For quite a while it’s been argued with some vehemence that Black Americans living today are entitled to reparations from the Federal government in the form of (taxpayer) cash because they’re the fifth or sixth generation removed from the slave ancestors.
Reparations like 40 acres and a mule, if implemented after the Civil War to the actual former slaves would certainly have been appropriate, but now 159 years removed from its abolishment via the 13th amendment, present-day taxpayers who had nothing to do with slavery should not be on any hook for the sins of perpetrators long dead, as are the people who were in the grasp of that”peculiar institution”.
This is speculation on my part, but I think the big stink in the room is what happened after the end of reconstruction.
It was going to be only a matter of time before the Democrat Party won back political power (added by its terrorist arm) first in the former Confederate states and then the federal government. The radical Republicans had died off or had been voted out, by the election of 1876 political violence was such a possibility that a compromise was reached to prevent it. Federal troops were withdrawn along with most federal enforcement. The solid South would be solid Democrat for the next nine decades, the age of “Jim Crow” had begun.
Racism was no doubt a fact of life for Black Americans, It was codified into law by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. In 1912 the voters elected a racist progressive who reversed all the black progress since Reconstruction.
Needless to say, for Black Americans, life meant walking on eggshells and it was only going to get worse.
In the first part of the twentieth-century race riots were white mobs attacking black people, and burning down whole black neighborhoods, and business districts. It is no doubt an utterly shameful period in American history that everyone living today recognizes as such. While race relations were a power keg it was alleged interactions between white women and black men that was the spark that set them off.
I’m assuming that most people have seen the movie“To Kill a Mockingbird”
A black man is accused of sexual assault on a young white woman and despite significant evidence that the man is innocent, he is found guilty by an all-white male jury.
And then there was the horrific case of Emmett Till.
All white juries convict black defendants, All white juries acquit white defendants. ( Was it then any wonder many black people cheered when O.J. Simpson was acquitted.) Yes indeed, racism was real and ugly for most of the twentieth century.
The Civil Rights Movement of the late fifties and sixties finally started making progress which culminated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Shortly after came LBJ’s Great Society.
So what am I trying to say?
I’m saying that in 2024 race relations are 180 deg. different from what they were 50-100 years ago.
And over the past few decades, the pendulum has swung from “white supremacy” to “white guilt”.
We elected the first person of color…twice in the mistaken belief that America could finally put race in the rearview mirror and achieve the dream of Martin Luther King. But no…A fundamental transformation of the country was going to take place, and it certainly did.
When Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016 denying Hillary Clinton her expected historic victory it sent liberals, white women liberals in particular into fits of apoplexy. Trump would be under attack from all sides throughout his presidency. White Liberal democrats found it easy and convenient to get woke and accuse Trump of being a racist. In the year 2020, Democrat-run cities exploded in mostly peaceful riots, sparked by the death of George Floyd. The organization Black Lives Matter was embraced by liberal white people and white women in particular.
In the election of 2020, the bad Orangeman was defeated. Happy days were here again. And virtue signaling rich white people could still enjoy their white privilege.
People have long sought forgiveness for past transgressions. In days past, they may have turned to penance, confession, or even self-flagellation. Today, white women shell out $2,500 to be told how racist they are.
And after all the penance for their perceived racism and the sins of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, what has it got them, no respect and a punch in the face?
But whoever the men are doing this has to be to be the desperate last gasp of those evil”MAGA” men. Because everyone knows downtown NYC is “MAGA Country”, just like downtown Chicago.