"Forty Acres and a Lexus"

SAN FRANCISCO
California is the last place that ought to be embroiled in the slave reparations controversy. Slavery was never legal in the state. There were no plantations. Its ports were not slave trade centers--wrong coast.

Nonetheless, California has become the first state to step into the reparations game. The legislature two years ago passed, and Democratic governor Gray Davis signed, a bill requiring insurers doing business in the state to provide information on any slave policies they or predecessor companies had issued. The state's imprimatur lends undeserved credibility to the long-shot effort by race demagogues to shake down corporations for damages incurred in pre-Civil War America.

On May 1, California's insurance commissioner, Harry Low, made public data from the Slavery Era Insurance Registry. Low's office noted that 92 percent of insurers complied with the measure--with most claiming they had no hard evidence of slave policies (some had conveniently destroyed old documents). Only 8 out of more than 1,300 insurers provided comprehensive answers. Aetna, for example, produced the first names of 16 slaves covered by policies payable to the slaveowners in the event of damage to or death of the slaves.

At an April 24 press conference with Jesse Jackson, Davis said the reparations law he signed was important, because "clearly we want to right any wrongs and do justice to people who were taken advantage of." Later, his staff tried to spin that statement into meaning that Davis supported the collection of information, but that he has no position on paying reparations. As Davis eyes reelection and then the White House, his staff is hoping America won't notice that he is now the highest-ranking elected official in America to take a stand in favor of reparations.