A new poll finds that voters in California oppose cash reparations to blacks over slavery by a two-to-one margin.
The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, seems to show that proponents of giving blacks thousands of tax dollars to make up for slavery will have a hard path to success.
The poll found that 59 percent oppose cash reparations while only 28 percent support the idea.
“The lack of support for cash reparations was resounding, with more than 4 in 10 voters ‘strongly’ opposed,” the paper reported.
The paper adds:
“It has a steep uphill climb, at least from the public’s point of view,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created California’s Reparations Task Force in 2020 with the goal of establishing a path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation. After two years of deliberations, the task force sent a final report and recommendations this summer to the state Capitol, where Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature will ultimately decide how the state should atone for slavery.
The group suggested providing cash payments to all descendants based on health disparities, mass incarceration and over-policing and housing discrimination that have adversely affected Black residents compared with white Californians.
The remedies recommended in the report also go far beyond cash payments and include policies to end the death penalty, pay fair market value for jail and prison labor, restore voting rights to all formerly and currently incarcerated people and apply rent caps to historically redlined ZIP Codes that disadvantaged Black residents, among dozens of other suggestions.The conclusion of the task force’s work places political pressure on Democrats to deliver on a process they started, but the unpopularity of cash payments suggests they’ll face strong political head winds.
Of course, it is a stupid idea. The idea of slave reparations is a imbecilic idea. The idea that people today who never owned a slave are responsible to pay cash to people who never were a slave — indeed whose father and father’s father was never a slave — is laughable nonsense.
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