As would inevitably be the case when New York moved to create a commission to study paying out reparations, there is already squabbling over which black people will be getting a piece of the pie.
Back in December, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill to formally study the impact of human slavery in a state that was never one of the slave states, a transparently cynical attempt to pander to black voters by the top Democrat.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) signs legislation creating a commission to study potential reparations for residents of African descent, making it the second state after California to do so. pic.twitter.com/VI6LwPzmfp
— The Recount (@therecount) December 19, 2023
“In New York, we like to think we’re on the right side of this. Slavery was a product of the South, the Confederacy,” Hochul said at the bill’s signing ceremony. “What is hard to embrace is the fact that our state also flourished from that slavery. It’s not a beautiful story, but indeed it is the truth.”
Last year, a commission in California decided that reparations were merited only by those who are actual descendants of blacks who were enslaved, with such limitations potentially cutting off most New York blacks from the wealth redistribution scheme if similar limitations are imposed by the panel, an idea that isn’t going over well with some.
“That’s a false narrative,” said Bertha Lewis who heads up the Black Institute, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit. “I don’t give a f**k what California did.”
“You can’t just say, ‘only descendants of slaves from the South.’ Black people faced the effects of slavery — discrimination — simply because they’re black,” Lewis told the New York Post.
“If you’re going to talk about reparations, you have to talk about discrimination that has gone on a long time against black people in the white American system,” she said, seeming to suggest that ALL blacks should make bank, not only those whose ancestors were impacted by slavery.
A different view is held by Mona Davids, the founder and publisher of Little Africa News, who argues that blacks who have “willingly immigrated” to New York shouldn’t be paid under Hochul’s scheme.
“It was our choice to come here,” Davids, a black South African, told the Post. “The only beneficiaries of reparations should be descendants of chattel slavery — not African immigrants or Afro-Caribbean descendants.”
“Descendants of slaves didn’t have a choice. White people benefited from slavery,” Davids added.
“In many cases it was black Africans who sold slaves. Ghana is rich. Nigeria is rich,” she pointed out, an inconvenient truth that is rarely if ever acknowledged by the reparations grifters.
New York Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages who sponsored the law to study reparations payments said that the commission will decide who is eligible and that the state shouldn’t seek to be like California.
“We have a different history than California. We’re looking at harm-based reparations. New York is not just looking at slavery but the vestiges of slavery,” Solages said.
While declining to give specifics on who would be eligible, Hochul seemed to suggest that even those who are descendants of people who immigrated after the end of slavery should be on the hook.
“I think of the immigrants and the children of immigrants who’ve come here since the end of slavery,” the governor said. “They will say, ‘We had no involvement in slavery. … None of our relatives were slave owners.’ And there’s part of me that worries about leaping into this conversation because of the racial divisions, strife it could sow.’”
“These huddles and tired masses came here to seek a better life. … Slaves, people who were enslaved, didn’t come here willingly to pursue a dream, but they came in bondage to live a nightmare. And we have to ask, do those of us whose family came here to pursue a dream not have a role to play in ending a nightmare? Yes, yes we do,” Hochul added.
“The battle for civil rights was not below the Mason–Dixon line. The largest port of slave trade was in Charleston, South Carolina and Wall Street, New York,” Rev. Al Sharpton, longtime racial grievance pimp and MSNBC host said at the reparations bill signing ceremony. “So this today starts a process of taking the veil off of northern inequality and saying we must repair the damage and it can be an example for this nation.”
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Author: Chris Donaldson
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