Pssst! Hey, brotherman! Sisterwoman! Have you put in your application for your slavery reparations money yet?
Just kidding. Contrary to whatever rumors you may have heard, the federal government is not paying reparations for slavery.
And, by every conceivable indication, it never will, except in some people’s dreams.
Unfortunately, thousands of African-Americans have gotten suckered out of their money by scams promising tax credits or tax refunds related to slavery reparations.
The rip-off, which cynically tends to target churchgoers and senior citizens, has become so widespread that the Internal Revenue Service has posted a notice on its Web site (www.irs.gov.) warning taxpayers not to fall victim to it.
Among recent prosecutions, a Sherman, Texas, man was sentenced in late January to 78 months in prison for preparing 10 fictitious federal income tax returns, each claiming a $40,000 credit for a “black tax investment.”
A Florida tax preparer was shut down and her assets frozen after making a bogus offer to secure tax credits for blacks in exchange for a $100 money order.
A Virginia tax accountant was sent to prison in 1999 on 22 counts of filing false returns for clients, some of whom he claimed were owed a “black tax credit” as a reparation for slavery.
Yet the scam has only grown since the mid-1990s to almost 80,000 reparations claims filed with the IRS last year. That’s a big increase from about 14,000 claims that were filed a year early.
The filers sought more than $2 billion last year in compensation that they are not going to get. Instead, they have to pay the back taxes and possible penalties when the scheme is busted. If federal authorities believe you deliberately tried to deceive the government, you can be prosecuted.
As a descendant of African-American slaves, I find it sad that some people are celebrating Black History Month by fleecing black people, especially when the fleecers are black.
Yet, as a former police reporter, I also find the scheme to be sadly unsurprising. Reparations scammers are doing what con artists always do. They are taking advantage of a basic human desire to get something that has not been earned–at least not by anyone now living.
Most of us black folks feel we are owed something for what slavery and subsequent discrimination took from our ancestors. But, generations after slavery, it is impossible as a political and practical matter to put a cash value on our feelings, especially when it arouses even more outraged feelings among those who do not share our feelings.
That’s why America has no legal history for paying reparations to anyone but the original victims of the offense. In this way, surviving Japanese-Americans who were sent to detention camps during World War II received a formal apology and a token $20,000 in the 1980s.
More recently, Tulsa, Okla., officials announced a new fund in January to pay $5,000 to each of 138 still-living black survivors of that city’s 1921 race riot. Local ministers started a second fund with a $20,000 donation. Neither fund will use tax money.
Freed slaves received little more than an effort by Gen. William T. Sherman and others to grant them the proverbial “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, an effort that President Andrew Johnson, sympathizer with the South, repeatedly vetoed.
Nevertheless, the reparations movement has found new life in recent years but little traction. Even during the Bill Clinton years, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) made virtually no progress in his crusade to create a commission just to study the possibility of reparations.
With all the ensuing publicity it is no wonder that some people who don’t follow the news very closely think they may be a winner in some sort of reparations sweepstakes.
Excitement was kindled further by Johnnie Cochran’s announcement that he and other prominent black lawyers were planning to sue Uncle Sam for reparations. Surely if anyone could get Ol’ Massah to cough up our 40 acres and a mule, Cochran could.
But, sorry, folks. Like my daddy used to say, when somebody offers you something for nothing, that’s probably what you’re going to get. Nothing. Not even the mule.
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E-mail: cptime@aol.com
