Conyers Still Pushing Reparations

The man who would be the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee under a Dem-controlled House is still pushing for slavery reparations:

The left wing Democrat who will become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins back Congress in November wants to hold full blown congressional hearings on whether the government should pay African Americans reparations for slavery.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers has attracted attention in recent months for his House resolution calling for an impeachment investigation against President Bush.

But another Conyers cause-celeb is reparations, which he's been advocating since 1989, when he first introduced legislation to establish what he calls, "The Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African American Act." ( H.R. 40)

In a press release posted to his official congressional web site, Conyers explains how he intends to handle the hot-button issue.

"My bill does four things:

• It acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery.

• It establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves.

• It studies the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans.

• The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans."

No sane person thinks slavery was a good thing, but likewise no sane person can claim that any black person alive today was directly financially harmed by slavery. People today are at least two generations removed from anyone who would have been directly affected by slavery, and reparations talk is silly.

You know that any commission established under this bill would be heavily biased toward reparations, and their work product would be highly suspect. And how would any individual demonstrate that their direct financial harm from slavery? My guess is they wouldn't have too - they'd just be granted funds from the U.S. taxpayers based on their skin color alone. So much for being judged "by the content of their character", to quote a famous civil rights leader.

If there was an actual unbiased study of the impact of slavery, AND the impact of massive government poverty, welfare and civil rights programs, the result might not turn out as Conyers expects. He and is followers might actually find themselves getting a bill instead of a check.