Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson includes half a million dollars in his budget to advance a “Commission on Restoration and Reparations.” He thinks that “reparations for descendants of slaves will help improve his city’s rising crime rate.” He’s wrong.

In a Daily Mail report: “Chicago’s progressive mayor Brandon Johnson claims REPARATIONS will help tackle ‘the cycle of violence’ amid a 17 per cent surge in crime,” by Nic White,, December 28, 2023:

The commission will study the issue and provide recommendations on whether and how to compensate Chicago’s descendants of slaves.

‘These are the first dollars spent in this city to begin the process of studying both restoration and reparations,’ Johnson said last month.

‘When residents who have experienced neglect and disinvestment for generations speak out of their pain and their trauma, this administration and the Black Caucus, we hear you.’ 

Johnson on Wednesday claimed reparations would also help reduce violent crime, though he was yet to directly explain how.

Johnson can’t explain how reparations would reduce violent crime, because there is no evidence for this. Reparations are a cash grab. Throwing money at the problem of mostly black-on-black crime in Chicago won’t solve the problem. A stable family and education would.

In a report by The Atlantic:

Before 1960, when poverty and racism were by all accounts far worse, the black family was considerably more stable. 

In Africa, where slaves were not taken abroad, sheer greed and corruption, accompanied by savage violence, has been the norm throughout an extended history of African tribal wars. Indeed, the leftists who habitually blame whites for every problem that blacks experience will blame “colonialism” for African tribal wars. It’s the usual leftist soft bigotry of low expectations at play; it’s based on the notion that blacks are forever scarred by the deeds of whites, to the extent that they are unable to have productive lives and achieve goals, and cannot rise above any residue of “colonialism’ and historic slavery after more than a century and a half. Which other group is so shackled by historic oppressors that they’re forever victims and therefore committing an inordinate proportion of crime? The Chinese were severely abused by the Japanese, the Jews experienced the Holocaust, the Japanese were put in internment camps, and Indians were taken as indentured laborers. Yet these groups do not have problematic high crime rates.

Also, what might Mayor Brandon Johnson have to say about the rapid spread of Islam by the sword through Africa? Black jihadists rampage through villages and butcher blacks — including women and children. Black-on-black crime is a problem globally, including in predominantly black countries.

Once again, a stable family and education are the solutions for blacks in America. Johnson, a black man himself, has been married to the same woman since he was 22, went to college and became mayor in Chicago. Yet he’s calling for reparations (i.e., more handouts) for disadvantaged blacks, whom he knows actually have the opportunity to succeed in America.

The idea of every abused individual or group in history making a demand for reparations due to historic abuse is absurd. It’s no different for blacks. It’s time to put talk of reparations to rest. It’s a shameless way to squeeze cash out of the guilty-minded for crimes that were committed generations ago.