Another local government in California is considering the absurd idea of reparations.

Alameda County struggles to balance its budget, but is considering cash payments to black residents. 

Not one of the five supervisors dissented. 

They may think they showed how progressive they are. They should hang their heads in shame, instead.

Talk of reparations is an insult to the intelligence of all Californians.

California entered the Union as a “free” state in 1850. There is no reason to pay reparations, to anyone, for anything.

History matters. And the decision to enter the Union as a free state was a difficult moral choice, in a fraught time.

Those who founded the Golden State knew what the price might be: The division of the entire country.

At the time, the North and the South were locked in a bitter political battle. Each new state triggered another round of fighting over whether it would be a free state, or a slave state. 

Sometimes, there was even bloodshed — a foretaste of things to come.

California was admitted as a free state under the Compromise of 1850. A group of senators from the South protested, and warned that admitting California could lead, eventually, to the dissolution of the United States.

That was the risk California took to resist slavery.

Later, hundreds of thousands of Americans would die on the battlefield, in a struggle to save the Union — and, ultimately, to deliver millions of Americans from slavery to freedom.

It was a price paid in blood.

It has been 161 years since the end of the Civil War. And there are good arguments to be made that America could have done more to help the freed slaves and their descendants. 

But it is too difficult to determine who should pay reparations, and who should receive them.

California’s Kamala Harris, the first black female presidential nominee, also reportedly has a slave owner among her ancestors.

Is she supposed to pay reparations to herself?

Left-wing governments have led the push for reparations. They do it as a form of virtue-signaling, or to push the issue up the national agenda.

The first was the town of Evanston, in Illinois — another “free” state, which produced Abraham Lincoln himself.

San Francisco and the State of California formed committees to study reparations, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

But neither has budgeted any cash for the idea.

Alameda County says its focus will be “criminal justice reform,” as well as more spending on housing and education.

None of these is a substitute for economic opportunity.

And Oakland already learned the hard way that giving money specifically to black residents, even if privately funded, is unconstitutional. 

Either all receive help, or none.

If we are serious about helping black Americans achieve their potential, the best way is to build a growing economy that creates jobs at a rapid pace.

That is what President Donald Trump achieved for black Americans in his first term, when their wages rose for the first time in a decade.

Talk of reparations does the opposite. It signals to investors that Alameda County is not safe — that they will be abused by a county government that pursues extremist racial agendas rather than the public good.

That can only hurt black residents, and all residents.

If reparations are ever paid, it will be at a national level.

Most Americans reject the idea. And pushing absurd local versions of reparations probably hurts the case.

Our forebears in California made a choice. We should honor their legacy by building a free economy that brings prosperity to all.

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