The District of Columbia City Council reintroduced legislation to establish a reparation fund for black residents who have been “directly wronged and traumatized by the ills of slavery.”
On Monday, at-large council member Kenyan McDuffie, along with nine other members, introduced the Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act of 2023.
The measure was first introduced by McDuffie, the former Ward 5 council member, in 2020, but the proposal failed.
According to a 2016 joint report from the Urban Institute, Duke University, The New School, and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, the average white household in Washington has a net worth 81 times larger than an average black household (pdf).
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that most black adults are in favor of some form of reparations to black Americans, but most non-black adults were opposed to the idea. In the survey, 68 percent of adults said reparations to descendants of slaves was not a good idea, which included 80 percent of white respondents, 65 percent of Asian respondents, and 58 percent of Hispanic respondents.
The survey found that 77 percent of black respondents said descendants of slaves should be repaid in some way, such as by giving them land or money.
In his introduction of the bill, McDuffie wrote that the government needs to “atone” for centuries of government-sanctioned policies and practices that exploited black people.
“We do not live in a post-racial society, and racial equality has not been achieved. If ever we are to achieve racial equity in this country, it will require official recognition of the role of government-sanctioned slavery, segregation, and racism that denied wealth-building opportunities to Black people,” McDuffie wrote in a letter to the council secretary (pdf).
However, opponents of reparations, like conservative commentator Larry Elder, argue that paying money to black people would not solve the underlying issues facing black Americans, such as the breakdown of the nuclear family.
“The money won’t do anything other than anger people who are on the hook for paying them with nothing to do with the conditions I just mentioned and will create a great deal of racial strife and tension in America,” Elder told Fox News Digital.
Another conservative political commentator, CJ Pearson, has said he believes addressing issues like economic empowerment, encouraging entrepreneurship, and school choice would be far more beneficial to the black community than reparations.
McDuffie’s bill has three main components: establish a nine-member reparations task force to study and develop a proposal; require the commissioner of the Department of Insurance, Securities, and Banking to create a slavery-era database; and establish a reparations foundation fund.
Five task force members would be appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser (who would also select the task force chair). The remaining four, including the co-chair, would be selected by the D.C. Council.
Of the five mayoral appointees, two would be from “major civil society and reparations” organizations that have worked in reparatory justice previously and one would be an academic in the field of civil rights.
“I think it is high time for us to have this conversation, this public debate,” McDuffie said in the letter.
One sorry-a** group after another looking for free money., There seems to be some confusion as to the meaning of the phrase: Aneruca—land of the free.
And no mention of things like LICE – which some races cannot manage to eradicate in their homes.
Hey Democrat voters!!!! They’re LYING TO YOU AGAIN. The Democrats will NEVER do it. They’re STRINGING you along, wanting you to THINK you’re finally going to get some $$$$money$$$$. They’re USING you for your VOTE ! They will fail and then blame the Republicans or the courts. For the Love of God, wise up for once.
Unfortunately most of their voters, are too DUMB to make that realization.
I lived and worked in the DC area in the 1980s. Didn’t think the city could get any worse than when it was run by Marion Barry. Yet, here we are, slave reparations and letting Russian and Chinese embassy dirtbags vote in local elections. Hopefully, the Congressional Oversight committee stomps out these idiotic things before it’s too late. Unfortunately, Biden will probably veto any laws preventing this.
Bribery (which this clearly is), is still illegal as far as I know; given it’s only aimed at blacks “traumatized” by slavery it is also clearly racist.
Nobody ever-EVER thinks of the hardscrabble farmers who never had slaves to work the fields nor the presence of black slaveholders (they were more visible than we’re told) in the South and the trauma they suffered when their homes and fields were destroyed without mercy–nor compensation.
Woke history conveniently ignores so much of what actually happened.
SINCE when has demon-rats, cared if what they do is legal or not?
“The money won’t do anything other than anger people who are on the hook for paying them with nothing to do with the conditions I just mentioned and will create a great deal of racial strife and tension in America,”
I never owned a slave nor did any of my ancestors. I never oppressed anyone, but I have noted that since the 1960’s the Blacks have been getting a great multiple amounts of free stuff, welfare, food, clothing, medical, housing, transportation. All payed for the taxpayers.
I never went to college, I served 22 years serving my country and now this corrupt woke No Joe Biden wants me to pay off the student loans for people that did go to college and making less than $250.000 a year. 🙁 🙁 🙁
I’d love to see someone stand up and ask these morons
“SO If my grand parents came here after WW2, DO WE OWE reparations, or do we Get them??”
I don’t believe in Reparations for criminals. How about a boat trip back ??
The only black American citizens alive today who’re slaves, are the one’s on the “Welfare plantation”. The DemonRats are more often racists (KKK, BLM, vying for segregated graduations and dormatories etc.).
How about we all treat each other with the respect and dignity that God intended, and allow the laws already on the books that gaurantee equal treatment (NOT equal outcome) take care of the rest.
By the way, if the DemonRats think there should be equity, then what about all of those poor white NBA players who don’t earn as much as the blacks? Aren’t they being discriminated against?
Discrimination against whites, IS A-OK to dems.
Can the SATAN WORSHIPPING DEMONCRATS name one person living today in this country that is currently A SLAVE OR SOME OTHER INDENTURED SERVENT! I think not yet to hear these servents os satan scream and yell about slavery this and slavery that you would that half the country were slaves of some type. These people do not deserve reparations, it should be all or none, I may be a white person but a couple of my ancestors were slaves in this country so my sister and myself should also get reparations as well? Those that are screaming for this money are not slaves nor have they ever been slaves, so therefore they should get nothing, besides black people get things that almost no one else can get, they have been getting thir reparations o goomany years noin the form of welfare free medical care free housing and many other things.
Reparations and civil war, one and inseparable. That is the aim of cultural Marxism.
I identify as a welfare fraud, lazy, malt liquor swilling, womanizing slob…..Where’s my reparations???
Are you white? IF so, you don’t get any.
show me the welts on their backs from the whppings-
show me the scars on their ankles from the shackles-
show me the plantation and the owner that did them wrong-
200 years late –
and yet there are thousands upon thousands of blacks( maybe millions)
doing quite nicely –
educated –
employed-
nice housing
good car-
and then there are a bucket load of black millionaires-
reparations my behind———–
I’d like to give a little shout out to all the women out there who are getting ready to give black men their hard-earned tax dollars in the form of reparations. In 1868 black men were given full rights as a citizen. That meant the right to vote, ect. However, women at that time were not even considered to be citizens. It wasn’t until the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920 that women won a national right to vote. Who do you think deserves reparations more?
Don;t give the left any ideas of whom to ‘pay out to’ next..
As Dr. Thomas Sowell was wont to point out, Black families were making great strides into the middle class into the ’50s and early ’60s, and started declining steeply only after Welfare and other government programs were introduced, which encouraged single black mothers to “marry” the government rather than the fathers of their children.
“District of Columbia City Council reintroduced legislation to establish a reparation fund for black residents” (copied from the article). DC is a dump and swamp. To be fair they should also give reparations to Jews (suffered/suffering from the Holocaust), the Chinese (the Rape of Nanking), Russians (living under the oppression of communism), South African blacks (apartheid by whites), and whole host of other groups. Not kidding one bit here. They should also give reparations to people who live in that hellhole (again not kidding).
Blacks had LICE in the 1950’s and no doubt before.
Even today, Hispanics and Native Americans have them.
How about a law that you do not SPREAD LICE by pretending you cannot kill them in your home while other races who catch them from YOU CAN manage to rid their homes of them.
If blacks were really so victimized they would have gone back to Africa decades ago.
All they would have to have is a suitcase and an airline ticket. They waste more than that on booze and drugs.
The Quakers offered to pay their passage back to Africa after they were freed.
Go back to Africa and find the real enslavers. They were the tribes that were the largest according to Thomas Sowell. They would kidnap the blacks from tribes who had people who were smaller in stature.
Just like now when blacks attack Asians and rob them because they are smaller and female.