The economic crisis and reparations for blacks

Wouldn't this be the perfect time for "reparations," i.e. huge payments of taxpayer money to blacks just for being black?

Um, no. How about ... never.

The author of the linked article argues, "Barack Obama's election certainly makes reparations more likely than they were under, say, Woodrow Wilson..." Actually, I hope reparations are even less likely under Obama than before (or than under Woodrow Wilson, for that matter). If you look past Obama's race and look at the content of his ideas, he's shown every indication of wanting to move past race-driven politics. ("There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.") Also, Obama's diverse background and his lack of roots in American slavery point out one of the absurdities of reparations -- on what principled basis could you decide who's really "black enough" to give the bonanza to?

So what's his argument that "now is the perfect time" for reparations? He says:

[T]he money will pay off mortgages, hopefully recapitalizing banks and stabilizing them. The money will go to buying new appliances. It will also go to higher education. Can you imagine how many people will return to school to finish degrees or get new ones? People will suddenly have the breathing room to do so. Crimes of a desperate nature will decrease.

When you list things like that, of course, they sound wonderful. Mortgages getting paid off and people getting the chance to pursue higher education sound great. But why should those goodies be slanted toward black people rather than people of any race?

If the idea is to help the poor, and the concern is that blacks are disproportionately poor, then why not just come up with economic policies that are targeted toward the poor -- not some preferred slice of the poor, but the whole poor -- and let the chips fall where they may? If blacks are so disproportionately poor, then won't poverty-directed policies automatically help blacks, without creating racial resentment among whites?

One more thing -- the author says:

The money will go to churches and finance new church building projects.

Did the author even consider that maybe more churches isn't the answer to our problems? Not to mention how unsavory it is to think that the government would choose to prefer one race over other races because the people of that race are seen as more Christian than people of other races.


UPDATE: I originally linked here, which doesn't work anymore. The article ("Reparations as an Economic Stimulus") still shows up in Google, but again it's a dead link. The Root, which is affiliated with the Washington Post, had posted that article a few days ago, but they apparently took it down, reworked it, and reposted it with a new headline and URL. Is it a good practice for a site like The Root to take down articles without a trace like that?