The Detroit Reparations Push Silliness Continues

The Detroit News:  Advocates for reparative policy argue 'we can do better' at Mackinac Island conference

The panel talk centered on policy decisions and discriminatory practices that contribute to the racial wealth gap and comes ahead of a Nov. 2 ballot question in Detroit over whether a reparations committee should be formed to study ways to boost opportunities for Black residents. 

Reparations is just another word for money transfer to Democrat favored constituencies.   Typically with such transfer enriching Democrat bureaucrats and consultants in the process.

Now Detroit, if I may remind you, is a city that has been run by Democrats, and specifically Black Democrats for the majority if not the totality of the lifespan of most of its current residents, and with said residents having suffered under the corruption and misrule of said Black Democrats,  not from slavery.  Now apparently said City should pay slavery reparations to its Black residents - said residents who have never been slaves in their entire lives.

Does that make sense to anyone?  At all.

Basically it is a quest for free stuff:

Hamilton said during the Tuesday talk that society will never move forward from racism until reparations are addressed. 

"If we want to have solutions, we need to honestly grapple with reparations," said Hamilton, adding that alone "is not enough."

"...we need a government that promotes anti-racist economic rights that ensures that people have a birthright to capital, quality housing, quality health care," he said.

There is no such thing as a "birthright to capital, quality housing, quality health care"  you earn each of those things by virtue of work, savings, and effort.  It's not given to you.  Assuming such a birthright is absolute magical thinking and part of the problem here.  Also, assuming Blacks cannot achieve any of these things on their own is also part of the problem here.

But the article and the statements made by these race hustlers get even funnier:

Note the subtle anti-white racism among the "anti-racists":

Goss added she finds it "disturbing" only six of Detroit's 11 middle-class neighborhoods grew in the most recent U.S. Census and "only because upper, middle-class white families moved in." 

. . .

For the rest of the city, opportunities for middle-class families where housing can be stabilized and where small businesses can grow are needed "without that gentrifying factor," she said.

Yep, curse those gentrifying white people and their (checks notes) increasing of property valuers and increased small business presence in a city rather bereft of them.

On top of that, the hilarity that one can say something with a straight face and then argue for the exact opposite is rather funny.

[Darrick Hamilton, professor of economics and founding director of Institute on Race and Police Economy] Hamilton said change will begin when "somebody's race or ethnicity no longer has transactional value."

Wait a sec, transactional value of someone's race is exactly what he himself is advocating for: Blacks, by virtue of Being Black should get these "reparations"  - If that's not race having "transactional value" one wonders what is so in his book.

The next funny bit in the article:

Perry has conducted research on housing and authored the book "Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities."

Through his work, he found homes in Black neighborhoods are underpriced by 23%, about $48,000 per home, "cumulatively, that's about $156 billion in lost equity," he said.

Wait just a minute here.  

Let's note that the City of Detroit which again is majority Black and at the time was completely Black-run, has been properly castigated for overvaluing Black (and everyone else's homes) to the tune of over $600 million in overvaluation - causing residents to pay higher and in some cases ridiculous taxes on their properties - leading to foreclosure of (you guessed it) Black-owned properties due to non-payment of the improperly high taxes.

You really can't have it both ways, unless you're a Democrat or progressive "thinker" apparently.

Having the City of Detroit vote to pay reparations to its residents is a joke.  Having the State of Michigan which was not a slave state pay any reparations is a joke when the last slave here was before the civil war is similarly a joke.  Pushing reparations for people who have never been slaves is a joke. But, it's apparently a very profitable and politically popular joke to Democrat race hustlers and consultants and for their constituents looking for money for nothing.