Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) gets reparations all wrong, trying to monetize African American contributions to the United States, thinking it’s the American Way to pay off groups claiming a lack of success. Bush acts like a Marxist-Leninist saying the U.S. government owes Black Americans the same wealth as any American, including Whites, that have enjoyed success in America due to overcoming obstacles and eventually making it. Bush’s 24-page Congressional Bill H.R. 414 could not be more Communist expecting the government to do for a specific racial group what they couldn’t do for themselves, when she knows there are plenty of examples of African Americans in various industries and professions taking full part in the American Dream. Bush acts like African Americans have been cheated by White society, deliberately preventing Blacks from enjoying the fruits of their labor.
Bush knows that the success of American is its capitalistic system, not based on government promotion but on a meritocracy of competitive citizens working hard to achieve their goals. Bush doesn’t want her constituency to hear the story of individuals like 71-year-old Dr. Ben Carson, formerly Housing and Urban Development Director who grew up in Detroit’s infamous Nine Mile ghetto, yet buckled down when young, eventually graduating Johns Hopkins University and National Institute of Medicine, becoming one of the nation’s premier transplant surgeons. Bush should read Carson’s autobiography that he had a choice as a young person to get involved with crime or keep his nose in the books. He chose the latter, and wound up succeeding, despite what Bush and others call “systemic racism.” Whatever civil rights issues, poor public education, criminal justice or other obstacles, Carson made it.
Bush’s Congressional Bill places African Americans as the victims, not the perpetrators, of an evil White Society, descended from Slavery, leaving the vast majority of African Americans with Post Traumatic Slave Disorder, an ancestral carry over from centuries of slavery or post Civil War Jim Crow laws that institutionalized discrimination. “The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Americans and its last harm on the lives of millions of Black people in the United States,” reads H.R. 414. Bush cites many examples in U.S. history of atrocities committed against African Americans to justify asking for $14 trillion in reparations, claiming that capitalistic America should bankrupt itself to pay off the Black community because of Bush’s unfounded theories about what she and others say would make the Black community whole.
Bush has been watching too many TV shows or movies highlighting the great success of White Society, forgetting that in a country of 335 million with 41.6 million Blacks or 13.6%, that by sheer numbers far more Whites live in poverty. Whatever the group, whether Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, etc. there’s always a natural stratification in U.S. society, the same distribution of wealth in every country on the planet. Bush contends that the discrepancy between White and Black wealth is attributable to past enslavement, something that ended legally in 1865 with the end of the Civil War. Bush knows that of the 620,000 Civil War deaths, 40,000 were Black, the rest of White Society paid an unspeakable price to rid the society of slavery, something practiced mainly in slave states. Before statehood, the colonies brought slavery to America in 1619, well before the nation was country, 168 years before the Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787.
Bush knows that American society, good, bad of indifferent, is built on capitalism, with the government supporting certain individuals unable to take care of themselves. Bush says, in H.R. 414, that 222 million hours of forced labor lost the African American community $97 trillion dollars between 1619 and 1865, saying her $14 trillion reparation bill would barely scratch the surface of what’s owed by the U.S. government to African Americans. Bush knows that in 1619, up till the Sept. 17, 1787 signing of the Constitution, there was no United States. Why she calculates reparations back to British colonies demonstrates the arbitrary way she and her experts calculated her $14 trillion figure. Bush also knows that her $14 trillion calculation is over twice the size of the $6.27 trillion federal budget and over half the total $25.5 trillion U.S. Gross Domestic Product [GDP].
President Joe Biden, 80, finds himself in a dogfight for a $1.5 trillion continuing budget resolution to keep the U.S. government from defaulting on its obligations. Bush asked the U.S. government for $14 trillion that would end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and all other social programs benefiting Black people, bankrupting the U.S. government. Whatever the unrealistic amounts of reparations asked by Bush and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), both know there’s no money for their outrageous demands. Beyond that, reparations for any American group, including Native Americans, runs counter to the American Way, where every citizen under current federal laws has equal opportunity, whether or not any U.S. citizens experiences racism or discrimination. Bush knows the Black Community would benefit more from her amending any current federal law that disadvantages the African American Community.
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.
