California reparations proposal may hurt Democrats in 2024

issues ranging from tax reform to illegal immigration to gun control. California often leads the way. This ain’t Las Vegas. What happens in the Golden State rarely stays in the Golden State. This is where national trends start before they head east. Unfortunately, California’s tendency to lead the way might also include leading the way to lunacy. The nation’s most populous state is the new capital of wokeness. Oh, great. In her official response to President Biden State of the Union address, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders observed quote, the dividing line in America is no longer between right or left the choices between normal or crazy. Well, the example of how California a state that never sanctioned slavery is handling the reparations issue falls into the latter category. On July 1 2023, a first in the nation Task Force on paying reparations to African Americans is supposed to file its final report to the state legislature. The origin story tracks back to the savage murder of George Floyd in May 2020. By Derek Chauvin, a now former Minneapolis Police Officer, after riots erupted in dozens of US cities, California lawmakers were rattled, rattled enough to pass a reparations bill that was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2020. The bill create a task force to study reparations, hear from experts and suggest ways that the state could atone for its sins against black Californians. In January. The members of the taskforce seem to agree that there should be a residency requirement. If you want a check from the state of California, you must live in California. That’s fair. But it’s also fair that African Americans who lived in California for multiple generations are more deserving of reparations than recent arrivals from Tennessee or Georgia or New York. This taskforce is focused on specific areas of alleged harm property seized by the state government, devaluation of black businesses, housing discrimination, homelessness, health issues, mass incarceration, and quote over policing, this will get confusing and maddening in a hurry. For instance, if black owned businesses in California have in fact been devalued by state action, aren’t African Americans who own businesses owed greater compensation than individuals who don’t own a business? And if the grievance is homelessness, then shouldn’t any economic benefit go directly to black homeless people in California, as opposed to African American millionaires who own McMansions? Lastly, how does a community measure quote over policing that puts residents in danger when that same community has complained before about what it perceives to be under policing that wait puts residents in danger? Well, then there are the actual figures, some of which aren’t a borrow a phrase from Governor Sanders Stone Cold crazy. Apart from the state legislature, San Francisco has its own plan to pay reparations to the city’s black residents. Only about 5% of the population of San Francisco is black. A draft plan from San Francisco’s reparation committee includes a proposed one time lump sum payment of $5 million dollars to each eligible individual. The draft argues that a quote, lump sum payment would compensate the affected population for the decades of harm that they experienced. The figures bandied about by the state reparations committee seem paltry by comparison, only about $200,000 per resident, and about 6% of California’s population is black. Look, I’m not saying that African Americans and California don’t deserve compensation. In those cases where for instance, a parcel of land was stolen from a family by the state through eminent domain, and then that parcel land turned a profit for decades, and all the money went to state coffers. That’s not right. And California should make it right. But if the focus of reparations is too wide, the figures too high, and the grievance is too broad. You can expect Californians to push back by voting out Democrats and voting in Republicans. This state could be hit by a red wave in the presidential election of 2024. And the governor’s race in 2026. All because of reparations. When this all shakes out, some black Californians may get a reparations check good for them, but the rest of the state will wind up paying the price. And for decades to come.