The idea of “reparations” has been thoroughly rejected by voters, who have followed the curious concept since it popped up several years ago. They’ve decided, by overwhelming majorities, that it’s a bad idea.
The most thorough research concerning public attitudes I’m aware of into California’s own reparations proposal comes from the non-partisan American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), which in April published the results of their study. It concluded that, in California,
- reparations…are not supported by a majority of the public
- the more time that has elapsed between a historical injustice and the proposed redress, the larger the ideological divide is on providing reparations
- to increase support for reparations, those committed to health and racial justice must do a better job of connecting the dots between historic injustice and modern-day inequity
You’d think, in the face of massive voter opposition, electeds would cease trying to foist reparations onto us taxpayers. But this clearly isn’t the case here in our East Bay, where the Alameda County Reparations Commission just demanded $4.6 million to fund themselves.
First, what is the Alameda County Reparations Commission (ACRC)? Established only little more than a year ago (March 2023) by the Board of Supervisors, its stated purpose was to come up with a reparations plan for the entire county (which of course includes Oakland, which has its own reparations commission, as does the State of California). The ACRC would have sixteen members, or “seats,” the qualifications for each of which were carefully crafted in the draft language, which makes for curious reading. For example, “Seat 1 represents a media outlet that principally serves the African American community; Seat 2 is displaced [people] from Alameda County due to gentrification; Seat 4 is an individual age 55 or older who has lived in a predominantly African American community; Seat 8 is an individual with expertise in the impact of redevelopment activities on Black communities; Seat 9 is a small business owner principally serving the African American community,” and so on. So we shall have an ACRC largely constituted by Black people. Whether it’s constitutional to apply such strange and arbitrary racial constraints on the members of an official county commission is legally questionable. IMHO, it’s outright racism.
In the little more than one year of its existence, the ACRC hasn’t gotten much done. According to KQED, the Commission “was expected to complete its work by this July [2024]. Instead, it has hardly started.” ACRC’s CEO said they simply ran out of time and now will need until June 2026, in addition to that extra $4.6 million, to get the job done.
With this inactivity, we don’t really know what the ACRC has in mind, but we can make some inferences based on the minutes of one of their meetings (March 13). There was, naturally, a lot of logorrhea, as there always is in such conclaves. The only reference to actual proposals alluded vaguely to the California Legislative Black Caucus, which has worked with the state’s own reparations study group, the California Reparations Task Force. The March 13 minutes specifically reference “some key points” from the Black Caucus’s reparations proposal, including
-expanding technical education
-financial aid for redlined communities
-amending the constitution to fund programs addressing life expectancy
-an apology for past harms
-criminal justice reforms like prohibiting involuntary servitude
-restricting solitary confinement.
-food injustices,
-licensing barriers for those with criminal records
-prioritizing African American applicants for licenses
This gives us some idea of the scope of what the ACRC will be asking. Direct cash payments doesn’t seem to be on the table for now, given Gov. Newsom’s stated resistance to it and overwhelming voter opposition. However, the ACRC clearly is thinking of injecting huge amounts of taxpayer money into communities of color. Just what does “financial aid for redlined communities” mean, and how much will that cost? Just what does “fund programs addressing life expectancy” mean, and how much will that cost? Ditto for “food injustices.” You can see that the devil is in the details. Reparations proponents are determined to pump a ton of [our] money into the Black community, whether it’s called reparations or something else, and if they have to resort to sleight-of-hand and obfuscating bureaucratese to trick the voters, so be it.
And what does the ACRC need that $4.6 million for? “Infrastructure,” note the March 13 minutes, specifying “marketing, communication, outreach/community engagement [and] legal/political” costs. We can imagine the sorts of “outreach” and “community engagement” the commissioners have in mind: semi-secret payments to select members of “the community.” We know how graft and grifting works, because it’s happened for years in Oakland.
Let’s zoom in closer for specifics on what ACRC wants the millions for. There are too many line items to fit into this blog, but here are some of the more dubious ones:
- $440,000 for “conducting listening sessions across 15 cities and 6 unincorporated areas”
- $1.5 million for three “Research Analysts”
- $300,000 for “narrative work (social media, PR, storytelling”)
- $85,000 for a “Freedom Day Celebration Hosted by the Alameda County Reparations Commission”
- $180,000 for “Outreach and Engagement” to “fund a professional outreach and engagement company to organize events, facilitate discussions, and ensure that diverse voices are heard”
- $150,000 for a “surveying company to understand the community’s views and gather quantitative data.”
- $250,000 for lawyers
Do you, dear readers, detect any opportunities for graft and corruption in this slush fund? Any opportunity for, say, Carroll Fife to give her friends and boyfriend cushy consulting jobs? Do you think that the “outreach and engagement” company will invite anyone from the Coalition for a Better Oakland to express our views, or if the “listening sessions” will include me, or you?
Fat chance. We have no voice because we don’t kiss woke ass.
Look, this is more baloney from the same folks that brought us the Department of Violence Prevention and MACRO. These people want to eternally expand the government bureaucracy, hiring endless numbers of BIPOCs onto the public payroll. It’s really just another version of the welfare dole--a benefit paid by the government to the unemployed. This is what your property, sales and business taxes are paying for: a zombie army of docile, woke bureaucrats who, grateful to their City Council overlords for a job with such good benefits, will do exactly what they’re expected to: push papers and obey orders.
Steve Heimoff