Mayor Brandon Johnson proposes to pay the reparations out of money already earmarked for violence prevention in the Windy City.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has called for paying reparations to African-American residents as a way to prevent them from committing crimes.
Mr. Johnson, who has been mayor for eight months, revealed the plan in a CNN interview on Friday evening going into the holiday weekend. During the interview, he appeared to blame government policies for crimes committed by black Americans, characterizing the need for reparations for those who have been incarcerated “because of failed policies.”
“In order for us to have a better, strong and safer Chicago, it really requires the full force of government,” Mr. Johnson said.
He proposes to pay the reparations out of $100 million already earmarked for violence prevention in the Windy City. He said $500,000 has already been put aside as reparations money to be used to reduce what he called “the cycle of violence” in Chicago.
The proposal has set off a hailstorm of criticism. Just one post on X garnered 3,700 comments from users of the social media platform.
“Reparation has already been paid by the 360,000 soldiers who died fighting to end slavery,” one user who uses the name “LynrdsMom” wrote in an X post.
LA anthropologist Robert Sepher posted: “So white people that never had slaves should pay money to black people that never were slaves in the hopes that the black perpetrators committing a disproportionate rate of crime, rape and murder will allegedly subside. Low IQ woke Afrocentric ”logic“ is running wild in America.”
In a panel discussion on Fox News over the weekend on Mr. Johnson’s reparation plan, contributor David Webb, co-founder of the TeaParty365, referred to his status as a black man in calling out Mr. Johnson’s proposed reparations as “ridiculous.”
“By the way — who gets paid? I’m a black man; do I get paid?” asked Mr. Webb.
Mr. Webb said it was clear that Mr. Johnson was implying that “blacks are the problem, that if you give them some cash they won’t go rob your store.”
