Washington, D.C., is not a state, and Congress has the authority to block its laws, but the district pulled a fast one on the Republican majority in Congress to get its “reparations” bill past its oversight.
The Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act of 2023, which passed Washington’s City Council in January, was listed as the “Insurance Database Amendment Act of 2024” when it appeared before Congress.
The act goes into effect Friday because Congress failed to block it. It joins the ignominious list of radical policies the nation’s capital has enacted—from the state-sanctioned graffiti of painting “Black Lives Matter” on the street by the White House during President Donald Trump’s first term to touting itself as a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens.
Congress did exercise its rightful authority in blocking D.C.’s attempt to weaken criminal laws back in 2023, and it should do so again. Blocking this reparations policy would be a great place to start.
What Does the Reparations Law Do?
The law establishes a Commission on Reparations to “study and analyze” the ignominious history of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, government support for slavery, and specific incidents of civil asset forfeiture and eminent domain that allegedly affected black people.
The best part of the law involves a concrete suggestion of specific injustices in a specific time period and specific areas of the city.
It may make sense to study specific injustices against specific black people and redress them, not because of skin color but in the interest of colorblind justice. I do not doubt that there are specific examples of injustice committed against black people in Washington, D.C.’s history that would garner sympathy among right-thinking people. The problem with reparations policies in general—and with this law, in particular—is that they’re not really about addressing concrete harms but rather propelling a false narrative of “systemic racism.”
Naturally, the claim that American society is still inherently racist, despite the noble history of colorblind civil rights laws and private efforts to help black people succeed, permeates this agenda-setting law.
The law directs the commission to study “lawful and de facto discrimination against enslaved people and other free African American people and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present, including economic, political, educational, and social discrimination, and structural and institutional racism” (emphasis added).
There it is. This isn’t really about helping a few residents who lost their property through eminent domain and targeted takings aimed at harming black people. It’s about furthering the narrative that America is fundamentally racist and evil, even today. Then there’s the further benefit that, using this broad narrative, the D.C. government can enrich cronies in the name of addressing vague injustices.
The commission will include 12 members: nine voting members and three ex-officio members. The law stipulates that the voting members must support reparations, of course!
That’s explicitly what the law says. The voting members will include two people from “organizations with a demonstrated commitment to reparations” and one who “has expertise in community development and social justice in the district,” along with two academics from the fields of “civil rights, history, or constitutional law.”
Something tells me academics from Hillsdale College, Troy University, or the New College of Florida won’t be considered, for some reason.
The law claims that tax dollars won’t be the only funding source for the reparations, but color me skeptical.
Of course, to call reparations unworkable in a city that’s 44% black would be an understatement. As Ben Shapiro noted, the federal government has spent more than $25 trillion on redistribution programs and the results have been rather discouraging. Schemes like this are often more about expanding the Overton window in a woke direction than they are about concrete policy.
Bowser Backtracking?
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, returned the law to the City Council unsigned in January, signaling that she knows it might not be popular among the Republican majorities in Congress or with Trump, The Washington Times reported.
Bowser also released plans to finally remove the “Black Lives Matter” road mural on 16th Street Northwest, just north of the White House. Her move comes after Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., introduced a bill yanking funds from the city if it kept up the state-sanctioned graffiti. Washington erected the street mural shortly after a Black Lives Matter riot near the White House in 2020 in which rioters set fire to historic St. John’s Church.
Bowser said the city aims to repurpose the two-block stretch for America’s 250th anniversary celebration in 2026. That would be a great idea. Perhaps D.C. should celebrate America rather than promoting ideologies that demonize this great country.
