From Asheville to Trashville

Via David

Though it’s not politically correct to say, today’s blacks benefited immensely from the horrors suffered by our ancestors.…Had there not been slavery, and today’s blacks were born in Africa instead of the United States, we’d be living in the same poverty that today’s Africans live in and under the same brutal regimes.
~~Walter Williams

For all the blathering we’ve heard over the past few months about how “systemic racism” is the nation’s biggest mortal threat, it’s become sparklingly clear that the real problem is systemic stupidity.

The country is currently in the throes of fatal conniptions over idea that there’s some solution to “inequality.” Not for a second has anyone paused to ponder that perhaps the true cause of inequality is the fact that people aren’t equal—never have been, never will be.

Tucked away in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville, North Carolina, would be a little slice of paradise if it weren’t infested with Marxist bluehairs transplanted from the Northeast who see it as their solemn moral obligation to carpetbag the local blacks into endless frothing fury about the supposed indignities of being black in America, as if it’s not measurably better than being black anywhere else on the planet.

Asheville’s mayor, Esther Manheimer, wasn’t even born in America. Despite the fact that the town is nearly 80% white, there is only one white male on its seven-member City Council. There are two blacks, and as is the wont of black politicians, their entire political world consists of endlessly announcing their blackness to startled passersby. But it only takes a brief glance at both of Asheville’s black City Council members to realize they’ve both been living off the fat of the land in ways that would be unimaginable back in the Motherland.

But unlike most modern white politicians, at least black politicians grasp that politics is the art of taking things from other people without having them kill you. And last Tuesday—a day after the U.S. Conference of Mayors endorsed the establishment of a commission to study exactly how much they think black Americans are “owed” for slavery, all seven members of Asheville’s City Council approved a “RESOLUTION SUPPORTING COMMUNITY REPARATIONS FOR BLACK ASHEVILLE.”

The resolution mentions slavery, segregation, incarceration, redlining, blockbusting, gentrification, discriminatory wages, “food deserts,” and even the idea that blacks are purposely being forced to live in environmentally toxic sites as part of some grand extermination scheme. It mentions “disproportionate…mortality rates,” ignoring the fact that black women live longer than white males do in America.

As is the fashion these days, it blames all black suffering on everything but black people.

It specifies that the “reparations” will not come in the form of direct cash payments to blacks but rather as “investments” in black communities, which is a nice way of saying more tax money gets diverted to Democratic political tokens whose jobs are symbolic at best. In fact, the Asheville City Council possesses no legislative power to divert revenue to black communities; it’s something they’d have to beg the State of North Carolina to do on their behalf.

Funny, innit, how this comes on the heels of a nonstop nationwide riot orgy based on the provably fraudulent notion that blacks are unfairly targeted for police brutality?

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But if people truly understood what the word “reparations” means, it would mean returning black Americans to the conditions they’d be “enjoying” if they’d never been sold into the West African slave markets. In other words, both their lifespan and their income would be severely curtailed.

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Is black American poverty proof of American racism or proof that blacks bring poverty with them wherever they go? Isn’t the fact that blacks live in more impoverished conditions when there are no white people around evidence that it’s actually beneficial for them to be around white folks?

I realize it’s hateful to ask questions, but these questions ask themselves.

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How the hell do you even tabulate the degree to which black people have been “exploited”? Why is it permitted—actually, it’s encouraged—to compare their conditions to American whites but never to African blacks? If you want to see how black people prosper when there aren’t any whites around to oppress them, take a gander at Haiti. And if you want to bring up a truth that’s so uncomfortable it will make their thighs chafe, remind them that blacks already benefit from slavery’s legacy merely by living in America. In the painfully truthful words of black writer Walter Williams:

Though it’s not politically correct to say, today’s blacks benefitted immensely from the horrors suffered by our ancestors.…Had there not been slavery, and today’s blacks were born in Africa instead of the United States, we’d be living in the same poverty that today’s Africans live in and under the same brutal regimes.

[...]

Would all white taxpayers be forced to pay reparations, despite the fact that at the peak of slavery in 1860, only about 1.5% of white Americans owned slaves? How about the fact that since almost all historians agree that two-thirds of whites who came to the colonies arrived in some form of bondage, whites are far more likely to be descended from slaves than from slaveowners? What about the endless millions of whites whose ancestors came to America after 1865?

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To reiterate, all this nonsense is based on the lie that American blacks are STILL being economically exploited. But that’s not what the statistics say. In real dollars and cents, whites—the alleged exploiters—pay nearly $3,000 more per capita every year in taxes than they receive back in government benefits, whereas your average American black receives about $10,000 more per year in government benefits than they contribute in tax revenue. Every year, blacks take about $660 billion more from the public cookie jar than they contribute to it. When you factor THAT into your math, you might conclude that reparations have already been paid—with interest.