Alameda County has approved a sweeping reparations plan at the same time it is facing a massive budget shortfall. County officials have already admitted they are struggling to close a gap of more than ninety million dollars for the upcoming fiscal year. Despite this financial crisis, supervisors voted unanimously to adopt a plan that could eventually include cash payments to residents based solely on race. Supporters call this historic. In reality, it is deeply unfair, financially reckless, and built on a premise that does not match the facts of American life today. No one alive today owned slaves The plan is framed as a way to correct slavery‑era injustice. But California was never a slave state. No resident of Alameda County today owned slaves. No resident of California today was enslaved. Forcing modern taxpayers to pay for slavery that happened over 150 years ago is not justice. It is collective punishment. Reparations advocates often argue that “systems” or “structures” justify payments. But systems are not people. Taxpayers are. And taxpayers today are being told they must pay for something they had no part in. Slavery still exists in parts of Africa today If the moral argument is that slavery anywhere in history requires financial compensation, then the logic collapses immediately. Slavery still exists in parts of Africa today. Modern human trafficking exists worldwide. Yet Alameda County is not proposing reparations for victims of modern slavery. It is proposing payments based on ancestry, not actual harm. Furthermore, what about the hundreds of thousands of white people who were victims of the Muslim slavers? For centuries, European nations and even the early United States fought long, costly campaigns to stop the Barbary Coast slave raids, where North African corsair states captured and enslaved Europeans and Americans by the thousands. These conflicts, including the First and Second Barbary Wars, were the first foreign wars fought by the United States and were driven by the need to end the enslavement of American sailors and European civilians. Millions of Europeans were taken in these raids over several centuries, showing that slavery was not a simple one‑direction historical event but a global problem that affected many peoples. This history makes it clear that no single group today can claim exclusive historical victimhood, and it further undermines the idea of imposing modern reparations on taxpayers who had no connection to any of these events. This reveals the core problem. Reparations are not about helping victims. They are about political symbolism. The government does not have the money The county is already cutting positions, reducing services, and renegotiating contracts just to stay afloat. Officials have eliminated dozens of vacant jobs and made reductions across departments simply to pass a balanced budget. Yet they still approved a plan that leaves the door open to cash payments that even supporters admit would be difficult to fund. A government that cannot cover its basic obligations cannot afford race‑based payouts. The plan calls for expanded housing programs, economic development initiatives, increased education and healthcare spending, and criminal justice reforms. All of this costs money. And Alameda County does not have it. Even the federal government has warned that race‑based reparations programs may violate the Equal Protection Clause. So not only is the plan unaffordable, it may be unconstitutional. It is unfair to everyone who is not included Reparations divide residents into categories of deserving and undeserving based on ancestry. That is not equality. That is not unity. That is not justice. The plan does not even verify whether recipients are descended from slaves. In other words, people who never suffered the harm may receive payments, while people who did suffer other forms of injustice receive nothing. This is not a serious policy. It is a political gesture and a joke – but a costly one!
