First, the Oklahoma Supreme Court showed the reparations people the door, shoved them out of it, and slammed it shut behind them.
Then chaos and a mini-scandal engulfed the Alameda County Reparations Committee, which, months behind its own schedule, is now claiming it needs millions more dollars in funding even to map out its goals.
Then the state’s own reparations initiative, the cumbersomely-named Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, seemed to doom themselves by demanding things that Gov. Newsom will never agree to: free college and university education for Black people, and what amounts, in essence, to free housing for California’s 2.2 million Black residents. (The Task Force already has quietly given up on their demand for cash payments, which Newsom has said he opposes.)
Meanwhile, closer to home, the Oakland Reparations Fund hasn’t even been able to formulate an agenda, and instead is posting links to the discredited Black activist, Ibram X. Kendi, whom the New York Times called “a symbol [for many] of everything that’s wrong in racial discourse today.” Kendi also became the subject of an internal investigation by his employer, Boston University, for “mismanagement and secrecy” after questionable handling of $55 million. The university eventually found “no issues” with Kendi’s behavior, but conservatives have delighted in criticizing him for allegedly “stealing funds.”
The popular backlash against reparations seems, in retrospect, to have been unavoidable. Ordinary people don’t mind a mea-culpa apology for slavery by local, state and/or the Federal governments. But anything that is going to cost money rubs them the wrong way. It’s not going to happen, and Democrats who find themselves caught between Black activist pressure groups, on the one side, and the public at large, on the other, are advised to side with the latter.
Steve Heimoff