CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Democrats in Congress picked Hakeem Jeffries of New York as their minority leader last week.
He is an unapologetic supporter of reparations for African-Americans. He favors a special congressional committee to make recommendations. He said, “it’s the least we could do.”
I’m skeptical.
Here are three issues that such a committee, if it is ever created, should have to answer.
One: How much of my tax money should go to the descendants of former slaves? I ask because my descendants, the Conleys and the Del Contes, came to the United States as immigrants in 1902 and 1906 respectively. The slavery issue in the United States had been settled 50 years earlier. My family didn’t own anyone. And they faced their own bigotry. The help wanted signs my relatives saw: “Irish and dogs need not apply.” Italians were not considered white when my family arrived in the United States. And if you argue that my relatives benefitted from the discrimination that blacks faced, that’s a shocking moving of the goalposts. We were told that reparations were to compensate slaves for unpaid labor.
Second: Do blacks who came to the United States voluntarily still get reparations? Today 16% of black Americans are naturalized legal immigrants. They were born elsewhere, and made the personal choice to come to the United States. So, are reparations, perhaps, to cover the racial wrongs of the 1980s and 90s? How is it possible to compare that to the master’s lash on a plantation 150 years earlier?
Third: Do mixed race Americans qualify for reparations? 10% of Americans self-identify as multi-ethinic. Does someone with a black grandmother get a quarter of reparations? Let’s consider the case of former president Barack Obama. His father was Kenyan, and was not a descendant of slaves. His mother was a white woman. Obama identifies as black. Does he get a half-share? Or nothing? Or a full share, to compensate for his blackness? And how, exactly, has he suffered because of his ethnicity? He’s highly successful, influential, and wealthy; largely admired by large numbers of his fellow citizens.
There are no answers to these questions. Reparations is a failed policy before it begins; little more than a wealth transfer from one group of Americans to another. And what about the 600,000 men, almost all white, who laid down their lives on the battlefields of the Civil War to end the horrid practice of slavery? Have we made proper reparations to their descendants?
Chris Conley
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