Chicago's mayor plans reparations task force. I'm on the South Side and I've got loads of questions
It’s almost like the last 60 years did not exist for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. But they did for us. I know because I'm in a neighborhood on the South Side.
I have questions for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who is proposing a reparations task force: where are the reparations for all Blacks killed in shootings in my neighborhood and elsewhere in the city?
Where are the reparations for the city’s failure to produce adequate protection for its residents? Where are the reparations for the city’s failure to provide adequate schooling to inspire kids toward the American Dream instead of nihilistic violence? And where are the reparations for the city’s woke legal system that puts the interest of violent criminals above the interests of the city’s hardworking citizens?
Most of all, why has he consistently ignored the efforts of Chicagoans like myself to better our neighborhoods through tried and true American principles — his administration refuses to support the massive Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center that I’m building on the South Side.
These questions entered my mind as I read the recent news that Mayor Johnson committed $500,000 toward a "Reparations Task Force to develop a Black Reparations Agenda." His executive order states that the nation and city "perpetuated, condoned, profited and benefited" from slavery and Jim Crow policies from 1877 to 1963. He blamed these polices for racial disparities in "life expectancy, unemployment, homeownership rates, home value, incarceration, and more."
What he conveniently left out were all the liberal policies that have devastated my neighborhood since the 1960s. People laughed recently when Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said there were more intact Black families under Jim Crow. But he was absolutely correct.
Will these same people laugh when I say my South Side neighborhood was better off in the 1960s? Look no further than former first lady Michelle Obama for evidence. Her first home was the Parkway Gardens, a massive living community next to my church. Back then, it was a working class community. Today, it is the projects.
IF DEMOCRATS SAY THEY STAND WITH MY COMMUNITY, WHY ARE SO MANY STILL FAILING TO LEARN HOW TO READ?
These liberal policies disincentivized marriage, steered us toward dependency on the government instead of upward mobility, and undermined the virtues of personal responsibility and agency. To our shame, we allowed these policies to make us a shadow of ourselves.
This reparations argument is not about slavery or segregation. Those past evils are being weaponized to cover up the fact that liberalism was so devastating to our communities. I’ve lived this reality for more than twenty years. I’ve delivered the eulogy at the funerals of young men and women gunned down in the prime of their lives. I have had to provide academic support and tutoring services for the kids that go to the nearby school where so few students are performing at grade level. And I’ve personally witnessed violence by criminals let out of prison early in the name of racial justice and criminal justice reform.
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It’s almost like the last 60 years did not exist for Brandon Johnson. But they did for us.
The best decision I ever made was to hop off this train of liberalism that was fast going nowhere — I did that, so I could live in reality. The reality is that I know the American principles work.
People in the mayor’s office call these principles white supremacist values, but that just gaslighting. I know these principles work because they are universal and belong to no color. They worked for me, a true country boy from Indiana. And they work for the youths on these tough streets.
That is why I spent the last 12 years working to build a community center — so it could be a place for these American principles to take hold and allow my people to flourish.
The last thing we need is more liberal gaslighting from Mayor Johnson that will only extend the misery of Black people. We need to stop this shucking-and-jiving act for liberals and begin to live in reality. It is only then that we Blacks will begin to make true and everlasting progress.