In the 90’s there was a lot of talk about “Repairarions” which basically meant financial Compensation to black Americans due to the atrocity of slavery. The idea had some legitimacy after reparations were paid to WWII era Japanese internment camp victims in 1988. The idea of black reparations spawned a lot of jokes that Cadillac and KFC would merge into the worlds biggest corporation over night. And the idea kind of fell off the national conscience. I have never thought “reparations” was practical, but if the economy is going to be in need of stimulus anyway, one way to do that would be to give black Americans money. There’s about 42 million black Americans. I don’t know that you can give them all life changing money. But I think you could give a generation of Black Americans potentially life changing money. The US government could give all black American children born between 2000 and 2020 a $100,000 trust fund upon their 21st birthday. This would help about 10 million kids and be a trillion dollars over 20 years, which is comparable to previous economic stimulus packages passed by Congress. It would automatically give young black Americans the opportunities that systemic racism denies them. They have access to capital for education, or to start a business or to continue to invest towards a future portfolio. Imagine a generation of black kids that no longer have to dream of college football scholarships, they can dream of anything they want because they will be financially secure on their 21st birthday.
Imagine how much black business can grow and innovate in the next 20 years with the best and brightest young black Americans have some financial security. And all the average and below average students will have the same windfall to encourage them to dream bigger than their grades or circumstances would suggest. Doing so would make it so that a literal generation of black Americans could be told “you can be anything you want to be” by their teachers and family and they could actually believe it because they would have the financial resources to do so. Imagine how that generation could change things for the subsequent generation. Now this would put a lot of pressure on this young black generation, and it definitely makes them targets of people, family, hangers on, scammers and even legit businesses who want to get their hands at their windfall. But it’s affirmative action in the truest sense of the term, and white people can’t complain that it is reverse racism like other affirmative action policies such as quota systems for hiring practices. We all know young black Americans are capable of doing whatever they set their mind to. For once lets give them the resources so they can do it, and change the world in the process.
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