‘Reparations Activist’ Has Issues With the Globe’s Depiction of Black Caucus Legislation

In 2023, the Globe reported on both the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee and State Reparations Task Force, which were quite openly expanding reparations beyond slavery. It became a grab and hustle for all grievances.

They said the quiet parts aloud: “the racial wealth gap in the state of California.”

As the Globe reported in December 2022, Reparations task force member Jovan Scott Lewis said: “Spoiler-alert: We don’t yet know the racial wealth gap in the state of California.” This is the preliminary conversation to figure out what we know and what we don’t know.”

Remember this: “Racial wealth gap.” The catch all phrase that would serve to justify anything the committees wanted.

Another task force member Dr. Cheryl Grills said: “Racial terror leads to racial trauma … also known as race-based traumatic stress.”

Where does this end? And aren’t there laws on the books prohibiting racial preferences via affirmative action?

Yes. Proposition 209, a ban on affirmative action, was passed by California voters in 1996, and prohibits discrimination or preferential treatment by the state, public universities, public employment, or other public entities, and banned affirmative action policies.

In 2020, voters even reaffirmed the ban on affirmative action policies and practices by voting down Proposition 16, 57% to 42%. Prop. 16 qualified for the ballot when ACA 5, authored by then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), was passed by the California legislature in 2020. If passed, Prop. 16 would have repealed Proposition 209.

As we said, “it now appears that the California Reparations Task Force has taken up the affirmative action mantle and will backdoor granting preferential treatment based on race via their final recommendations to the California Legislature.”

Now on to history and facts on slavery that have not changed over time. Stefan Spath, Executive Director for the Foundation for Economic Education, argued this some years ago, but the facts and history has not changed:

• Slavery has existed on every inhabited continent for at least 4,000 years of recorded history. 
• Humans have enslaved other humans for thousands of years: Europeans enslaved Europeans; Asians enslaved Asians; Africans enslaved Africans; and Native Americans enslaved Native Americans.
• The only thing unique about slavery in the West is that in the West it was abolished.
• Less than 10 percent of whites owned slaves, so as one of the three primary arguments for reparations, the argument for damages is the most irrational. Though slavery was widespread in the southern United States, slave ownership was not. The vast majority had neither financial nor agricultural resources to warrant slave labor. Slave ownership was restricted to a highly concentrated group of wealthy southern elites—the landed aristocracy.
• Nearly all ethnic groups that migrated to America including Chinese, the Irish, and European Jews were all subjected to harsh discrimination. However, with every passing generation, ethnic groups developed the occupational skills, knowledge, and cultural norms necessary to fully assimilate and rise to higher socioeconomic levels within the mainstream American culture.
• Lastly, as Stefan Spath concluded, “the idea of achieving justice by taking money from one group to pay another for an act that was neither committed nor suffered by the parties is a collectivist affront to the American ideal of individualism. People are not interchangeable pawns but individuals responsible for their own actions. Slaves and slave owners are dead, and we cannot bring them back.”

A California Globe reader left a rather insightful comment on one of our articles about proposed reparations bills: “I’m OK with reparations if only Democrats get the bill to pay for this. Democrats were the slave owners. Republican fought and freed the slaves. No Republican should be paying for reparations. They already did, with their lives.”

A local historian friend shared with the Globe:

“In the [Sacramento] Land Park area (there is a monument marker in the park) was Camp Union Sutterville where seven regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and smaller specialized units were trained and participated primarily in two Union moves. One was to replace regular army troops in the west and they garrisoned posts all the way to Salt Lake City, founding an army base in that area that is still active. The other went to southern California and joined units raised in that area. Confederates had occupied what is now Arizona and New Mexico up to the California border. Camp Union troops were involved with pushing them back into Texas and when the war ended Sacramento troops were well established in that state.”

Every kid in California should be taught this rather than the steady stream of “reparations activism.”