Producers’ Pick | Ward Connerly: California is About to Hand Out Reparations for Slavery

The more you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Kilmeade. From a common sense perspective, I think reparations for United States slavery and its legacies, Jim Crow with the new Jim Crow, should be for the descendants of US slavery and its legacy, Jim Crow and the new Jim Crow.

That's how complicated it is. That's Kamala Moore, chairperson of the California Reparations Task Force. And believe it or not, reparations are moving. Here is Ward Connolly, president equal rights for all political action committees.

He's president of, Ward is president of the American Civil Rights Institute in a former region at the University of California. Ward, where are reparations for the citizens of California now? Are they on the threshold of passing?

I don't think so. I think that the legislature wants to do something, but they realize they've got a political football on their hands. And many of us, just ordinary citizens, think this is not a good idea. So I don't think anything's going to actually come of it. And if it does, we're going to fight it.

You've taken formal action. You tweeted that Prop 29 could stop any form of reparations for black Californians from happening. In what respect? How? Prop 209 says that you cannot, in this state and about nine other states that we've fought in over this, over the last 24 years, you cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any citizen on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.

And if this isn't a preference, I don't know what is. How can you possibly qualify for it? I mean, it's going to be the rare individual that has a pure background that dates back to slavery. And how does that benefit somebody from something that happened over 200 years ago? Ryan, the answer to that is that the proponents of this would really like to just just distribute benefits to people like me, black people, claiming that we've had a rough time in this country and it's time to pay us back.

I don't disagree with some of that. We have had a rough time in this country. But we made the conscious decision as a people, the country did, 25 years ago or so that we had to resolve the issue of race in our country.

When we came out of Jim Crow, President Kennedy had said, race has no place in American life or law. And so we consciously decided to integrate, not have separate institutions as Malcolm X had proposed. So we've made the decision to integrate.

That was a good decision. But there are people now who are looking for another mission, progressives in our country. They don't know where the heck they're going or where they want to go, but they want to transform the country. And in the process, we're dealing with issues that we've already resolved. We've said that we want integration, but people are not comfortable with that.

We want to overcome, we've overcome, but they're not comfortable with that. And so what we have is just a mess on our hands. No political leadership, no moral leadership. Biden is not a leader. He is the problem. But that's not to say that President Trump is the solution either. Because to a large extent, he is the source of many of our problems that we face right now.

We love his policies. But the style of delivering them is problematic for a lot of people. And what you see with reparations, Brian, is the outcome of all of this disarray in the country. And we're going to have to defeat it in California. Because if we don't, it's going to spill over into the rest of the country. People will come here who were not residents of California because they might get some sort of a goodie distributed by the legislature. It's a mess. It's just a mess. So I know what you're saying.

I never thought about that. People coming from the outside to say, yeah, I moved out of the country. My great grandparents were here.

I need to pay out and I'll take a condo. Here is Assemblyman Reggie Jones Sawyer talking about this very issue, a Democrat from Los Angeles, a member of the California's Reparation Task Force. When you read what has been done in California against African Americans, it's unbelievably eye opening. We really do need to look at some of the laws that were in place that restricted African Americans to live certain places, that restricted who you could marry. You could not marry out of your race here in California. And so the vestiges of slavery that may have started in the South and the East Coast still permeated in California society. So that's the sentiment that you say has no place, right? Right, right. He's not wrong in identifying some of our history, but we do not solve problems in our country by passing on to different generations the responsibility of paying for that.

My grandkids would be paying for the damage that was done to me arguing the need for reparations. And where does it end? Who's next? Chinese Exclusion Act. How about them? Gays who are saying we have been marginalized. How about them? People who are just now coming to the country from across the Southern border are going to argue that illegal immigration has been put around our neck.

How about us? We're talking trillions of dollars. More importantly, we're upsetting the fabric of our people. We are a pluralistic society in this country, especially in California. And people came here, my people did, from the deep South because we thought that California was the land of opportunity. Now we're being told that we were living a lie. This is idiocy and we have to bring a close to it.

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Subscribe and listen now at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's more from the Assemblyman, cut 36. There have been things that have gone on in America that have stifled, impeded, or stopped African Americans from really realizing our full potential. It's not all about money, it's about generational change for all African Americans.

What's flawed about that reasoning? It's not all about money, it's about generational change, but it is about money. It's about money. And I think that there are some people who see the low hanging fruit there because we're vulnerable as a society. White guilt. No political leadership, no moral leadership. Hey, there's some low fruit, let's get it.

And I just think that they're flirting with danger here. I know, Ward, I know you are. So you're an African American. What is your background? What is your heritage? Where's your family from?

My family is from Leesville, Louisiana. We are a multiracial people. Some of my people were Irish. On my father's side, one of my great grandparents left the ranch and married a slave. On my mother's side, it's Irish and Choctaw Indian, no African descent.

Therein is a whole other story. What is race in America? Who's been discriminated against?

When it reaches the point that the presumed discriminators are going to be paid by those who didn't want slavery at all, such as most people of California, you've reached the fantasy land here of public policy. And you need some courage to stand up to that and let people say, wow, you're being racially insensitive and you don't understand and you're denying our past. No, we're not. We're living in the present and we cannot continue to look back the way we are. We study history.

I didn't think we were going to judge it the way we are and then ask for cash in return from it. There's signs that their scientists say Irish need not apply. The Italians formed a mafia because they felt they were being discriminated against and couldn't get a job.

They had to form their own protective society. The American Indians constantly say, and they might have a case, they were here first. So that's not the way America was made. America has constantly made progress. We acknowledge where we've been. We acknowledge where we want to go.

And I think we're their country that continues to self-correct. But this, I 100% agree with you, Ward. I think this is, this is a sinkhole that'll further poison the country. How close is this to passing? I don't think it's close right now. Well, I won't say that. It's close, but I think that we can prevent it. And we do have in this country laws that some of us respect.

This is not an easy one for me, my friend. I'm going to be called everything that you can imagine by my fellow black Americans, but this is not right. It has long-term ramifications. And if they go forward, we'll try the law because it's a violation of Prop 209, which is in our constitution. It's seeking to circumvent it by this hokey notion of ancestry. And, and it will invite people to come to California in search of that low-hanging fruit, as I described it.

But you're a brave guy. He doesn't look like you know how to take a backward step. America's got to get better. First and foremost, you got to love the country and then everything else will work out. If we can all get on that page, I'd love to go forward together.

That would certainly be an equity relief. Never deny Jim Crow happened. Never deny slavery took place.

Never deny the mistakes, but also deny the great, don't deny the greatness. Ward, thanks so much. Thank you, Brian. Put the power of over 100 meteorologists and the worldwide resources of Fox in your hands with the Fox weather podcast.

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