Imagine if Adolf Hitler had formed a commission, say around 1938, to study solutions to “the Jewish problem.” Imagine if he had begun his announcement by saying, “Our commission is not here to debate whether or not Jews have caused harm to the Fatherland. It is to decide what to do about it.”
Well, switch “the Jewish problem” to “the racism problem” and make the speaker, not Hitler, but the Alameda Country Reparations Commission, which announced last week that it will deliver its final report at the end of June.
Let’s understand one thing clearly: this “report” is going to be a joke, because the Alameda County Reparations Commission is a joke. No intelligent person will take it seriously, but it might succeed anyway because of White complaisance. The public is so sick and tired of being falsely accused of being White supremacists that they may be willing to throw hundreds of millions more at a made-up problem in order to make its adherents finally shut up and go away.
The problems with the Commission are vast and shocking. For starters, the Commission told the Board of Supervisors that a survey they commissioned showed “show strong support for a range of reparations proposals.” They never bothered to release details of the “survey.” I have looked high and low for it and found nothing. So when they say “96%” of the public favors “direct compensation,” I cry bullshit. I know that’s a lie. You know it’s a lie. Let’s see proof of this “survey,” including—especially—who responded to it. Because we know that the public does not want money handed over willy-nilly to the Black population at large.
And, just for a touch of comedy, the Commission adds that “Respondents also suggested tax breaks or tax holidays, access to single-family homeownership, and free education.”
Attention shoppers: the line for free stuff forms on the left!
But then, that’s what these reparations freaks always do: they lie, and they form “commissions” that they stack with sympathizers to make the scam appear to be small-“d” democratic. They cherry-pick incidents that may or may not ever have happened and use them as justifications to ram through “solutions” that support their conclusions.
The Commission doesn’t even try to hide the fact that its agenda is overtly racist. Their website features illustrations of the “listening sessions” they claim to have conducted in order to “elevate community voices.” These cartoons--for that is what they are--depict only Black people, garbed in superhero warrior costumes, looking very menacing indeed. I don’t know about you, but none of these “listeners” ever asked me or anyone I know what we think.
In Spring of this year, the Commission published their official “Guidelines” for their work, 64 pages of bureaucratese designed to give academic credibility to it. (The cover image is of a Black woman who looks remarkably like Angela Davis, her right fist raised defiantly in the air.) Their conclusions were based on interviews with hand-picked participants. These include (I’m not naming names, just the official identifications provided by the Commission itself)
- A racial justice and reparative justice expert
- A policy consultant and humanities researcher
- A civil rights attorney
- A director of grantmaking strategy
- The director of a national reparations company seeking “the liberation of Black people”
- The founder of an organization—coincidentally [?] located in the same town as the previous company—that “shares the stories of Black individuals”
- The chair of “the African American Reparations Advisory Committee”
- A Ph.D from the “African American Redress Network”
You don’t need a weathervane to know that this is a biased group of extremists who make their living pushing reparations schemes. It’s like asking welfare recipients if they think benefits should be increased, or MAGA billionaires if their taxes should be lowered.
In short, the Alameda Country Reparations Commission is a kangaroo court of self-appointed vigilantes who are determined to wring as much money out of Alameda County taxpayers as they can. They will depend on the cooperation of progressive connivers, such as the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, and also of local City Councils, including Oakland’s, who will assist them in this extortion scheme. They also will count on the apathy of the county’s taxpayers, who either won’t even be aware that they’re getting pockets picked—again—or who stand to benefit in some financial way.
There’s not much you or I as individuals can to do stop this scam. Trust me, the fix is in. The professional race mongers have already decided how this is going to end: with further robbery of taxpayer money. There’s no shame left to appeal to in our electeds. If they possessed the capacity for moral shame, they wouldn’t hold their current positions. But just in case I’m wrong, try contacting your Supervisor, if you know who it is, and let them know you think that the Reparations Committee is a fraud and you oppose it.
Steve Heimoff