This article originally appeared on Newsweek.com
by Anthony Pericolo
Pretty soon, Californians may log into Ancestry.com to see if they won a prize of $223,200. A new bill signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom is seeking ways to pay out reparations for slavery to Americans descended from slaves. But even if you’re white, you should check Ancestry.com to see if you are a descendant of American slaves; “experts” have expressed “concern” that “the current language of the eligibility criteria might open the door for individuals identifying as white… if they prove descendence.”
This absurd situation came about after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which energized the California government to create a slavery reparations task force. After months learning about struggling Black Californians, the Task Force released a 492 page report blaming all problems facing California’s Black community today on slavery and societal discrimination. From the report emerged a predominant proposal: to give $223,200 to the descendants of former slaves to close the racial wealth gap, address mass incarceration, and remedy housing discrimination.
Tentative options for payment include housing vouchers, tuition assistance, or cash. The Task Force has until July 2023 to finalize its proposal, at which point, it will be up for a vote before the California legislature.
If approved, the plan’s current figures will cost California nearly double its current budget, and since California must pass a balanced budget, a slavery reparations bill would cause massive tax increases across the board. It seems like lottery tickets are not free in progressive paradise.
People will not like that. If they don’t leave California first, they will bring lawsuits, which will prevail. In a legal challenge to Hawaii’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs limiting voting to descendants of native Hawaiians who lived on the island in the 18th Century, the Supreme Court prohibited the use of ancestry as a proxy for race in government policies. Replace voting in an election with handing out slavery reparations, and the same question is before the Court.
But how to pay for the program and whether it’s unconstitutional are the least of California’s concerns. Worsening race relations make it necessary to pass fair laws and treat citizens fairly. Instead, California’s Task Force strokes racial division.
The damage is already done: People who were never slaves feel entitled to reparations because their government tells them so. People who never owned slaves and who live in a state which never had slaves now must pay for the sins of completely different people.
Previously, individualswho directly suffered from racist government policies received compensation. Now, it is sufficient to have the DNA of someone who suffered hundreds of years ago.
How did we get here? It’s easier to throw money at enraged Californians than to unify its diverse population. Passing school choice, for example, to improve mediocre educational outcomes that Black children suffer from requires political will. By the time someone would qualify for the tuition voucher, he is already several grades behind his peers. On another front, proving discrimination in the criminal justice system requires a showing that prosecutors decline to prosecute similarly situated individuals of other racial groups. That requires complex statistics, not auto-ethnography. Lowering crime requires strengthening families, a solution that may not even come from the government.
Perhaps even worse, the reparations scheme pretends that descending from slaves is what determines whether you make it or not, when the truth is not one of race but one of zip code.
By an accident of birth, Californians might grow up in Sacramento or Skid Row, which will determine whether they are subjected to real harms like lack of housing, “school-to-prison pipeline,” and disproportionate Black arrests. Blaming others hundreds of years ago for the inequality of zip code today is just a way for California elected officials to avoid responsibility for their progressive failures while forcing the poor suckers who voted for them to foot the bill for their failures.
The rest of America has not yet solved the zip code lottery problem, either. We need to. But it’s really hard. California’s zeal to address racial issues could make it the first to do so. Unfortunately, Californian elected officials are too stubborn to abandon their progressive dogmas to deliver real change.
Anthony Pericolo is a student at Harvard Law and a civil rights fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity.
