Following the death of George Floyd and in the context of mass rioting, on Monday, BET co-founder Robert L. Johnson, the first black American billionaire, made the media rounds, calling for $14 trillion in reparations for the descendants of African-American slaves, or nearly $358,000 for every black American, as "atonement" for slavery.
"Now is the time to go big," he says, explaining the mind-boggling sum. "We need to focus on wealth creation... and to do that we must bring the descendants of slaves into equality with this nation."
Johnson's call for reparations is irresponsible and provocative during a time of widespread riots, muggings, shootings, and property destruction, the likes of which hasn't been seen in the US since 1968. He has been advocating for reparations since before George Floyd's death, but now, his call comes across as "either pay up or expect more rioting."
Johnson's demand not only represents a morally bankrupt extortion attempt, it is a fiscal impossibility. It would amount to the largest wealth transfer in American history. The demand is dead on arrival. It would tax every living American taxpayer, not only white Anglo-Saxons, but also Hispanics, Palestinians, Arabs, Asians, Jews, Italians, Germans, Russians, Poles, and every other American ethnic group, for crimes from which few living Americans have benefited, least especially non-whites. The ancestors of these groups, and most white Americans for that matter, had no part in slavery, and their descendants received no benefit from historical slavery either.
Further, locating the descendants of American slavery and separating them from black Africans, as well as other blacks whose ancestors were not slaves, represents a genealogical nightmare of enormous proportions.
And the claim that living whites are the beneficiaries of "white supremacy," or the milder infraction of "white privilege," has no relevance where reparations are concerned. Structural injustice has been redressed time and time again, with countless programs and affirmative action policies, while the Civil Rights movement removed legal liabilities and injustices. Personal feelings of racism may persist, but people cannot be charged money for having the wrong opinions.
It remains verboten to ask the following question, without recriminations and charges of racism, that is: after all the programs, affirmative action efforts, welfare distributions, and other efforts to redress economic inequality in the US, is it possible that the persistent wealth disparity between whites and blacks has less to do with historical slavery than it does with more proximate causes, such as contemporary policies and politics, including the Democratic Party-led welfare program that effectively paid black American unwed mothers when the fathers of their children absconded from their homes, thus destroying the black family and creating a culture of failure?
Because no existing black American suffered slavery, and few living white Americans benefited from it, reparations make absolutely no sense to most Americans, and rightly so. Johnson's charge that reparations have been denied because white Americans are "insensitive" and unwilling to "atone" for their crimes is ludicrous. Atone for what, exactly? For crimes they didn't commit and for benefits that they did not receive. And one can't be extorted for feelings or unwillingness to beg for forgiveness, even if such feelings and unwillingness persist generally among whites, which is quite doubtful.
If black Americans want reparations, they should locate the descendants of the owners of black slaves, and, with Johnson's help and money, bring a class action suit against them for denied wages, suffering, and historical immiseration.
Michael Rectenwald is an author of ten books, including the most recent, Beyond Woke. He was Professor of Liberal Arts at NYU from 2008 through 2019. Follow him on Twitter @TheAntiPCProf
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IQ correlates strongly to job performance, wealth, income, economic growth, livability, cooperation, life expectancy, and infant mortality.
Blacks are the only race never to have civilized. No modern creations exist in sub-Saharan Africa that were not brought there by Whites. Without continuous intervention, Blacks cannot even maintain what Whites gave them.
19 of the 20 poorest countries are sub-Saharan African. There are no White Third-World countries, but all Black ones are.
The average national IQ of the world is only 90. Fewer than one in five nations have National IQs of 100. Almost half have National IQs of 90 or less.
It was calculated in a study published in IQ and the Wealth of Nations that a National IQ of 90 is the threshold for a technological economy:
African Black (IQ 67) + White (IQ 102) = American Black, 24% White admixture (IQ 85).
The more Black a society is the less safe and prosperous it is.
National IQ correlates at 0.73 with living standard.
Each 10 point increase in IQ generally doubles economic growth, assuming the country has a market economy.
The following intelligence scores came from work carried out earlier this decade by Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist, who analysed IQ studies from 113 countries, and from subsequent work by Jelte Wicherts, a Dutch psychologist. The study was published in IQ and the Wealth of Nations and has nearly a a thousand cites. Lynn and Vanhanen benchmarked their IQ results so that Britain is 100. America scores 98 on this scale, and the world average is 90.
Google: National IQs
Notice a pattern?
• 108 Singapore
• 106 South Korea
• 105 Japan
• 105 China
• 102 Italy
• 101 Iceland
• 101 Mongolia
• 101 Switzerland
• 100 Austria
• 100 Luxembourg
• 100 Netherlands
• 100 Norway
• 100 United Kingdom
• 99 Belgium
• 99 Canada
• 99 Estonia
• 99 Finland
• 99 Germany
• 99 New Zealand
[snip]
• 70 Botswana
• 70 Rwanda
• 69 Burundi
• 69 Cote d'Ivoire
• 69 Ethiopia
• 69 Malawi
• 69 Niger
• 68 Angola
• 68 Chad
• 68 Djibouti
• 68 Somalia
• 68 Swaziland
• 67 Dominica
• 67 Guinea
• 67 Haiti
• 67 Liberia
• 66 Gambia
• 65 Congo
• 64 Cameroon
• 64 Gabon
• 64 Sierra Leone
• 64 Mozambique
• 59 Equatorial Guinea
Blacks can only achieve because they have White admixture or because they reside in White societies. Too few of them are smart enough to even build sufficient infrastructure in Africa to allow the Black intellectual elite to achieve.
Sub-Saharan Africans have never made a contribution to the world. Blacks can only achieve either because they are mixed with White genes or because they reside in White societies. Blacks are unable to achieve within their own race because not enough of them are smart enough to build a sufficient infrastructure to allow the Black intellectual elite to achieve. If allowed to become too numerous they destroy previously-thriving and safe White cities.
This is why Blacks seethe with jealousy and hatred of Whites yet can't seem to stay away because they want what we create and maintain, no matter if they deserve it or not. They want our peaceful and clean neighborhoods, our law and order, our technology and science, our school systems, our inventions, the jobs we create, the food we grow, the transportation we invent, the entertainment we provide..... Blacks hate us but can't live without us. That's why they demand that we take care of them and give them special rights and privileges that we don't grant ourselves, just to compensate for their inability at living in a modern and technologically-advanced civilization.
Some groups succeed all the time, everywhere. Some have never succeeded anywhere.
Blacks are the oldest race, so they should be the most advanced race; but they never developed at all and had to be domesticated by Whites.
National IQs calculated and validated for 108 nations:
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