In a spasm of moral exhibitionism designed to please and placate ignorance-based idiocy, racial grievance mongers, and historical illiterates (there is much overlap) Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., signed a proclamation apologizing for California’s non-existent "role in slavery and legacy racism against Black people as part of a legislative package." Thank you KTLA.com.
Newsom (or Newsome, if you prefer) pontificated, "The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and permitting the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of persistent racial disparities.
"Building on decades of work, California is now taking another important step forward in recognizing the grave injustices of the past — and making amends for the harms caused."
Now it’s up to your humble authors to unpack the lies and distortions holding that paragraph together.
When The Golden State began toying with the idea of reparations for non-existent slavery, we wrote in a column why the effort was nonsense. Details are here.
First California was admitted to the Union as a Free State.
When the Civil War broke out, California sent 17,000 volunteers to the Union, while only about 200 men went south to fight with the Confederacy.
California gold also played a crucial role in the war to end slavery.
The gold reserves and the prospect of finding more gold buoyed confidence in the financial system; that allowed the United States to borrow money to finance the war at a favorable rate.
That’s why we remain unconvinced there were any "lasting effects of slavery" in a state which never legalized slavery in the first place.
Secondly, California was not one of the Jim Crow states where discrimination against Blacks was baked into the legal code.
The Jim Crow states were all former Confederate states, the same states California sent 17,000 men to fight.
That’s why the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was marching in Birmingham, Alabama — and not Sacramento, California.
The person, ignorant of history, who wrote the story for KTLA sniffs that, "California banned slavery in 1850 but the state had no laws that made it a crime to keep someone enslaved or require that they be freed, thus allowing slavery to continue."
California didn’t "allow" anything. It was illegal to own a slave in California.
But as even the reporter — who evidently can’t put two and two together — writes, "For example, the federal Fugitive Slave Act required government officials and ordinary white citizens in all states and territories to actively assist slaveholders in recapturing enslaved people who escaped from slave-holding jurisdictions."
This combined with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), meant that any laws California had regarding slavery were null and void as far as the federal government was concerned.
Blaming California for this state of affairs requires a soft brain, one lacking cognitive abilities. And as for Newsom’s "persistent racial disparities," Blacks have not been damaged by the legacy of slaveholders long dead.
They’ve been damaged by the good intentions and bad ideas of white left-adherents.
If anyone owes reparations, it should be the Ivy League schools that produced both those on the left, and their bad ideas.
This apology for imaginary wrongs is nothing but throwing another cord of wood on the fires of racial division. It’s power politics at its ugliest.
Democrats throw Blacks a short-term appealing, yet deceptive, divisive trick in the hopes of keeping them voting for Democrats en masse.
While the racial-grievance-mongers hope this is another step down the road to reparations, where Democrats in power take money from people who have committed no wrong and gives the money to other people who have suffered no wrong.
No politician with a shred of moral fiber, thought for the future, or love of country would do such a thing. Unfortunately for California they don’t have that politician.
They have Gavin Newsom.
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Mr. Reagan is an in-demand speaker with Premiere Speaker's Bureau. Read Michael Reagan's Reports — More Here.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now With Added Humor!)" Read Michael Shannon's Reports — More Here.