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THE DOCTOR IS IN - Good for State Senator Steven Bradford for saying it as it is: The seven-figure checks for reparations to black California residents is "just not happening".
Well, we all have had our troubles in life, and you deserve reparations, and I deserve reparations, and apparently, we all have reparations we apparently are OWED...by someone.
Call me whatever name you wish, but here's MY list of reparations I want to see:
1) Being told to my face by my college advisor, a white male, who told me that my 3.93 GPA/summa cum laude status, and my high MCAT scores weren't good enough to get me into a California medical school, despite the listing showing an African-American female getting in with a 2.9 GPA and a 10-point lower MCAT score...because I was a "white male". Where are MY reparations?
2) Getting the crap kicked out of me at age 12 by four Latino youths my age and older because "they didn't like whiteys". Where are MY reparations?
3) Being lumped in by more people than I can count in my life, job, the press, social media, etc. that because I was a white male (Jewish to boot), that I was racist and bigoted and chauvinist, even though the list is longer than I can fit into this article about how I fought racism my whole doggone life. Where are MY reparations?
4) Paying more taxes than I can think of to support the needs and causes of underprivileged minorities, and then told it was NOT enough. Where's my slice of the pie about all the antisemitism I've endured my entire life?
5) My Jewish ancestors killed in Europe because the United States denied access to safe harbor and then forced to die in the gas chambers run by Nazi Germany. Where are MY reparations?
6) But enough about me: where are the reparations owed to Japanese-Americans forced into concentration camps, and then having all of their money and property stolen from them and thus made to start from scratch after the war?
7) The terrible plight of over performing Asians unable to get into medical, law, and other graduate schools, and even undergraduate colleges, because they were lumped together ("I am the worst kind of animal!" to quote an Asian male fourth-year California medical school student who, like myself, was forced to go out of state while our families' taxes were going to pay OTHER students' tuitions). Where are THEIR reparations.
8) The many Latino families who had to fight to get better English education when forced into horribly underperforming "bilingual" school programs because they had Latino last names and ethnicity. Where are THEIR reparations?
9) The untold number of families, predominantly black and brown, who had the bad luck of living near an underperforming school, and were forced away from better schools not too far away. Their career opportunities were and are still horribly limited. Where are THEIR reparations?
10) The students in our schools who were at the mercy of paranoid teachers and unions who--for their own irrational and selfish agendas--let their mental health and educational achievement go straight into the toilet by keeping them remotely-educated and tearing away their childhood and sanity by keeping them in prison/lockdown far, far, FAR after the pandemic was ending. Where the devil are THEIR reparations?
And the list goes on, and on, and ON. Reparations? To quote the late Tom Petty, "everyone's had to fight to be free". Life is a bitch...but getting over the unfairness by our own efforts is the best we can and should EVER try to do.
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father to a wonderful wife and two cherished children. He was termed out of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) twice after two 9-year- stints as a Board member and is also a Board member of the Westside Village Homeowners Association. He previously co-chaired the MVCC Outreach, Planning, and Transportation/Infrastructure Committees for 10 years. He was previously co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee, the grassroots Friends of the Green Line (which focused on a Green Line/LAX connection), and the nonprofit Transit Coalition His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
