At Liberty Unyielding, Hans Bader writes about an astoundingly bad proposal for “reparations” payments to blacks in the state — over $223,000 per person.
The purported justification for this handout is housing discrimination between 1933 and 1977. That creates legal problems, as Bader notes: “But that period ended over 40 years ago. It is unconstitutional to give people money based on their race for what happened a long time ago. Giving people money based on their race generally violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, even when the recipients are a minority group. Courts have struck down affirmative action programs that were designed to remedy discrimination that occurred over 20 years before the affirmative-action plan, because that’s too long ago. ”
Moreover, the state can’t afford it.
Bader also points out that past housing discrimination has very little to do with current conditions, writing, “Past housing discrimination does not explain present-day racial disparities in wealth or income. Asians once experienced far worse housing discrimination than blacks in California, yet they have much higher incomes and more assets.”
This is a terrible idea, but just the sort of thing that the thoroughly woke zealots who run the Democratic Party in California simply cannot resist. Will any remaining adults in the party have the nerve to say “No” to reparations?