New York lawmakers vote to study the idea, which can only harm blacks and worsen race relations.
“We don’t need reparations. We need restraint. Don’t go out and buy a Range Rover when you livin’ with your momma. And pay your momma some rent.”
Those lines come from Ricky, a character in the hit 2002 comedy “Barbershop.” The movie has a nearly all-black cast and is set mostly in a clip joint on the South Side of Chicago, where Ricky and his fellow barbers engage in free-wheeling nonstop banter with customers. Ricky was responding to a small-time crook who had said that ancestral slavery “ruined my whole life” and to another customer who suggested that black people demand reparations from the government.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images