Activists who campaign for reparations for black people have come up with a new idea for how such compensation can be delivered.
MailOnline reports that campaigners in Chicago have already placed billboards demanding $6,000 relief on property taxes that are notoriously high across the city.
Among the issues raised by the billboards is the plight of Empire star Terrence Howard, who was forced to pay $1 million in backtaxes after refusing to honor years worth of payments over his belief that it is “immoral” to tax the descendants of slaves.
“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” Howard was quoted as telling a government lawyer investigating the case. “Now you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage.”
One of the campaign’s leaders is former MSNBC Tiffany Cross, who argued on her podcast this week that tax breaks were the answer and that Howard was right to defraud the taxpayer.
“This brother was making a legitimate point,” Cross said. “I don’t know how we would make this happen, but I would be completely down for some sort of policy that says ‘Yes, you are exempt from paying taxes.'”
Activists seek huge tax WRITE-OFF for African Americans as ‘reparations 2.0’ – billboards for rebates go up over Chicago as tax-dodge actor Terrence Howard praised https://t.co/aEJSlDdZTd pic.twitter.com/4QZRYzoKZr
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 14, 2024
She went on to suggest that the descendants of the enslaved have their tax brackets reduced. “If you’re in this tax bracket, if you are a descendant of the enslaved, then we will decrease your tax bracket,” she suggested.
Also campaigning on the issue is the organization Reconstruction Era Reparations Act Now, whose leader Howard Ray Jr. has pointed out that many black people in Chicago have been evicted from their homes.
“We have a problem, where our black citizens in Chicago are being kicked or forced out of Chicago, and they are going to the southern states to live comfortably,” he told ABC7.
Calls for reparations for the legacy of slavery have become increasingly mainstream over the past decade, with elected lawmakers, including Rep. Jamaal Bowman, openly supporting the redistribution of public funds to one specific racial group.
Last month, Bowman made the unusual suggestion of spending money “into existence” in order to fund multi-bilion dollar reparations packages.
“When COVID was destroying us, we invested in the American people in a way that kept the economy afloat,” said Bowman. “The government can invest the same way in reparations without raising taxes on anyone. Where did the money come from? We spent it into existence.”
Meanwhile, the state of California has come up with various recommendations to pay out $800 billion dollars in reparations, dwarfing the state’s annual budget, as well as various amendments to the constitution effectively guaranteeing black people a superior status within American society. Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom has stated his opposition to the plans.
Among the most ambitious proposals is that put forward by San Francisco, whose board of supervisors last year announced with a ludicrous plan to pay every black person $5 million, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years and multi million dollar homes for just $1 a family.
