New York’s “reparations” train continues to gain steam: Now the city Department of Health is getting in on the act.
A report DOH released (with the Federal Reserve Bank), “Analyzing the Racial Wealth Gap and Implications for Health Equity”, pushes reparations to “seek acknowledgment, redress, and closure for America’s complicity in federal, state, and local policies . . . that have deprived black Americans of equitable access to wealth and wealth-building opportunities.”
It claims “a reparations program, such as federally paid cash to Black descendants of enslaved people, would eliminate the Black-White wealth gap.”
City health czar Ashwin Vasan has endorsed discussing the idea, though how it would address “health inequity” (whatever that is) or eliminate the gap is far from clear.
The City Council also introduced a bill, like one that passed in the state Legislature, creating a commission to look into payments.
Yet it’s obvious the DOH/Fed plan is little more than virtue-signaling: It calls, after all, for the federal government to provide the funding.
Ha! Team Biden won’t even cough up money for a migrant crisis in New York of its own making.
Which means this call won’t do much except, like the one in California, stoke racial division.
Besides, New York should be the last place to consider repayments: It outlawed slavery in 1827, decades before the Civil War.
Why should any citizens today be responsible for sins committed nearly 200 years ago?
Here’s a better idea: Maybe the Department of Health can focus on, say, health — and stop with all the social-justice cosplay.