Of all the outlandish provisions within California’s outlandish reparations plan, none feels more craven — or cruel — than the demand to exempt black fathers from paying child support for their children.
This particular tidbit is buried deep within the 1,100 page final report released last week by California’s Reparations Task Force.
The document argues that “discriminatory” laws “have torn African American families apart” leading to a “disproportionate amount of African Americans who are burdened with child support debt.”
With more than half of black kids in America being raised by single mothers, the “burdened” parties here are almost entirely fathers.
But rather than hold them accountable for the debts to their families, the Task Force sees these men as victims — “hindered” in their ability to secure suitable housing, jobs or education because of those nagging child-support obligations.
So: At a minimum, such fathers should have any interest on these payments erased, though ultimately, all child-support debt might be forgiven.
The Task Force couldn’t be more off-base.
My own views around reparations are conflicted and uncertain — I’m African-American and understand the unresolved consequences of both slavery and its centuries of subsequent inequality.
But I fail to understand how reparations will atone for them.
I’m also a California kid, born and raised in San Francisco, the son of a black father who not only failed to be a father to my sister and me — but failed to provide my mother with any form of financial support.
In other words, the fathers the Task Force speaks of so compassionately were just like mine — absent and unaccountable.
And what about their kids — kids like me who grew up under the specter of constant financial insecurity, not to mention lacking the second parent children need to feel whole?
What about our mothers — entirely responsible for offspring they clearly did not bring into this world alone?
Where is the compassion for us?
Yes, I was fortunate to come through OK, but the same can’t be said of so many other black kids raised under similar circumstances.
The data is clear and connected: Single-parent homes have tripled in number since 1965 across the United States, but this shift has not impacted families equally.
According to Census data, more than half of black children in America were living with just one parent, almost all mothers — more than 2½ times the rate of white kids.
These numbers have real consequences: Vs. whites, black children have lower high-school graduation rates, higher levels of incarceration and a staggering lack of familial wealth.
There’s also the psychic toll of fatherlessness on black boys, the absence of loving role models while growing up and for our own future fathering, not to mention the stress of having to step in to help Mom with things fathers normally would handle.
Relieving fathers of child-support won’t discourage this, it’ll only incentivize it.
Plus, the Task Force’s report fails to make clear who — if anyone — will compensate black mothers for all of those unmet payments.
Do taxpayers get screwed yet again — or the mothers?
Most frustrating is the taboo around single-parent families.
Despite its current moment in the headlines, this epidemic is silent — erased from popular discourse by progressive culture-makers ready to pounce on anyone who dares to question whether generations of familial disunity might actually be a bad thing. (Spoiler alert: It’s bad!).
The irony is that many of these talking heads — folks like Ta-Nehisi Coates or Nikole Hannah-Jones, for whom any mention of accountability or consequence for black fatherhood is immediately drowned out by lectures on “structural racism” or “white supremacy” — come from two-parent homes.
Lucky them. But they certainly don’t speak for the black masses.
They have no idea what it’s like to be raised without a father.
Trust me, the experience (despite my true hero of a mom) ain’t great.
Of course, as Hunter Biden so vulgarly confirms, there are plenty of white dads equally committed to stiffing their kids (I hear about them all the time from the single white mothers at my sons’ elementary school).
But no one is suggesting Daddy Biden cancel the debt of absent white fathers, which would leave white men with less incentive than blacks to be absent dads in the first place.
Indeed, the most insidious injustice here is toward black men, once again reduced to the most base cultural and historical stereotypes in the name of social justice.
White males, it appears, are perfectly capable of aligning their reproductive urges with long-term financial planning. Blacks, not so much.
And so, in the end, the solution is to simply let black fathers off the hook — while leaving their children to pay the price for this insanity.
California’s Reparations Task Force might view this as “equity,” but trust me — there’s nothing equitable about being a deadbeat dad.
dkaufman@nypost.com