Posted by Mary Grabar, June 21, 2019: Alas, not one of the Democrats (or Republicans) at the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Hearing on Slavery Reparations on June 19 seems to have read my article at FrontpageMagazine, "Reparations Madness." Had they done so, they would have learned that it was the Democratic Party of the FDR administration that instituted the New Deal programs that imposed federal segregation in government-made and financed housing (public housing, the FHA), and discriminated against African Americans in New Deal programs in farming, public works, construction, and Social Security. It was quite a contentious hearing, captured on C-SPAN, with statistics about "disparities" thrown around with great fervor, but no context, historical or otherwise. Nor was a mention made of the black owners of black slaves (in a surprisingly large number, as I pointed out). Instead, Democratic legislators and professors railed on about the "legacy" of slavery to Jim Crow to discriminatory New Deal policies to today.
Chairman of the subcommittee Steve Cohen, famous for chomping fried chicken when Attorney General William Barr refused to show up for a hearing on the Mueller Report (and not being scolded for his cultural insenstivity for doing so), gave away a major aim behind the newfound push: eliinating the electoral college. See, the electoral college is a vestige of America's slave-holding past, when slave states which counted each slave as three-fifths of a person were given disproportional representation. You can bet your money that the study committee will present the elimination of the electoral college as a major remedy for the lingering effects of slavery. (Cohen also went out of line in calling Coleman Hughes "presumptive" because he thoughtfully disagreed.)
I don't know how many others watched the entire ordeal, but I found it worthwhile when ex-NFL star Burgess Owens came on and revealed that he "used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race." It has been "the party of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow." George Schuyler would have cheered to hear him denounce socialism and Marxism, which has been infecting education. Owens's great-great grandfather had been brought over on a slave ship, yet Owens proclaimed, "this country has given us greatness--look at this panel." Watch Burgess's star performance.
Indeed, Daniel Greenfield pointed out the estmated worth of the two star witness, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Danny Glover, in his article, "Slavery Reparations for Millionaires," also at FrontPage.
