In a blatant move to buy the black vote, Vice President Kamala Harris told a podcaster that “reparations” to blacks for slavery must be studied and is part of her agenda.
The Democratic presidential candidate unveiled something of her plan for reparations to Charlamagne tha God on his program The Breakfast Club.
Former slaves never received the 40 acres and mule they were promised after the Civil War, she said. But Harris, apparently, plans to remedy that injustice.
The promise comports not only with her previous support for reparations, but also her lengthy campaign website appeal to black men. That, too, is an obvious attempt to buy their vote given their apparent support of former President Donald Trump.
Just a Study?
Curiously, Harris didn’t discuss a dollar figure with Mr. God, previously famous for getting President Joe Biden to say, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
When the podcaster asked about reparations, Harris was ready with the usual word salad.
“First of all, on the point of reparations, it has to be studied,” she said:
There’s no question about that. And I’ve been very clear about that position. In terms of my immediate plan, I will tell you a few of the following. One, as it relates to the economy, which is a lot of what you have addressed. Look, I grew up in the middle class. My mother, you know, worked hard, raised me and my sister, and, by the time I was in high school, she was able to afford our first home. I know what it means for an individual and a family to have home ownership. I also know in the context of history, nobody got 40 acres and a mule.
While brief, Harris’ commitment to “studying” reparations is nothing new.
In February 2019, in an interview with the far-left, black supremacist website The Root, Harris spoke at length about what reparations advocates call the “legacy of slavery,” which seems to worsen the further slavery recedes into the nation’s past.
“There has to be some form of reparations and we can discuss what that is,” she said:
But look, we’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery. We’re looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow. We’re looking at legalized segregation, and, in fact, segregation on so many levels that exist today, based on race.
Ignoring the trillions of tax dollars poured into inner cities largely for the benefit of poverty-stricken blacks, Harris falsely claimed “there has not been any kind of intervention done, understanding the harm and damage that occurred, to correct course. And so we are seeing the effects of all of those years play out still today.”
As president, Harris said, she would “lead a conversation” about reparations, particularly to discuss “untreated trauma” among blacks.
A month later, she elaborated in an interview with the far-left National Public Radio.
“You can look at the issue of untreated and undiagnosed trauma,” she said about the form reparations would take. She blamed the “rates of heart disease and high blood pressure” among blacks on “centuries of slavery.”
Continued Harris:
There was never any real intervention to break up what had been generations of people experiencing the highest forms of trauma. And trauma, undiagnosed and untreated, leads to physiological outcomes.
Harris said reparations means “different things to different people. But what I mean by it is that we need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course.”
Reparations Commission
Harris cosponsored legislation to establish a reparations commission, which is always in the hopper on both sides of Capitol Hill.
The commission would “study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans.”
And the panel would be stacked with “persons who are especially qualified to serve on the Commission by virtue of their education, training, activism, or experience, particularly such education, training, activism, or experience in the field of African-American studies and reparatory justice.”
Congress doesn’t establish commissions for nothing. “Studying” the matter almost certainly means a commission would recommend a payout, possibly for as much as that suggested by black billionaire Robert Johnson. The founder of Black Entertainment Television, Johnson wants taxpayers to fork over $350,000 to every black American. Price tag: $14.73 trillion.
“Opportunity Agenda” for Black Men
Reparations aside, Harris frets that black men will support Trump in record numbers. Solution: an “Opportunity Agenda” for black men.
Harris “will deliver for black men,” her campaign website claims. And, it warns, “Trump is a serious threat to the lives of black men.”
The first plank of her “opportunity agenda” is flat-out payola: $20 billion — 1 million forgivable $20,000 loans — “to Black entrepreneurs and others who have a good idea but don’t have the resources, connections, or access to capital to get their business off the ground.”
Harris will also “launch a National Health Equity Initiative focused on Black men” and “legalize marijuana at the federal level to break down unjust legal barriers that hold Black men and other Americans back.”
During her ill-fated run for the White House in 2019, Harris confessed that she’s intimately familiar with the Giggle Weed.
“Half my family’s from Jamaica,” she laughed when the host asked about it. “Are you kidding me?”
And unlike former President Bill Clinton, “I did inhale.”
