To the Editor:
Gov. Kathy Hochul has set up a commission to mull slavery reparations. Really?
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who never misses an opportunity to make just about anything a race issue, spoke at the signing ceremony. I encourage you to listen to Sharpton’s latest rant about the resignation of Claudine Gay at Harvard University, calling it, in essence, a racist attack and mentioning nothing about her failing to condemn antisemitism via the Oct. 7 horror in Israelm let alone her plagiarizing over 50 times when students at Harvard are expelled for doing it just once. It’s about competence, not race.
It’s always someone else’s fault, there’s always someone else to blame from Sharpton’s perspective, and Hochul has bought into it. They both play the “white guilt” card.
New York state lost over 100,000 residents last year. The migrant crisis is straining New York City to the max, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Mayor Eric Adams said that from 2022 to 2025, the estimated cost will be $12 billion. Crime is off the charts in New York City, as has been widely reported. And slavery reparations are a priority to our governor?
This is a proposal to give money to people who were never slaves and the people who would pay for it were never slave owners.
Everything is out of whack. People regularly sue others to hopefully receive a large settlement. People don’t want to work to make the American Dream their own. They instead feel entitled, they feel somehow owed for all kinds of things such as reparations.
I encourage others to speak up about this ridiculous proposal, which could cost New York taxpayers a heck of a lot of money based what California was looking at when that state set up a similar commission, and when there are so many other fires to address in the state.
Michael Stokoe
Cortland
Related: New York will set up a commission to consider reparations for slavery