What follows are two alternative proposals for amendments to the United States Constitution to ban race-based transfer payments, or reparations.
Discuss these daily with friends, families, and elected officials. In this season of race-based hysteria, support for reparations to African-Americans has gained considerable ground.
The New York Times supports it. The U.S. House of Representatives has created a commission to study the idea. California and at least one southern state are examining the topic.
Race-based reparations is a direct assault on equality. We need to amend the constitution to make sure it never happens.
The first proposed amendment relies on a forgotten concept in the law, the privileges and immunity clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reads as follows:
Amendment Proposal One
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of a person’s identity and no person shall enjoy superior privileges or immunities under law on account of their identity.”
Amendment Proposal Two
The second proposed amendment relies on more traditional language, and tracks existing law. (It was crafted by a young lawyer in our office, Cameron Atkinson.) It reads as follows:
“Section 1: Congress shall pass no law or budget that appropriates money or otherwise provides financial benefits on the basis of race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation.
"Section 2: No state shall make any law or budget that appropriates or otherwise provides financial benefits money on the basis of race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation.
"Section 3: No person shall enjoy superior privileges, immunities, or protection or be punished more harshly under the law because of anything related to race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation."
I am agnostic as to the means, but not the end. The fundamental law of the land needs to place beyond reach the very notion that folks are entitled to special governmental solicitude on account of their race. Race-based transfer payments will set the clock back to the tawdry days of slavey and Jim Crow, the title to persons and nooses replaced by the grip of the tax code.
Amending the Constitution is difficult, and requires broad popular support. Distribute this piece to anyone who cares about the republic. Come up with your own proposals. Make this topic trend.
Or do nothing, but, in that case, be prepared to pay a tax as odious as the slave trade, a tax imposed on you because of the color of your skin, the proceeds of which are paid to others because of the color of their skin.
The choice is yours.