Reparations and Moral Posturing

    New York City recently took a small step forward in correcting historical wrongs—well, at least that’s what lawmakers would have you believe. The city council has passed a legislative package that would “fully examine the present-day impacts of injustices inflicted on Black New Yorkers and communities” and “advance necessary efforts to consider potential remedies that can lead to healing and reconciliation.” These bills, now bound for the desk of Mayor Eric Adams (who one would think has more than enough on his plate than this idiocy) for his signature, include the establishment of “a Truth, Healing and Reconciliation Process on Slavery Within New York City” and a “reparations study” to determine how much money is owed to black New Yorkers because of slavery, which, by the way, was abolished statewide way, way back in 1827. Hold on...let me repeat that...way back in 1827! I am in no way trying to be disrespectful here, but are you kidding me? This is what New York City and State are digging in on?

    The new bills complement New York’s statewide Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, which held its inaugural meeting this past summer. (And, by the way. Why do all of these commission titles sound like “Star Chambers” right out of Orwell’s 1984?) The state commission will explore the “lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and discrimination on living people of African descent and on society in the State of New York,” with a view to recommending “appropriate remedies and reparations thereto.” And can I digress for a moment and lament the use of the word “Thereto”? I mean, this is why people hate lawyers. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “thereto” as “to that or that place.” I mean, I’m not the brightest guy, but I’m not an idiot...and I have no idea what that definition means. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is why Shakespeare wrote, “...kill all the lawyers” or something like that. But I digress... 

    The chairwoman of this state commission, Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, who also headed up the New York City Racial Justice Commission, kicked off the meeting by stating her aim to “embed racial justice and equity in core government functions.” I bet she’s a blast at cocktail parties!

    These various commissions within multiple, overlapping, and multiple and overlapping (no, that wasn’t a typo) levels of government are presented as finders of fact, daring to investigate the unexplored history of the city and state to assess the ongoing damages of slavery. Councilman James Gennaro of Queens—one of a dwindling caucus of ten white guys in the 51-member council—applauded the formation of a city-based reparations study, insisting that “no one should be afraid of a conversation, nobody should be afraid of a dialogue, a colloquy.” Please...just stop right there. First of all, I looked up Mr. Gennaro’s background. I’m pretty sure he’s never heard of the word “colloquy,” let alone what it means. Secondly, not a day goes by in this great land of ours, that race is not talked about. It’s talked about in coffeeshops, and sports arenas, and this here blog that is read by millions (see what I did there?); it has popular songs written about it, and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting some kind of commission about it. Hey! Enough with the swinging dead cats, Boss! My bad, Sancho. But I’m on a roll! No one, and I mean no one, is afraid of talking about race in the United States of America. What people are frighteningly, and I mean FRIGHTENINGLY, afraid of, is being honest about it.  

    You don’t have to be Nostradamus to guess what kind of conclusions these commissions will reach. Just look to California, where the state’s 2022 Interim Report from the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans set what is likely to be the national model for defining the parameters of future reparations programs. This forest-killing document, all 475 pages of it, explores every indignity and stolen opportunity that California—admitted to the Union in 1850 as a FREE state—has visited on its black population; though it is worth noting that the percentage of state residents who were black did not reach 2 percent until World War II, and black California’s demographic share peaked at 7.7% in 1980. But let us not allow inconvenient data get in the way of good old American moral posturing.

    Nevertheless, the California task force left no stone unturned in its tally of crimes. “State-funded California museums have excluded Black art from their institutions,” it declares. Well, maybe the Black art happened to suck, just like a lot of White and Hispanic art, sucks. Further, “California has criminalized Black rap artists, as California courts have allowed rap lyrics to be used as evidence related to street gang activity.” Well, maybe black rappers gave the genre a bad name by rapping “bust dat pussy open” to get what they want. That’s a quote from a Lil Wil song, by the way. Native-born black households, the report says, have on average $200 in total liquid assets; white households have 500 times more. And black Californians “have the highest rates of attempted suicide among all racial groups.” Look, I hate to nitpick here, especially after having to write some of the above, but those last two statistics are contradicted by EVERY major study in the literature. Let me repeat that for those of you on the West Coast. “By EVERY MAJOR STUDY in the literature.” Go ahead, have at me.

    What does California—and America as a whole—owe its black citizens and residents? From a purely economic standpoint, the answer largely depends on what one chooses to calculate. The above referenced California task force cites one economist’s finding that “unpaid wages owed to enslaved people amounts to $19.4 TRILLION in today’s dollars,” derived by adding up all the hours that slaves worked between 1776 and 1865, multiplying that sum by the average prevailing wage, and then applying a 3 percent interest rate to the total. Nineteen trillion dollars, dear reader, is no trifling sum in the context of American capitalism; the market value of ALL U.S. traded stocks, after all, is  approximately $55 trillion. However, a 3 percent rate of interest, the report notes, is rather stingy (kind of like my allowance in my youth, right Duane?); “merely doubling the interest rate to the more realistic six percent would increase the total estimate to $6.6 quadrillion in 2019 dollars.” Again, for those of you on the West Coast, that’s quadrillion, with a big, fat Q!

    And that so-called “more realistic” figure only accounts for unpaid wages for American slaves; it doesn’t touch on the costs of Jim Crow, redlining, racial violence, the role of racism as a health stressor, unfair prison time because of the War on Drugs, and so on...and so on. It’s hard to imagine white Americans getting away with settling up their tab for much less than $25 QUADRILLION (“Excuse me bartender...do you have an ATM here in this fine restaurant of yours? I'm a little short.”), or about 1,000 times the nation’s current Gross Domestic Product. Lesson learned; I should have bought a lot more shares of Apple and Microsoft!

    And feel free to throw the question at me, “Well, Mr. Golf Room, what exactly does America owe its Black citizens that has nothing to do with economics?” That’s a fair question. And let me preface my answer by saying, you’ve forced me to make this an even longer essay than I had originally intentioned. But because I have something of an ego, and you’re not paying for this...I’m all in!

    First and foremost, we fought a soul-crushing, almost nation-destroying, civil war. I understand there are reputable historians who will posit the war was fought for a variety of reasons. And as a student of history, I agree with that. But the foremost reason (at least from the Northern side) was to keep the Republic intact, and in doing so, it had to destroy the slave economy. 

    New York’s two (you read that correctly...TWO) reparations commissions may come up with different figures from those of the California task force, but two or three decimal places to the left or the right isn’t really the point now, is it? No one believes that the United States is going to write its black citizens checks for tens of millions of dollars apiece. I mean, when I talked to a couple of friends of mine, both black and successful, in order to get any insight they might have, they couldn’t stop laughing while I read the rough draft of this essay to them. In the end, James smiled and asked if he could just get a couple of cases of Titleist golf balls! Yes, golfers are idiots! I’m not sure what Curtis wants. He’s still laughing. But not to worry, Uncle Sam. I’ll cover the golf balls.

    The real goal of these commissions is to, as Jones Austin explained, “embed racial justice and equity in core government functions.” Keeping the grievance/victimization train moving with multiplying and regenerative commissions and task forces forever, like rabbits reproducing, with plenty of gravy for the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies and its many not-for-profit cousins, remains the shining prize upon which the reparations industry affixes its eye. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com