California is debating whether to pay all black residents who descend from slaves as much as $1.2 million each—to atone for the horrific injustices that their ancestors suffered. San Francisco has proposed a $5 million payment to each black resident.
The numbers are staggering, and the politics of racial grievance are toxic and out of control. In a Fox News column today, American Ideals PAC president Ying Ma argues that instead of obsessing over the past, Americans should strive to treat each other equally, regardless of race, color, or ethnicity.
California was never a slave state, nor was San Francisco ever a slave city.
BUT, the state does have a sordid history of mistreating its large Chinese population, Ms. Ma’s great-grandfather included. Arson, forcible expulsion from neighborhoods, prohibition of land ownership, slave-like working conditions, the first federal immigration ban based on ethnicity, and other racist policies and practices befell the early Chinese residents of California.
Ms. Ma writes in her column, “Under the logic of the current reparations proposals, descendants of early Chinese immigrants to the Golden State, like myself, should be eligible for reparations as well. That we are not even included in the discussion demonstrates the absurdity of the reparations movement. That reparations are discussed seriously at all further shows the perils of policymaking based on racial grievance and virtue signaling.”
Photo: California State Capitol
Ms. Ma states that the answer to whether she should receive reparations as a resident of California and a descendant of a victim of rampant racism is an emphatic NO.
She concludes, “Advocacy for reparations are in vogue today – but as Americans and as Californians, let us never force one group of people to pay off another group of people to atone for the sins of others. Let us not obsess over grievances of the past but strive, today, to treat each other equally, regardless of race, ethnicity, color or country of origin.
To read the entire column on the Fox News website, please click HERE.