LTP News Sharing:
If you’ve ever wondered what Project 21 Chairman Horace Cooper thinks of California’s reparations proposal, wonder no more. And he certainly doesn’t disappoint in his assessment:
This high-stakes con game will prove no more beneficial to Blacks in California than the typical recipients of the Nigerian Prince email scam.
Horace Cooper
In a FoxNews.com commentary, Horace notes that the very goal of California’s Reparations Task Force is both illegal and fraught with danger:
First, the math simply doesn’t work….
Second, who should receive payments? Per the decision of the task force, only Blacks who are descendants of slavery are eligible. Persons born outside of the U.S. aren’t eligible.
But should all others be eligible? What about Michael Jackson’s kids? Should his oldest son Michael “Prince” Joseph Jackson, Jr. receive a payment? Using the online calculator set up by the reparations task force he’d be eligible for a half a million payout. This despite there being no evidence that he has ever faced discrimination because he is the son of a black man…..
Merely being black is a sufficient basis for getting a payment per the task force. But who is Black? Do recipients self-select and declare themselves black? Will California restore the odious “one drop rule” and decide that any black descendant is sufficient to make someone black? Alternatively, will the state of California use visual inspectors a la Plessy v Ferguson to sort out who is who? Or must recipients submit DNA samples to show their heritage?…
Finally, the task forces objectives are illegal. Courts are highly skeptical of any public policy effort that relies primarily on race to provide a benefit or detriment. There was a time when “separate but equal” was the law of the land. But that ruling was overturned and today after a long line of rulings starting with Brown v. Board of Education, even modest raced-based policies are highly scrutinized.
Read Horace’s scathing commentary in full here.
Author: The National Center
