As California’s Reparations Taxk Force gets ready July 1 to transmit its demands to the legislature, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) sponsored her own national bill H.R. 414, designed to compensate the African American community, roughly 41.6 million, $14.trillion for a hypothetical model of how much African Americans have lost since coming as slaves to the United States in 1619. Bush says $14 trillion is needed “to eliminate the racial wealth-gap that currently exists between Black and White Americans,” Bush said in her H.R-414 national legislation. Bush asks for over 50% of the total U.S. Gross Domestic Product [GDP] in 2022. Democrats and Republicans are ready to default on U.S. Treasury obligation over $1.5 trillion on a budget of $6.2 trillion, staggering numbers but dwarfed by Bush’s demand to pay off the African American community, all 41.6 million.
Bush has followed the California Reparation Task for and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) H.R 40, “The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African American Act, making good on the U.S. government post-Civil War promise of “40 acres and a mule,” an unfulfilled promise costing African Americans trillions in wealth according to Lee and now Bush. Bush and Lee know, that within the “woke” Democrat Party, opposition to such outrageous demands is considered racist, a perpetuation of the systemic racism in American society. Lee wants to blame Whites for using African American slaves for helping to build the U.S. Capitol and White House, itemizing every tragic event in Black history to justify cash payments by the government. California’s Reparation Task Force monetized what it thinks California descendants of slaves should get compensated. Whether subject to prejudice, employment discrimination, inadequate education, unaffordable housing, etc, there’s a price for everything.
Bush calculated that over 222 million unpaid labor hours for Black slaves occurred between 1619 and 1865, the end of slavery and the Civil War. Bush thinks “those who were stripped of their dignity the first time, the extensive history of the enslavement of Africans, post-Jim Crow discrimination and other racially charged subjects has been entered into the Congressional record—and repairing the lasting damage these institutions cause will have hefty price tag,” according to one Democratic lawmaker. Bush says nothing in her legislation about Native Americans, whose land was seized by the U.S. government, putting them on reservations in undesirable parts of the Western wilderness. But Lee and Bush mention nothing of Native Americans, only the indignity suffered by African Americans. What happened to the Africans that stayed in Africa and were never sent to the United States?
Bush’s premise that a fundamentally racist White Society held down Black Americans, either by laws or subtle racism, keeping what she calls a wealth gap. Bush doesn’t calculate, with nearly 335 million Americans, the vast majority of U.S. citizens living in poverty are White Americans and other minority groups. Every society whether in the U.S., Europe, Africa or Asia, has a stratification of wealth based on many factors, not just systemic racism or institutional discrimination. No country in the civilized world, whether they had African slaves or not, has demanded repayment after the fact, including everywhere once utilizing the slave trade. “The United State has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans an its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States,” said Bush’s H.R. 414 reparations bill.
Bush leaps to conclusions not based on logic but only on demands, hoping that enough peer pressure and brow beating can get Congress to act. Bush doesn’t know what life would have been like for Africans that stayed in Africa, as opposed to living at least until 1865 as slaves but only in colonies that approved slavery. Bush doesn’t ask the basic question in her $14 trillion calculation of when the United States became an independent country. Does Lee and Bush think the U.S. government, that wasn’t a nation until Sept. 17, 1787, the date the Constitution was ratified? When the Bill of Rights was ratified Dec. 15, 1991, does Lee or Bush think that’s when the reparations clock started for African Americans? On does Bush and Lee think 1619 was the appropriate date from which to calculate damages, 170 years before the Constitution was signed? All the calculations are arbitrary, not based on any logic.
Bush and Lee can push for cash reparations but the U.S. government isn’t responsible for what the colonies did before the Constitution was ratified in 1787 or Bill of Rights signed in 1791. When you think that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation Jan 1, 1863, freeing all slaves, he signed his death warrant, assassinated by segregationist John Wilkes Booth April 15, 1965, less than a week after the end of the Civil War April 9, 1965. Of the total 620,000 deaths in the Civil War, only 40,000 were African Americans. Everyone living in the United States made unspeakable sacrifices during the Civil War to preserve the Union. Yet Bush and Lee think that only African Americans suffered in those years until present time. Many groups taking part in the American experiment deserve some type of compensation but the U.S. tax base and Treasury don’t permit it.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
