly they affect society.  The implication, for everyone else, is that any contributions they might make to the discussion on those injustices are limited, prejudiced, and unworthy of serious consideration.  This idea has enjoyed a resurgence this year, particularly on college campuses.

Carribbean Adopts Plan to Seek Slavery Reparations.  Leaders of Caribbean nations on Monday unanimously adopted a broad plan on seeking reparations from European nations for what they say are the lingering ill effects of the Atlantic slave trade on the region.

Caribbean nations consider push for slavery reparations.  More than 150 years after European colonial powers abolished slavery, a coalition of Caribbean nations is considering legal action to seek a formal apology and monetary compensation.  Caribbean leaders meeting next week in St. Vincent are expected to study a broad legal outline for the reparations claim prepared by a British law firm.

Black Skin Privilege.  Under the banner of "leveling the playing field," the rules of the game have been systematically rigged — against whites and in favor of blacks.  Speaking for the dominant culture in our universities, and for the U.S. Supreme Court's majority, Columbia University law professor Patricia Williams, who is black, explains:  "If the modern white man, innocently or not, is the inheritor of another's due, then it must be returned."  (Innocent or not!)  Attorney General Eric Holder is of a similar mind.

Slavery may be illegal in the U.S., but apparently it still exists.
African Diplomat Used Slave on U.S. Soil for Years.  The African nation of Tanzania was finally held accountable for allowing a diplomat who enslaved an African woman on U.S. soil to return home.  The diplomat had reportedly been operating at high levels of government.  Alan Mzengi was found to be liable for a $1 million civil judgement for forcing a young woman to live and work against her will as a domestic servant on U.S. soil.  The judgement came in 2008 after the woman escaped from four years of slavery.  She had been kept against her will by the diplomat and forced to be a domestic servant for no pay.  The diplomat fled back to Tanzania in order to avoid consequences for forcibly enslaving the African woman.

It's the 21st century and the Muslims still engage in slavery.
Saudi princess arrested for human trafficking in California.  A Saudi princess has been arrested for human trafficking in Southern California.  42-year-old Meshael Alayban allegedly held a Kenyan domestic worker against her will and forced her to work in the princess' condominium in Irvine.

Thirty million people are slaves, half in India: survey.  Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labor, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude, a global index on modern slavery showed on Thursday [10/17/2013].

Michelle Obama's Black Reparation Junket.  Michelle Obama has been capitalizing on her status as a descendant of slaves.  Her latest junket to Ireland shows she is definitely enjoying the 21st-century benefits of the transatlantic slave trade her radical friends in Chicago refer to as "genocide" by white Americans.  According to the First Couple's pals, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rahm Emanuel, and Dr. Conrad W. Worrill of Northeastern University, white Americans should monetarily compensate black Americans for past slavery.  The four, along with others, have been pushing reparations legislation since 1987.

Conyers Reintroduces Reparations Effort.  Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced two reparations resolutions on the first day of the 113th Congress.

The Anniversary that Wasn't There.  A sesquicentennial is a really big deal!  A century and a half ago, something happened that affects us today.  So why was the abolition of slavery in the United States (if that isn't a big deal, what is?) worthy of almost no attention when it marked its sesquicentennial on January first, 2013?  In the words on MLK, Jr, "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last," yet there were no celebrations of freedom in the black community.

The Editor says...
Blacks apparently would prefer to play the role of perpetual victims, rather than celebrate their costly freedom.

Obama Claus Gives You 90 More Days To Collect Your $50,000 Reparations Check.  No, you don't need a potted plant and you don't even to be black or even Hispanic; as long as you are a woman (or related to one) and you fill out the forms correctly, you can collect the money because nobody will verify your information. [...] Legally, nobody CAN verify any information; the law was written to make it impossible for the people looking at the claim forms to verify that their information is correct.

You should be glad you don't live in Africa.  At least a dozen countries in Africa are ruled by ruthless dictators, and all but a few of Africa's 53 or 54 countries are stuck in perpetual poverty.  The ten poorest countries in the world are in Africa.  The worst example of mismanagement is Zimbabwe, which is discussed on another page.  Slavery still exists in Africa, but these transactions are conducted by Muslims, which explains why you never hear about it on television.  And apparently there are those in Africa who are so poor that they eat rats and snails.

"People grossly ignorant of history — and that includes graduates of our leading colleges and universities — have no idea that slavery was not even a controversial issue before the 18th century, and only in Western societies beginning then. Everywhere else in the world, it was as widely accepted as it was widely practiced — and it had been for thousands of years."

— Thomas Sowell