Recently, Fox News reported the following:

The California Reparations Task Force's five-member economic consultant team reported that under the initiative, qualifying Black residents in the state could qualify for $223,200 per person.

The Reparations Task Force was formed by legislation signed by California governor Gavin Newsom in 2020.

The panel, comprising primarily African-American members, voted 5-4 to limit reparations to descendants of enslaved African Americans or of a "free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century."

It would be up to the California Legislature to act upon the recommendations.

California was a state that fought with the Union during the Civil War and never engaged in widespread slavery, but that's irrelevant to Newsom.  It also isn't the only state attempting the exercise.

Back in 2021, officials in Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb, approved $10 million in reparations in the form of housing grants.

Also in 2021, officials in Asheville, N.C. committed $2.1 million to reparations.

So let's dig deeper.

The panel says that only Black residents will qualify to receive reparations.

Since slavery ended around 157 years ago, these Black residents are likely to have a percentage of slave heritage.

The first question is who decides the cutoff percentage of qualification.

What about those who are Caucasian or Latino or other races who also have a percentage of slave ancestry?  Why should they be discriminated against?

Let's say a Caucasian and an African-American have the same percentage of slave ancestry.  Why does the Caucasian not deserve reparations, as his ancestors were also subjected to unspeakable crimes and hardships?

The only way to deduce slave ancestry is for all California residents to submit to a DNA test. 

This will be a massive undertaking and will probably cost the state millions of dollars, but that is the only accurate way to do it.

Those whose DNA reveals slave ancestry, if they can confirm that their black ancestors were actually slaves, will qualify; the race of the person should not matter.

Here, too, the question of the cutoff percentage matters.  Let's say the cutoff percentage is 30%.  Would it not be unfair to the person who has 29% slave ancestry?

There are other open questions.

The NYT reported that the groups spent months traveling across California to learn about "the generational effects of racist policies and actions."

The task force identified five criteria to decide compensation: housing discrimination, mass incarceration, unjust property seizures, devaluation of Black businesses, and health care.

But this makes no sense.

Reparations are handed out owing to the fact that the ancestors of the qualifying individuals were slaves. 

Reparations should have nothing to do with the current situation.

If other factors such as current situations are being considered, the funds cannot be called reparations.  It is instead welfare money — i.e., the state redistributing wealth.

The other question is, how long do payments continue?

Should it continue across generations forever?

If the recipients of reparations qualify because their ancestors from several generations ago were slaves, it should apply to subsequent generations as well and forever. 

What happens if an individual of slave ancestry has a child with an individual who has no slave ancestry?

Does the offspring from this union still qualify for reparations?

What happens if an individual of slave ancestry has a child with an individual who has no slave owner ancestry?

Does the offspring from this union still qualify for reparations?

What of the descendants of black slave owners, and black slave-traffickers, of whom there were a few?  Kamala Harris's Jamaican ancestors were in this category.  Do they qualify for reparations, too?

Now about the question of the amount.

The task force decided $223,200 by examining gaps in housing and speculating the approximate amount of wealth lost between 1933 and 1977.

But can the amount compensate for the unspeakable crimes of slavery committed against ancestors?

Perhaps the descendants deserve monthly reparations, such that they do not have to work again in their lives, because their ancestors didn't have the choice.

Perhaps they all deserve to be given mansions in the plushest localities in the U.S.  Perhaps Beverly Hills and Martha's Vineyard will have to be redistributed?

What about those with slave ancestry who are wealthy?  It seems the board is claiming that they will not qualify, but that is unknown.

If the point of reparations is to compensate for the sins of the past, the current financial status should not matter.  Every individual deserves to be paid.

Since it has been established that Oprah has slave ancestry, she should receive payments.  Her wealth, power, and success should not matter.

If the panel is claiming that Oprah doesn't qualify because she rose to the top despite her slave ancestry, it could be accused of punishing success and rewarding failure.

What about those such as Michelle Obama, who has the ancestry of both slaves and slave owners?  Does she qualify or does she not?  Does the fact that she has the ancestry of slave owners disqualify her?

Since the concept here is making payments to individuals for the sufferings of their ancestors many generations ago, should the same logic apply to slave owners?

Should an additional tax be imposed on the descendants of slave owners?  If slave descendants are being paid, it makes sense that slave owner descendants must be the ones paying.

If so, will Michelle Obama have to pay this tax because of her slave owner ancestry, or will the fact that she has slave ancestry cancel the tax?

Why just restrict reparations to those whose forefathers were slaves?

Why not offer reparations to the descendants of Native Americans?  Some Native Americans did receive reparations.  Perhaps they deserve more and continuous payments.

California itself had virtually nothing to do with the institution of slavery in the South, but it did have the Indian missions, which the left insists were terrible places for Native Americans, despite historic records showing an uneven record. 

Should California pay reparations to them, and those Native Americans whose ancestors were residents of the missions despite the activity being under the sponsorship of two foreign governments: those of Spain and Mexico?

What about the state's Californios, the original Californians of Spanish descent, whose land holdings were expropriated by the state after the state was annexed to the Union in 1850?  Should the state pay reparations to their descendants despite some of them holding Native Americans in a state of near-slavery?

How about the descendants of Holocaust victims?

A case can be made that if the U.S. had intervened sooner in World War II and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration had not turned away boats full of Jewish refugees, the Holocaust would never have happened.  Hence, the offspring of Holocaust victims in the U.S. deserve reparations.

What about the victims of the recent Iraq war, the Afghan war, and various other wars where the U.S. led the intervention, resulting in many civilian deaths?

These individuals suffered directly, not by ancestry, due to the U.S. actions, and hence deserve reparations.

What about the victims of crimes in the U.S.?

A case can be made that the state failed to protect its citizens, hence the victim and their relatives deserve reparations, too.

What about victims of human-trafficking, who have been smuggled across the border because of Joe Biden's unwillingness to enforce border security?  Some of them may be subjected to sexual slavery.  Surely these people deserve reparations because they are direct victims.

Soon every citizen in the country will qualify for reparations, because either the individual or his ancestor has been discriminated against at some point.

This will result in the emptying of the exchequer.

In fact, the proposed reparations in California is an act of discrimination since race is the criteria.

In the end, ancestry is a matter of chance.  It makes no sense to compensate people just because they happen to have the DNA by some stroke of luck.  It certainly makes no sense to narrow down the compensation based on race because the criteria are ancestry.

History is replete with dark chapters.  The horrors of the past cannot be undone by paying the descendants of the victims.  The only way to right the wrongs of the past is to improve the future.  In this case, it's by achieving Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream, where people are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Image: Benjamin Morawek via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.