The Demand for Reparations Proves That Affirmative Action Failed

Talk of reparations is all the rage with the radicals this year. Congresswoman Cori Bush (radical nut, MO) is demanding it on a national level. She has introduced a resolution which would reportedly cost taxpayers a whopping $14 trillion. That would be a reparations bill to every non-slave-descended family of four of almost $192,000. It would be like sending the family out for its Saturday shopping, to pick up 4 Teslas, to donate to neighbors on the way home.

While debate continues at the national level, San Francisco got impatient and decided to go ahead and do it at the municipal level. It approved a reparations package for the bargain price of $175 billion. That’s only 13 times the city’s annual budget – to be paid with the excess cash leftover after the city’s top earners leave.

Following San Francisco’s lead, 13 more cities have formed reparations commissions. Apparently if San Francisco is doing it, reparations must be the “cool kids” thing to do.

The logic behind reparations is that in the years prior to the Civil War, privileged whites got an economic head start in this real life game of Monopoly we play. The non-slaves had a couple of hundred years to build family fortunes that the slaves didn’t have. Therefore, we need to provide a boost to the descendants of slaves to make the game fair – rather like giving the newbie golfer a handicap.

I suppose that logic made some sense at the conclusion of the Civil War – when both the victims and the victimizers were still alive. But is it actually true that we’ve done nothing to address that issue since the war that freed the slaves – I mean other than freeing the slaves?

As it turns out, we’ve put a lot of time and money into “evening things out” since the war. Some of our reparations worked out well, and others not so much.

One of the failed attempts was to give newly emancipated free men land on which to farm and raise their families. On January 16, 1865 General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order 15, which distributed 400,000 acres of land to black families, in 40-acre plots. Unfortunately, this reparation unraveled when President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and former slave owner, reversed Sherman’s order.

So, Democrats were the party of slavery, and a Democrat killed the first post-civil war attempt at reparations. And yet Congresswoman Bush, a Democrat, wants the rest of us who never owned slaves, to pay reparations to people who never were slaves. That’s what passes for liberal logic in the world of consensus science. Maybe the Democrat party should be paying any reparations which are due.

One of the “even things out” initiatives that did improve the inequities was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It made it illegal to consider race in employment, elections, public accommodations, and education. It took racism out of the decision making of men, even if not out of their hearts. It advanced equality, if not equity. It has been the law of the land for 59 years.

Another failure was the biggest attempt at reparations of all – affirmative action. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246. It requires government contractors and subcontractors to take affirmative action to expand job opportunities for minorities. “Affirmative action” was interpreted to mean quotas. It was intended to be the ultimate reparation by allowing the descendants of slaves, to overcome the head start that everyone else had benefited from for 300 years. It gave the underprivileged (as defined by liberals) preferential consideration in employment over the privileged (also as defined by liberals).

I was a hiring manager at a major defense contractor for many years. I can tell you how affirmative action was applied. If there was a member of a protected class, which was minimally qualified for the job, I was required to hire that person over a more qualified person who was not a member of a protected class. If we had been playing baseball, I would have been required to hire a pitcher who could throw a ball at 85 mph (which is good enough to be in the big league) over a pitcher who could throw at 100 mph (which is good enough to win a pennant).

Hiring the “best” was replaced with hiring the “good enough.” Affirmative action replaced meritocracy with mediocrity.

Was affirmative action successful? Apparently not, because the radicals are demanding a new form of reparations now – cash. It seems our biggest attempt at reparations didn’t repair anything. So, why didn’t it work?

Note that many of the 21^st century’s wealthy are not living on inherited proceeds from slavery. We have a huge number of self-made millionaires and billionaires, many of whose families immigrated to America penniless, well after the Civil War. Between 1892 and 1954, more than 12 million immigrants passed through the U.S. immigration portal at Ellis Island. Did any of them have an economic head start over the descendants of slaves? How many of them became American success stories? How did they accomplish that without reparations?

Is it possible that affirmative action failed because prosperity was never as dependent on outside assistance, as it was on personal initiative – which affirmative action discouraged? Could it be an issue of accountability, that without the feedback of a meritocracy, people can’t succeed in a meritocracy? A decent ball player can never become a great ball player without heeding his coach’s feedback and accepting personal accountability for his performance.

When we take merit out of decisions to hire, fire, promote, and punish, we are denying individuals the feedback necessary to excel. Place a blindfold on a pitcher, denying him feedback as to whether his pitches are “strikes” or “balls” and see whether he can improve over time. That’s what we have done to the beneficiaries of affirmative action. We have denied them feedback and then acted surprised when excellence is not the outcome.

Given the failure of our affirmative action reparations, the radicals are now demanding cash. But will that work any better than affirmative action? Will it provide anything other than short-term rewards (i.e., stuff) to this generation? One hundred years from now, will the descendants of today’s reparation recipients be on level ground, such that we never need to address racial inequities again? Or will cash payments have enabled recipients to pass on a legacy of mediocrity rather than achievement. Will their descendants have learned to work for rewards, or lobby for rewards – as Congresswoman Bush is currently doing?

The reparations debate raises some interesting questions. Why are the radicals disturbed that the Supreme Court struck down parts of affirmative action – a program which is a demonstrable failure? Could it be that past affirmative action, and current demands for reparations, were never about leveling the playing field? Has it always been a scam to make recipients of government handouts a loyal block of Democrat voters?

According to author Rober Kessler, after signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, President Lyndon Johnson (D, TX) crudely said, “We’ll have those [expletives] voting Democrat for 200 years.” Perhaps that explains it all.

Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He has written for American Thinker, and American Free News Network. He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

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