No to reparations in California, a free state since 1850

Another local government in California is considering the absurd idea of reparations.Alameda County struggles to balance its budget, but is considering cash payments to black residents. Not one of the five supervisors dissented. They may think they showed how progressive they are.They should hang their heads in shame, instead.Talk of reparations is an insult to the intelligence of all Californians.California entered the Union as a “free” state in 1850.

There is no reason to pay reparations, to anyone, for anything.History matters.And the decision to enter the Union as a free state was a difficult moral choice, in a fraught time.Those who founded the Golden State knew what the price might be: The division of the entire country.At the time, the North and the South were locked in a bitter political battle.

Each new state triggered another round of fighting over whether it would be a free state, or a slave state. Sometimes, there was even bloodshed — a foretaste of things to come.California was admitted as a free state under the Compromise of 1850.A group of senators from the South protested, and warned that admitting California could lead, eventually, to the dissolution of the United States.That was the risk California took to resist slavery.Later, hundreds of thousands of Americans would die on the battlefield, in a struggle to save the Union — and, ultimately, to deliver millions of Americans from slavery to freedom.It was a price paid in blood.It has been 161 years since the end of the Civil War.

And there are good arguments to be made that America could have done more to help the freed slaves and their descendants. But it is too difficult to determine who should pay reparations, and who should receive them.California’s Kamala Harris, the first black female presidential nominee, also reportedly has a slave owner among her ancestors.Is she supposed to pay reparations to herself?Left-wing governments have led the push for reparations.They do it as a ...