Mr. M and I have just returned from the public library, where we viewed the documentary film
"Reckonings":
They met in secret to negotiate the unthinkable — compensation for the survivors of the largest mass genocide in history. Survivors were in urgent need of help, but how could reparations be determined for the unprecedented destruction and suffering of a people? Reckonings explores this untold true story set in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Early in the film, someone notes that reparations are something paid by the government that perpetrated bad acts to the people they wronged - the victims who experienced damage and loss. In this case, it was post-war West Germany negotiating with Israel and a Jewish claims organization over payments to actual Holocaust survivors. The very term "reparations" means compensation or making amends. For there to be compensation, one must establish responsibility and an actual a loss. Further, throughout history, reparations have been demanded of the losing side, post-war.
I immediately thought of this idiotic California plan and all the other "blacks demand reparations" schemes. They have it upside down. They're not seeking reparations. First of all, they're not victims. Not a single black person living in America today was victimized by slavery perpetrated through official policy. They've suffered no damage nor loss, personally. You can't be "made whole" when you never suffered any loss in the first place.
They're not seeking reparations but extortion money.
Those of whom they demand money did them no harm - not the California taxpayer, not the American taxpayer. There was no war against black people, thus no winners or losers.
The harmful acts committed by Germany against Jews were official governmental policy of the Third Reich. Where is the evidence of such official governmental policy in San Francisco? These people allege "public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery," but what are those policies, exactly? Where's the documentation that the SF government ever embarked on such a program of subjugation? What's the ordinance number, the statute citation? Where are the concentration camps, the plantations? And who among SF's current residents ever was confined or enslaved?
This is utter bullcrap which diminishes and discounts the actual suffering of persecuted groups throughout history.
If you get a chance to watch the film, I recommend it.
