Equal opportunity activist Ward Connerly responded to a California board's claims that offering reparations for Black state residents would not only stimulate the economy, but would also put a damper on crime, telling Fox News' Will Cain the move is a "bad idea."
"Capital, money, reparations… that will stimulate this economy for the 2.6 million Blacks in California," one speaker said at a Sacramento meeting on Friday.
"There's only one thing that would stop our children from busting into these liquor stores; there's only one thing that would stop our kids from busting into these jewelry stores, stealing watches and jewelry, and that's reparations," the speaker continued.
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Proposed payment totals climbed from $220,000 last year to $360,000 this year, according to Cain's Sunday report from "Fox & Friends Weekend."
"I think it's a bad idea. I'm not going to form a committee or anything to oppose it because of many considerations. I respect the perspective that the proponents of this goofy idea have," Connerly said of the reparations proposal during Sunday's show.
Connerly, founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, said he was born in the Deep South in Leesville, Louisiana, and has suffered "some of the humiliations of race."
Still, now living as a California resident, he considers reparations for descendants of slavery to be a bad idea.
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"Our founders told us this was a less-than-perfect union, and we wanted to make it a more perfect union… we know that we have some problems in the country, and we're working through them. Those problems relate to a lot of identities," he said.
"What about women?" he asked later, pointing to historical attempts to prevent them from making progress. "People based on sexual orientation, some argue, fits into that category. How about immigrants? Recent immigrants? Bad idea."
Connerly said, by his own estimates, claims that five million people would qualify for the proposed reparations are overreaching, adding that, unless enacting reparations triggered a mass influx of newcomers, he believes only half of the estimated number would qualify.
He also believes that state voters would take a stand against the proposed idea at the ballot box.
"California is a progressive state, but we're not insane, and so I think that the people of this state would rise up and say ‘no.'"
