Opinion

BISHOP AUBREY SHINES: Democrats Demand Reparations For Slavery. Fine Then, Let Them Be The Ones To Pay

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One of the words Democrats and leftists are fond of throwing around these days is “reparations,” specifically the idea of compensation and damages paid by the U.S. government to the descendants of slaves (by way of higher taxes, of course). It’s an idea that has gained more popularity in the last few years, and in the wake of George Floyd’s tragic death Americans have been hearing renewed calls for the idea.

Now, setting aside the impractical logistics of how you would pay reparations and how it would needlessly reopen ancient wounds, I believe our Democratic friends may actually be onto something here. If they continue gnashing their teeth and insist that reparations must be divvied out, I say let them go for it. If Democrats really, really want to compensate the descendants of slaves, why don’t they cut out the middleman and do it themselves?

It would be appropriate given the long, nasty history of systemic racism that’s woven into the Democratic Party’s story like a weed. I wrote another piece about this earlier this month, but in case you missed it, systemic racism is rampant in the Democratic Party and has been since the days before the Civil War.

It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to shut her mouth and open her wallet. She has millions, ill gotten, and she owes African Americans back pay. Same with Chuck Schumer. Pay up, Chuck! And let’s not forget Joe Biden, the master of race baiting. Joe, time to put your money where your silly mouth is.

It was the Democrats who thought the South should secede in 1860. Democrats used the Ku Klux Klan as enforcers keep the yoke of oppression on blacks even after slavery had been abolished. Democratic politicians passed law after law in the South to keep blacks from exercising their right to vote. Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic president, gave the racist film Birth of a Nation a platform in the White House. Democratic mayors and city officials have done nothing to lift inner city blacks out of poverty for decades, instead keeping themselves and their corrupt city governments in power.

Democrats hate school choice and have forced poor blacks to remain locked in the failing public school system for generations. Young blacks are stuck in schools where the only solutions are suspensions that put a temporary Band-Aid on the struggles black children face and don’t actually address their underlying issues. If things were different, we might see more black children grow into capable adults who have faced their demons instead of succumbing to them. But who cares as long as it keeps corrupt teachers unions fat and happy?

Democrats hate individualism and entrepreneurship, and so they have propped up a failing welfare system that removes any incentive for poor black families to find meaningful work or keep their children in school. Why get a job or be financially responsible when every month there’s a check in the mail from the bloated government? Never mind that it only feeds this vicious cycle, keeps black children from getting real jobs and disrupts the already fragile family units in black communities. Never mind that it only feeds the school to prison pipelines many young blacks face. Speaking of prison, Democrats had eight years under Barack Obama to reform the prison system that incarcerates hundreds of thousands of blacks for nonviolent offenses, but they never bothered to address the issue.

Every election year, Democrats expect blacks to line up like cattle and vote to keep them in office. They take us for granted, they expect us to obey them without question like sheep. Because, like their slave owning forebears, the Democrats only care about blacks so long as blacks are useful to them! They take so much for granted that they believe we’ll just forget that the current Democrat governor of Virginia wore blackface in graduate school (or a Klansman hood, it’s really hard to tell). So, it seems only fair to me as an African American that Democrats start paying out the reparations they love to talk about so much.

And while we’re on the subject, I also think it’s fair and reasonable that Democrats pay reparations to the descendants of Union soldiers. We love to talk about ending slavery, but we always leave out the men who did most of the leg work.

After all it was the soldiers who in many cases actually freed slaves as they marched across the territories of the Confederacy. It was these brave men who fought, bled and died to uphold and preserve our Union. Without them, our country might not even be a country, and it certainly wouldn’t be a country where blacks can eat out, go to school, vote and live freely.

It doesn’t seem like a big ask for a national party with a fundraising war machine that routinely spends millions each election cycle.

I would hope the party of America’s first black president would be honored to send some checks to these folks I’ve mentioned. Surely the rich, white liberals who live on the coasts and love posturing to make themselves feel less guilty would be privileged to pitch in to a reparations fund organized by the Democratic Party.

As they so often do, liberals speak before they think. If they thought a little more, they’d remember the old maxim, “If you want something done, do it yourself.” But then, stopping and thinking would probably be too big of an ask for them.

Bishop Aubrey Shines is the founder of Glory to Glory Ministries and chairman of Conservative Clergy of Color.