California Task Force Pushes Envy Instead of Harmony

People line up to speak during a reparations task force meeting at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco on April 13, 2022. Janie Har/AP Photo

Commentary

When the California Reparations Task Force released its Full Interim Report in June, I wrote in The Epoch Times, “California Reparations Report Ignores What’s Really Going On.” The conclusion: “The report’s solutions are a mishmash of socialist utopian thinking, biased history, and a failure to take up the ideas of conservatives, libertarians, and even liberal reformers. The final report coming out next year promises to be even worse.”

The task force just met again Sept. 23-24 at the California Science Center in South Los Angeles to work on the specifics. Although the numbers still are preliminary, CalMatters reported, “The four economic consultants calculated that each Black Californian who lived in the state between 1933 and 1977 experienced a ‘housing wealth gap’ of $223,239, or $5,074 for each year in the period. The experts said that number—which is the difference between the average value of all homes in California and the value of Black-owned homes—could be considered for reparations.”

The task force earlier decided reparations only would go to those who could establish ancestry going back to American slaves. Recent black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere would be excluded. Which would cause immediate divisions right within the black community.

Then there’s the problem of state residency. If reparations of $223,239 ever were to become a real possibility, hundreds of thousands of black people who have left California for other states might choose to return, even if for a few weeks, to collect the money. Perhaps hundreds of thousands, even millions, of others would come here who never lived here.

And in a state that doesn’t even require an ID for voting, how will identities be established? How will racial identities be affirmed—with DNA tests?

But let’s estimate the amount and use some official data. The 2020 U.S. Census found 7.1 percent of Californians were “Black or African American Alone or in Combination.” The state’s population was 39,538,223. So the black population was 2.8 million.

Multiply 2.8 million by $223,239 and you get $625 billion. That’s more than double the entire state budget this year, which was $308 billion.

In my June article, I noted the Final Interim Report “doesn’t deal with union power and environmentalist power that prevents reform. It has no conception of how free markets work, especially by lifting up those at the bottom by giving them opportunities. It also doesn’t take into account some of the realities of California’s unique situation, especially the difficulties of a state with one-party hegemony, impossibly high real estate prices, and the dominance of liberal delusions such as those advanced in its text.”

Their recent meetings don’t change that at all. The difficulties of all people, of all races, living in this state would remain. The exodus of those who just can’t take it anymore would continue. Although black residents may have some extra difficulties, perhaps at least 80 percent of their difficulties are shared with everybody else. Does it make sense to concentrate only on those 20 percent of difficulties black people have—and come up with the wrong solutions—or instead concentrate on the 80 percent everyone can work on together to solve with real solutions?

This is frustrating for me. I’ve always tried to advance comity among the races. In the U.S. Army, 1978-82, we had to work together to stand up to the Soviet menace. In and out of the Army, there are so many black people I’ve worked closely with, and been friends with. Right now I’m listening to a CD I’ve had for 25 years, “Bird and Diz,” meaning saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzie Gillespie. Along with bassist Curley Russell, they were black. On drums was the thundering Buddy Rich, who was white. You can listen to it free here.

Although this album was recorded in New York in 1950, part of the explosion of bebop, my favorite jazz period, Bird and Diz famously crashed California in 1945-46. This is dramatized in several scenes in Clint Eastwood’s biopic “Bird,” starring Forrest Whitaker. Trailer here. Clint is a big jazz fan.

My point is there’s so much the people on this task force could do instead of increasing racial animosity, even within the black community; promoting envy instead of harmony; and cooking up magical numbers.

I grew up in the 1960s, when it seemed we could repair racial divisions, bring people together, and live happily in our great country. As Martin Luther King urged, we just had to build a nation in which every person “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

That’s what I’m still working for.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.