Enough with reparations already.

It's hard to conceive of reparations in an era when the American public is already so fed up with the unjust reverse racism of DEI. You have to be tone deaf to the moment. But here we are.

Former Missouri Representative Cori Bush advanced a reparations bill in Congress in 2023. It went nowhere. In May, Summer Lee (PA-12) reintroduced a similar bill, the Reparations Now Resolution (H. Res. 414). It will also go nowhere. Why do we keep having this fight?

As envisioned by Ms. Lee and the resolution’s co-sponsors, Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), and Ayanna Pressley (MA-07)—two members of the racialist Squad—reparations are an attempt, as Ms. Lee put it, to fight the “white supremacy rampant in our country.” Ms. Pressley added, “We are in a moment of anti-blackness on steroids, and we will not back down in our pursuit of reparative justice.”

Similar to the Black Lives Matter con, in which co-founder Patrisse Cullors misused donor funds to purchase a $6 million Studio City mansion, among many other financial crimes for personal gain by BLM chapter leaders, this giant 14 trillion dollar redistributionist boondoggle is an attempt to guilt-trip Asian, Latino, and white folk into parting with their hard-earned money. This is why the vast majority of these groups oppose reparations, as indicated in polling. Only the majority of blacks favor reparations. It’s time for black Americans to see the light.

Let’s look at some hard facts. Over 14.3% of the American public today was not even born in America. Why should they be subject to the onerous burden of reparations? And what about the 250,000 white soldiers who died to free the republic from the scourges of slavery? What about their descendants? What about the hundreds of thousands more who were permanently maimed in the Civil War, unable to provide for their families? Don’t they deserve compensation? And what about all the descendants of white abolitionists? Shouldn’t they get a pass? This thing is a mess. And good luck determining who is black and who is a direct descendant of a slave.

All that said, reparations do have a history in America. They were given to Japanese-American citizens who were imprisoned in concentration camps during WWII. The victims of that injustice were given aid while they were alive. We did not, however, give aid to the children of Japanese-Americans who didn’t face incarceration. And none was sought.

As part of Special Field Order No. 15, issued by Union General William T. Sherman in January 1865, 40 acres and a mule were promised to slaves after the end of the Civil War. While some freed people did receive compensation, ultimately, the order was widely disregarded and not fulfilled. On this ground, reparations can be justified.

Here’s the problem. We have already more than made up for the 40 acres and a mule fiasco in myriad ways on multiple occasions. It has been 160 years since the complete abolition of slavery that came with the conclusion of the Civil War. We are 61 years past the end of Jim Crow. What was the War on Poverty but a giant reparations program? Since 1964, $25 trillion has been spent fighting poverty, more than three times as much as all U.S. wars put together. And the figure does not even include Social Security and Medicare.

I didn’t see any of that money. I don’t have any friends who saw that money. A disproportionate share of that money went to black people, though they are only 13% of the population. Will $14 trillion more make their conditions more harmonious and bucolic? Clearly not. All studies of welfare show it will make the conditions of the poor, and the black urban poor in particular, far worse. According to the Heritage Foundation, the $25 trillion spent produced no discernible improvements in the rates of black poverty, and, instead, increased dependency, disincentivized work, and fostered a permanent underclass of low-achieving Americans.

Blacks receive 28% of Head Start and 26% of SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) funds. We have a vast affirmative action complex, in which, for instance, a movie cannot be nominated for an Academy Award without the requisite racial pigment in a large percentage of the cast and crew. Is this not reparations? Kudos to filmmakers like Ed Burns for daring to make a film with white and Latino performers.

In an age when DEI has been roundly denigrated as nothing more than reverse racism, are we going to soak everyone who is not black all over again? What is driving this? In a word, stupidity.

California is the one state that has advanced reparations legislation, including, unbelievably, cash payments to descendants of slaves, even though California had no role in the Civil War! It is the least fiscally sound state in the union. It taxes its residents at a second-in-the-nation rate of 13.3% and leaves them with outsized levels of homelessness and crime. It imports millions of illegal immigrants, to whom it gives health care through Medi-Cal, free education at public universities, cash benefits through the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), food assistance through the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program, disability insurance, and paid family leave. Do reparations advocates honestly believe that California can afford reparations? The state’s debt is $1.6 trillion, per the Hoover Institute. It’s not happening.

The U.S. is no better off. Its debt was recently downgraded by Moody’s for the first time in 100 years. That’s in addition to earlier downgrades by Fitch and Standard & Poor's. Does this strike you as the opportune time for reparations? Is it any surprise that Wes Moore, Maryland’s first black governor, rejected a reparations measure put on his desk?

H.R. 2100, No Bailouts for Reparations Act, ensures that the federal government will not be left on the hook for the reparations profligacy of individual states and localities. It has been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. It must pass to prevent the worst effects of reparations from taking hold.

In lieu of reparations, the real “work” is ensuring black empowerment. This is achieved through charter schools, innovative public schools like the Eagle Academy for Young Men, the elimination of no-cash bail, the implementation of broken windows policing, and stricter sentencing for criminal offenders. That will set black Americans on the narrow path to excellence, not endless giveaways, preferential treatment, and quotas that alienate, divide, and make the path towards healing from the horrid effects of slavery and Jim Crow impossible.