Candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary election appeared at the National Action Network (NAN) annual conference. There they all bowed down at the altar of white guilt. One after another the mostly white candidates kissed the ring of the founder and leader of NAN, and the new pope of the Democratic Party primaries, the Reverend Al Sharpton. As Sharpton watched over his flock, each presidential aspirant professed support for a policy that fits squarely within Sharpton’s lifelong modus operandi -- using America’s original sin of slavery to shake dollars out of Americans suffering from white guilt.

Many know the reverend as the well-coiffed and bespoke talking head on the liberal MSNBC news talk show, "Politics Nation." However, before his made-for-TV makeover, Sharpton was a notorious race hustler and anti-Semite who played a central role in one of the biggest race hoaxes in modern times. He championed the 15-year-old black girl Tawana Brawley, who falsely accused six white men of rape, and actually got a judgment for defamation entered against him. He stoked anti-Semitic riots in Crown Heights, which led to the killing of a Jewish scholar, and in Harlem, which led to the shooting of four employees of the Jewish-owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart before it was set on fire, burning to death seven more.

Moving from the streets to the boardroom, Sharpton formed NAN with its motto of “No Justice. No Peace.” Through NAN, he perfected the art of the shakedown -- no peace unless NAN received “just” compensation. Sharpton would accuse major American corporations of racism and use the threat of boycotts to coerce companies into making financial contributions to NAN or to himself personally. Sharpton is using similar tactics in the world of politics. He supports a bill sponsored by Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), titled the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act.” The bill calls for “apology and compensation to begin the long-delayed process of atonement for slavery.”

Sharpton, who has become wealthy through his shakedown of corporate America, will now attempt to scam the ultimate mark -- the taxpayers of the United States of America. And Democratic presidential candidates are all in. At his conference, Sharpton asked the candidates if they supported the reparations bill. They all said yes, including the very white, Robert Francis O’Rourke, who goes by “Beto”, the Mexican nickname for Robert, the very white U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.,) who self-identifies as a Cherokee Indian, and the very white Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) who, after doing so poorly with black voters in 2016, has now flipped and favors reparations.

By “compensation,” the bill’s supporters mean “cash.” In short, this means U.S. taxpayers will be forced to pay a “reparations tax” to the descendants of black slaves. But will black Americans be exempt from having to pay the “reparations tax”? What about recent immigrants? We know that white Americans will be forced to pay it because, according to its sponsors, we’re to blame. But is that fair? No living white American had anything to do with slavery and only a few remain who were involved in segregation -- and they’re Democrats. And what about the great efforts made by so many whites to end slavery, desegregation, and combat racism?

Hundreds of thousands of whites from northern states died fighting in the Civil War to end slavery. In the 1950s, a white president sent the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, Arkansas to ensure blacks could enroll in a white high school. In the early 1960s, white college students joined with blacks on the Freedom Rides to desegregate busing in the south. An overwhelmingly white U.S. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to outlaw racial discrimination, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to guarantee the vote to blacks; both bills were signed into law by a white president. An all-white United States Supreme Court desegregated schools in Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.

Haven’t white Americans atoned enough?  

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Julian Castro, said the U.S., “will never truly heal until we address the original sin of slavery.” The truth is America has done that many times over. It’s long since time to move on. As President Donald Trump said at his inaugural, “It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.” And, so it’s time for white Americans to close the bank of white guilt. For the sake of racial healing and unity, this bill – the greatest of race hoaxes and shakedowns -- deserves a quick death in the U.S. Congress. And, the bill’s supporters should be ashamed of themselves for their obvious effort to advance themselves at the cost of further dividing America.