That which is subsidized, increases - it's the oldest law of economics
It's true that if you saw me on the street, you would never think so. I have light brown, straight hair (now unfortunately mostly gray), a reasonably thin nose, blue eyes, fair skin - in short, the classic Caucasian feature set. I can trace an unbroken line of ancestors on my dad's side to Herr Jakob Sensing, who immigrated from Germany about 1740 and wound up in North Carolina, where he bought and sold land and had three sons. One stayed there, where his descendants still live (not many people know their 8th cousin, but I do). One went to Georgia and died before siring children. The third came to middle Tennessee and prospered.
Germany, schmermany. I'm African. And when the Congress starts handing out reparations checks, I'll be really African.
Both sides of my family have lived in America for at least 260 years - 382 years on my mom's side. Since about 1800, both sides have lived in the American South. I remember reading a Census Bureau demographic extract years ago that said that anyone whose family tree has that kind of longevity in the South has at least one black ancestor to 90% probability. It seems racial crossbreeding was much more common than we think.
That's good enough for me. I'm black.
Two big problems with reparations:
First, what will be the criteria for determining who gets paid?
Stop and consider the fact that it is not actually obvious who is a black American. Most Americans of African descent look, well, African, but not all. Black families across the nation, especially in the North, can tell stories of one of the cousins or uncles or sisters who were so light-skinned that they were able to "pass," meaning they passed themselves off as whites to the whites of the city. Many succeeded, married white spouses and lived white lives. (Does it bring to mind Eddie Murphy's SNL skit, "White Like Me"?). In fact, American Heritage magazine published a detailed academic study of passing a few years ago. (Their online archives are pathetic, so I don't have a link.)
I worked with an officer at the Pentagon whose name was Jacobs. He was lighter-skinned than I am and had blond hair to boot (what there was of it, he was mostly bald). After a year, a senior officer mentioned to me that Jacobs was black.
On the other hand, there are people whose ancestry is predominantly white, and who can prove they have black ancestors. But, like me, they look purely white in lineage.
With the amount of money potentially involved, it would be worthwhile for me to hire a professional genealogist to document my near-certain black ancestry.
The whole point here is that appearance won't do it, not for everyone who is potentially eligible. And since we constitutionally insist on equal protection before the law, we can't allow some "obviously" black people to take money on the basis of their appearance alone, and insist that others document black ancestry because they don't look black.
So what will be the standard of proof of eligibility? Birth certificates? Only your own, or would, say, one black parent's birth certificate also count if your own certificate said you are white? (For that matter, do all states annotate race on birth certificates?) What about a single black grandparent - would that count?
Isn't it racist in the first place for the government to determine by percentage of ancestry or any other method what constitutes "black"?
Countless lawsuits to change certificates or other documents will be filed by formerly white people who will insist that they stated their race as white on forms of one kind or another because of the pernicious racism that they were trying to escape.
Trust me, when the word gets out that there is free money for black people, you'll be astounded at how undercounted blacks have been for decades. Tens of millions of new black people will emerge with their hands out.
The line forms behind me.
Second, non-black Americans (the few that are left once the checks are gone) will insist that racism is now a thing of the past. All debts are paid and all balances have zeroed out. All problems are solved.
If a black person raises a claim of racism again, the answer will be. "You got paid off. Shut up."
An unscientific poll conducted by Black Voices found that 75 percent of black Americans favor reparations, with the 63 percent saying that the amount received should be more than $10,000 per person. But more than half said that reparations would negatively affect race relations because payment would cause resentment by whites and other minorities.
Well, duh.
They support getting the money even though the know it will hurt them.
Will black people want white Americans to help them combat crime in public housing or heavily black parts of town? "You got paid off. Shut up."
Will black people want whites to maintain racial preferences for college admissions? "You got paid off. Shut up."
Will black people want white business owners to hire without regard to race? "You got paid off. Shut up."
Will black political leaders want to raise a stink about racial disparities in voting in Florida or elsewhere? "You got paid off. Shut up."
The next time anyone points out the differences in income between blacks and whites, they will be told, "You got paid off. Shut up."
The list goes on. People urging reparations need to think things through. I don't think they have.
Update, 2017: What about persons who merely "identify" as black, such as Rachel Dolezal, whose ancestry is a lily-white as they come but who claims she is really black and who claims that "race is a social construct"? Would she receive reparations? Is not, why not?
Photo above added 2017. Cited article here.
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