In Favor of Reparations for Poor Blacks

W.E.B. DuBois noted that marriage rates among blacks and whites in Philadelphia in the 1890s were almost identical.
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It takes a strong person to admit they have been wrong. I was once against the idea of reparations for Americans of African Ancestry. Now I realize that the injustices they have suffered can only be made right by a massive transfer of wealth.

I am not, of course, speaking of reparations for slavery. Anyone who suffered wrong or benefited illicitly for that shameful institution has long since passed on to their eternal reward. I instead call for reparations for the insidious destruction of the black family brought about by the welfare state of the last five decades.

Over 70% of black children are born illegitimately today. As you can see by the chart below, single parent families cluster in the poorest 20% of households.



The state of the black family went from close to the same as whites a century ago to a shattered wreck today. What changed in those 100 years? The welfare state intervened to destroy the black family. While a government check and health care might not be an attractive alternative to a female who had a husband with a middle class income and owned property, it proved to be a destructive enticement for black females. Compared to the wages and opportunities a common laborer could bring in, the welfare check seemed a viable option. Thus, black men were competing for wives with the government, and many black women chose to be married to the government rather than married to a common laborer.

We have since discovered that a mother and a welfare check are no substitute for a mother and a father. Whatever you subsidize, you get more of. The government subsidized out-of-wedlock births and the nation got more of it. It was largely restricted to the lower classes and those with less family resources to fall back on- black America. Once the welfare mentality became more accepted in the black subculture, it exploded and overwhelmed it. White Americans are not immune to the lure, our relative prosperity just meant that it took longer for a critical mass of acceptance to accumulate.

While the black family in this country was destroyed by the welfare state and the black population kept at subsistence levels, one group prospered. That would be the bureaucrats who administered the welfare state. They collected handsome salaries with excellent benefits. The acquired property. Competent or incompetent they were promoted quickly because they were in a high growth industry that was not held accountable for results. Today the largest employer in this state is the state, and many of those workers service one form of welfare program or another.

My modest proposal is that reparations be made for the horrid injury done to our fellow citizens. Specifically, all government welfare workers should be made into slaves to serve the people of color whom they have subjected to such deprivations. Likewise their possessions, gathered up on the misery of others, should be sold off and the proceeds given to the injured parties. Our government was not innocent in this matter, and so it is only fair that an amount equal to one half of the salaries of the former welfare state bureaucrats should be paid by the government into a pool that will be split up among the victims for a period of 40 years. If that seems too much, remember we are already spending twice that amount, and if we keep things as the are the salaries are likely to grow. In addition, we would not need the welfare programs anymore, saving the innocent taxpayers untold billions.

Now I realize that some welfare bureaucrats are people of color, but just as some blacks owned slaves and so should have had to share in reparations for slavery, those who profited from the destruction of the black family should pay for its restoration. Such people should be judged by their deeds, not their pigmentation.

That is my modest proposal for reparations.