The census is always a fun time every ten years, a chance to make sure you and your household are counted and for local and state officials to cash in on more federal funding for their various pet projects. Who doesn’t like being tracked by their government like a piece of inventory?
Besides my general dislike of big government tracking my every move and assigning arbitrary value to my existence, I am mature enough to understand the importance of a census.
However, the census has morphed into much more than just a manner in which to know how big or small your nation and district have become. The latest pet project within the Biden administration to adjust the census has overt implications, and none are good.
JUST IN – U.S. government is considering asking Black Americans on federal forms, including the census, whether their ancestors were enslaved — WSJ
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 30, 2023
Which One Are You?
The Biden administration is fond of asking the public to participate in decision-making. Their latest request is for input on differentiating between black people who are descendants of slaves in America versus black people who recently arrived as immigrants.
Suppose you haven’t been able to figure out why the administration is doing this. In that case, you haven’t paid attention for the last ten years. This query attempts to figure out how to pinpoint who would be eligible to receive reparations for slavery in the event legislation would pass to allow for such a ridiculous concept.
Anytime the debate over paying reparations to black Americans is posed, the inevitable and brilliant question arises as to how the government would confirm that those who claim to be descendants of slaves are who they say they are.
According to the Pew Research Center, one in five black people in the United States is an immigrant or children of immigrants.
RELATED: San Francisco Board Expresses ‘Unanimous’ Support For Racist $5 Million Reparations Payments
This means that these one in five are either directly from or descendants of recent immigrants from anywhere from Africa, the Caribbean, to Europe.
Advocate Chad Brown of the National Assembly of American Slavery Descendants points out:
“When you say all black people are the same, you are ignoring differences in culture, ancestry, economics, and you are doing a disservice to everyone lumped into that group.”
Wait for a second… you mean you can’t just assume broad-stroke judgments on individuals based on the color of their skin? And to think this whole time, I was sure I was just an oppressive, racist, fascist, privileged Karen.
How LOST do you have to be to blame white people from the 1800s for your lack of drive and determination towards success today?
Reparations is a joke and a diversion from people’s entitlement and laziness.
— Xaviaer DuRousseau (@XAVIAERD) April 3, 2023
You Get A Free Home, And You Get A Free Home!
For those of us who roll our eyes at the concept of reparations or the likelihood of it happening, I bring your attention to the trailblazer of stupidity to the west – California. San Francisco city leaders are debating a plan to pay eligible black residents up to $5 million per person.
To be eligible, you have to prove that you are, you guessed it, a descendant of a slave. Not easy to do given the lack of accurate records, and I would imagine the always-free state of California hasn’t much in terms of slavery documentation.
Makes sense. #Reparations #California pic.twitter.com/bv3pgNy6wa
— Lloyd Legalist (@LloydLegalist) March 18, 2023
In addition to a huge payday, the city is debating giving out free homes, guaranteed incomes, and debt and tax relief.
However, not everyone is for reparations, including black Congressman Burgess Owens, who accurately explained the fallacy of reparations:
“The conversation of reparations is condescending, counterproductive, illogical, logistically impossible, and deflects from Democrats’ overwhelming success in propagating misery. It also conveys a racist narrative that black Americans are a hopeless, hapless, and oppressed race who need pity and handouts to succeed.”
Congressman Owens isn’t alone; about two-thirds of Americans are against cash payments from people who never owned slaves to people who never were slaves. So why is this still such a hotly debated topic?
RELATED: Critical Race Professor Demands Black Educators Get ‘Bereavement Leave’ to Cope With Racism
Falling Behind?
The main argument that proponents of reparations spout is that systemic racism is why, statistically, lack Americans trail white Americans. For example, surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve state that black families’ wealth is less than 15% of white families’ wealth.
Georgetown law professor Dorothy Brown explains why someone like me who never owned slaves, whose ancestors were not slave owners, still should essentially, through taxes, pay for reparations to those who were never slaves but are descendants of slaves:
“It’s a recognition that, okay, you may not have had anything to do with slavery, but…your white grandfather got an FHA (federal housing administration) insured loan. My grandfather couldn’t because he was black.”
Using that same logic, I would like to counterargue that I deserve reparations because my female ancestors were not allowed to get FHA loans. After all, they were women, while those of you with male ancestors who did get FHA loans and such did because they were men. But the argument that black Americans have a more challenging time than white Americans isn’t as straightforward as many would like you to believe, anyway.
During the recent affirmative action Supreme Court hearing, studies found that Hispanic and black college applicants enjoy substantial advantages over their white and Asian American counterparts. Now, that’s not to say that every aspect of society has evened out or tipped the balance of power one way or the other. Still, our country has made dramatic strides against racism, contrary to popular belief.
New reparations proposal in CA:
-$7.6 million per person
-40 acres and a tractor
-Name changes for free
-Black language classes
-University price controls
-Real estate price controls pic.twitter.com/M0miGkQbA5— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 30, 2023
There Is No Fate
With some luck, we won’t see the next census attempting to weed out the actual descendants of slaves from those who are not, mainly because of the ineptitude of our government. One of the many problems they face is how to word the options.
So far, they are chewing on the following:
- American Descendants of Slavery
- American Freedmen
- Foundational Black Americans
Good luck in tackling that without insulting mass groups of individuals.
Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez rightly points out:
“Government shouldn’t be in the business of separating people by immutable characteristics.”
Another counterargument is that we wouldn’t want to give reparations to black immigrants because, statistically, they tend to do better than those who are descendants of slaves. But unfortunately, instead of exploring why that might be, the government and special interest groups default to the argument that the descendants of slaves just can’t overcome their ancestral pain.
But there will never be enough money to repay any of our generational ancestral pains. Go back far enough, and we all have ancestors who were slaves, victims, oppressors, murderers, and everything in between.
No matter how much the Ancestry.com commercials want you to believe it, what happened to your ancestors is not an impediment to who you are today and what you can do with your time on this planet. In the words of Sarah Connor, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
– Sarah Connor – pic.twitter.com/ekNBkrMwp2
— TheFrog (@frogoland) April 3, 2023
Reparations won’t solve what ails black America. Each American has their own fate and has it within themselves to tip the balance of their lives; they need to believe in themselves… which is one of the fundamentals of being an American.
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