Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
California’s state legislature just passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California’s African-American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery.
Apparently, when California’s one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.
California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous. Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed-rail project?
When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures, and scorched 4 million acres of forest, the governor reacted by thundering about global warming. But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green policies that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.
Thank you VDH for your common sense on the subject of reparations. One thing that needs to be added to the debate is that the USA fought a Civil War to end slavery at a cost of almost 700,000 lives and a cost of about $90 Billion in today’s dollars.
According to family records curated by my my paternal Grandmother, her family were fervent supporters of the Union cause and there were at least 3 of members of my family that died in the CIvil War, fighting on the Union side to free the slaves. In my work researching and documenting, I do not believe that there were any casualties on my maternal side as they were Swedish immigrants arriving between 1864 and 1880. However, my Mother’s great grandfather was a merchant seaman who fell off of a mast of a ship in 1864 (and survived spectacularly) in Boston Harbor. The ship he worked on was engaged in the commerce of suppying the Union Army.
Further as far as I know, no one in my immediate family (Parents, 5 children and extended families) has ever participated in any racism against African Americans systemic or otherwise.
All of this begs the question, shouldn’t my family’s sacrfices/actions entitle the California members of my family also be classified “victims” of slavery and entitled to reparation payments from the State of California?