Today, Hot Air posted an article reporting that the New York State legislature has passed to form a commission to study reparations to address the lingering, negative effects of slavery.
The article quotes an Associated Press (AP) report:
New York would create a commission to consider reparations to address the lingering, negative effects of slavery under a bill passed by the state Legislature on Thursday.
“We want to make sure we are looking at slavery and its legacies,” said state Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages before the floor debate. “This is about beginning the process of healing our communities. There still is generational trauma that people are experiencing. This is just one step forward.”
The state Assembly passed the bill about three hours after spirited debate on Thursday. The state Senate passed the measure hours later, and the bill will be sent to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for consideration.
The article concludes:
The history of slavery in New York is complicated, as are most things from that era. Slavery certainly took place in the earliest years, as it did pretty much everywhere Europeans went. (And as it did across most of the globe in various forms for nearly all of recorded history, if we’re being honest.) But nobody has legally owned a slave in New York State for almost two centuries. It was one of the earliest states to outlaw the practice. Not only are all of the slaves and the owners dead, but their great, great, great, great descendants are as well.
So if the New York legislature wants to have the same conversation that California’s lawmakers did, they will be dealing with the same reality. Any potential reparation checks that are decided on will be paid to people who have never been slaves and paid for by people who have never owned slaves in a state that was among the earliest to free slaves, even before it was mandated by the federal government. If you want to talk about the generational social and financial impacts of racism up through the early second half of the 20th century, that’s certainly a conversation we can have. But nobody today owes anyone anything based on the practices of people who lived more than two centuries ago.
So what will happen when the State of New York realizes that it is going bankrupt and cannot pay reparations? How will the people anticipating a cash windfall react when they find out that the cash windfall is not coming? Unfortunately, we may be paving the way for a ‘summer of love’ event in New York and California similar to what happened in many states during the summer of 2020.