90 Miles From Tyranny : Reckless Reparations Reckoning

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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Reckless Reparations Reckoning


The lesson from the $22 trillion record of Great Society compensatory payouts is that massive infusions of federal money are more apt to ensure social disruption and dislocation than alleviate them.

The last time racial reparations made the major news was on the eve of September 11, 2001 attacks. The loss of 3,000 Americans, which for a time fueled a new national unity, quickly dispelled the absurdities of the reparation movement, and turned our attention toward more existential issues.

Now the idea is back in vogue again. 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.

1) Identity Politics Absurdities

We live in an absurd woke age of retribalization. It has witnessed Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for mutual advantage, advertised as Harvard’s first Native-American law professor.

Fellow Montecito mansion denizens Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle and multibillionaire Oprah Winfrey swap ridiculous televised stories of their own racial victimization.

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett initially was canonized by our top elected leaders and exempted for months by Chicago legal authorities after claiming the following absurdity: two white, MAGA-hatted racists, on their apparently routine nightly racist patrols in a liberal Chicago neighborhood and equipped both with special bleach that does not freeze in subzero temperatures and an ever-ready, just-in-case noose, assaulted Jussie. They put a rope around his neck and libeled his predominately black “Empire” soap-opera show—only to be repulsed single-footedly by a courageous Smollett, while retaining in one hand his cell phone and in the other his late night Subway sandwich.

Note that in these nutty cases and thousands like them, there is the cynical assumption that current American society, and the government as well, reward claims of racial victimization. That is why a Ward Churchill or Rachel Dolezal constructed new racial identities to game the system for profit.

One of the racialist universities’ current admissions challenges is their checkbox of “mixed race.” Whites and Asians often feign mixed parentages in hopes of being assumed either part black, Latino, or Native American. Any such partial lineage is seen as preferable to their own race. In our old racist society, one used to attempt to pass for white; in our new racist society, one attempts to pass for non-white.

Current racial tribalization obsessions have descended into a nadir that makes Al Sharpton’s 1990s Tawana Brawley/Crown-Heights career start (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”/ “We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”) look amateurish in comparison. In this context, new calls arise for ludicrous reparations simply because we have become a ludicrous society.

2) Who Is Who?

Lots of racially obsessed tribal groups, in our multiracial, intermarried, assimilated, and integrated postmodern America, for perceived advantage still claim racial purity.

Yet to further those claims, they ultimately will rely on DNA certification (ask Elizabeth Warren how that went down). Perhaps some will resort to the sort of sick rules of past racialized societies such as the Old South (“the one-drop rule”), Hitler’s Germany (yellow stars), or apartheid South Africa (racial certificates). Stanford University recently deplored its recent past of anti-Semitic admissions—even as it has adopted an entire canon of racial classifications to return to the very categories that it now claims to regret. After all, Jews with superior transcripts in the 1950s were turned away for being Jewish and now a century of regression later are turned away for being considered white.

Do we adopt the South’s 1/16 rule that is occasionally used by Native-American gaming casinos and perhaps, stealthily, universities? Will blacks applying for reparations have to hire genealogists to calibrate percentages of racial purity to assess corresponding reparatory...



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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never owned any slaves and you never picked any cotton, so you can kiss my ass....
I want reparations for all the potatoes my ancestors were forced to dig. We're a yam family damnit! I was racially discriminated against (errrrr... my ancestors were)! I am entitled to reparations!

Anonymous said...

VDH makes one minor false assumption, that there was no slavery in the North. There was, but much less than the South.

He missed Vermont in his discussion on who should pay. There was no slavery in Vermont , even in colonial days.

But his best part is the hypothesis that being 6+ generations descended from it is the reason for poor cultural performance in today’s world, and thus they’re owed money. Nice try; no chance.

Drew458

Anonymous said...

Such a well thought out essay, taking a realistic common sense approach, will of course be utterly ignored, because feelings.

Drew458

ontoiran said...

i identify as black

Anonymous said...

Oh, and let's not forget the immigrants and their descendants. If your first American ancestor got over here after 1865, why should you pay a penny towards reparations?

The entire concept is crazy garbage, but we live in crazy world these days.

Drew458

Anonymous said...

I am 2nd gen American. My ancestors escaped the bolsheviks, sacrificed in service to their new country, and worked their tails off.

Besides, the dindus got their 40 acres and a mule. Only them to blame if they squandered it. (recognition that not all blacks were unsuccessful and irresponsible)

The larger blame is to certain persons and their policies in our own government. There is big money to be made from creating and perpetuating victimhood in whole segments of society. Supercharge that by getting fellow Americans to squabble with one another. Triple down by lax immigration laws (and lax enforcement) then offering incentives for illegal entry and trafficking of humans and illicit drugs.