RIGHT TO THE CHIN

40 Acres and A Clue: A Reality-Based Guide To Slavery Reparations

from Enigma

Every February, as Americans celebrate Black History Month, proponents of the slavery reparations movement throw their issue in the air and pimp it like they just don’t care. Last month, the concept was celebrated in a two-page spread in USA Today. What the pandering paper calls a “powerhouse team of African-American legal and academic stars” is attempting to not only recover the mathematically implausible "40 Acres and a Mule" promised (and subsequently rescinded) by our government some 130-plus years ago, they are also trying to hold accountable several present-day companies, who, during an ugly period of American history, profited from slave labor.

Now, as a white person who is opposed to slavery reparations and possible "lost wage recovery," I run the risk of being labeled racist. In our increasingly clueless society, it is not popular for a white person to say anything that is perceived to be anti-black. This outrage towards people with opinions such as mine is manufactured and manipulated by a handful of deceitful black leaders like the problem profiteering Jesse Jackson, the Communist-coiffed Al Sharpton, Michigan Demoncrat John Conyers, and the racist Randall Robinson. Instead of "bringing us all together," these exploitative and victicratic leaders’ actions and words are further increasing social and economic differences between the black and white communities in this country. White people, taught to feel immense amounts of guilt, are all too quick to cave into socialist pressures to contribute to the madness. The idea of reparations is ludicrous, and the idea of suing corporations that benefited from slave labor is just as bad.

In the matter of slavery, one fact (of the hundreds) that is often conveniently suppressed is the fact the slavery existed in Africa over 1,000 years before the first European or American took part in it. Contrary to notable portrayals of slavery (like on the mini-series, "Roots"), Africans did not sit idle and were not bewildered by white men coming into their villages and taking their people. After decades of trading blacks amongst themselves, blacks in Africa sold their own people to white people, and in a few isolated regions of Africa, slavery continues at this very moment. There were also 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States, but you won’t hear anything about that at your next NAACP meeting.

More importantly overlooked is the fact that every people in the history of the world, at one time, were slaves. All great civilizations in world history started out dependent on slave labor. The continuing reliance on slave labor, however, was also the downfall of many of these civilizations. America (or half of it) at least had the good sense to end it.

Now, while I hate the fact that slavery existed in the United States, I can't ignore the fact that the generations of black Americans whose families survived it are better off now, in America, than they would be had they stayed in Africa. I mean, seriously. When was the last time Sally Struthers did a commercial about starving children in Detroit?

Booker T. Washington, who rose from being a slave to being the head of the Tuskegee Institute, expressed similar sentiment in his 1901 autobiography, “Up From Slavery.”

“Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”

Slavery was an abomination, yes. But, in America, it is now over. What do we do now? Are reparations and lawsuits a viable solution? While you’re pondering that question, take a look at what Larry Elder, a black man, says in his book, “The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America.”

“Do wealthy blacks get a check? Should descendants of those who came to America after slavery pay up? (Elder is referring to, I’m guessing, Vietnamese boat people, Russian defectors, Iranian Refugees, Armenians persecuted in Turkey, Jews, Mexicans, Greeks, as well as Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian, and Korean immigrants.) Should descendants of those who fought and died on the Union side pay up? Should we make deductions for the trillions of dollars spent by the government on social programs from which blacks have benefited? What about people of mixed race? Should the payment correspond only to the percentage of ‘black blood’? Should we get a contribution from the African nations? After all, some black Africans assisted in the slave trade. And what about another question? Suppose the slave trade never happened, and today’s thirty million American blacks instead live in Africa. Would they be better off? Reparations indeed! What a waste of time and energy. For all a country can be is just in its own time.”

The more you study the issue, the more ridiculous it becomes. The only thing that remains constant is the fact that, in America, all slaves and slave owners are dead. And so should the issue be.

Every February (and all year round), white people are made to feel guilty that a certain “debt has yet to be repaid.” All trouble within the black community is taught to stem from white racism. No matter what we say, it is still our fault.

“Illegitimacy, poor schools, drug abuse, crime-you name it-get blamed on white racism,” says Elder. “This insults generations of black men and women who worked, survived, and thrived under unimaginably inhumane conditions. Today, many blacks ignore the meteoric progress of blacks, a success under way well before anyone heard of the expression ‘affirmative action.’”

Groups suing corporations that once profited from slave labor are committing as much of an affront to blacks as are those seeking reparations. As was mentioned earlier, all involved parties in these grievous acts are now dead, and the success of the accused corporations (Insurers Aetna, New York Life, and AIG; Financial Institutions J.P. Morgan, Chase Manhattan Bank, and FleetBoston Financial Group; Railroads Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific, and Canadian National; Textile maker WestPoint Stevens, Newspapers Knight Ridder, Tribune, Media General, Advance Publications, E.W. Scripps, and Gannett, the parent and publisher of the really pretty to look at USA Today) now benefits people of all races through jobs and services. Several of these corporations have already made public apologies for their actions during the 19th century, though, due to age limits on human beings, none of the current employees were physically able to have helped commit the racist practices.

Although our government has yet to act towards awarding blacks slavery reparations and lost wages, they have caved in at least one other slightly similar case. Over the last seven years, two million dollars in reparations has been paid by the state of Florida to the victims of a race riot in the black settlement of Rosewood. It should be noted that this tragedy occurred in 1923, after slavery had been ruled illegal. The events at Rosewood constituted, essentially, cold-blooded murder of blacks by whites, and the reparations for the crimes are equal to a really lousy and long overdue civil court judgment.
One reason why this case is interesting to understand in comparison to slavery reparations is because, as horrible as slavery was, it was, at the time, still legal and sanctioned by the U.S. government. And instead of going to jail for being slave-holders, slave-holding states were essentially sentenced by the Federal government to go to war over their wishes to keep slaves. Now the true cause of the Civil War will be argued forever, but no matter how you look at it, slavery was (at the very least) a very big part of it. And while northern states were also guilty of slave holding and slave trading, by the time the civil war started, the north was essentially out of the business.

A compromise by our government to begin the process of reparations and lost wage repayment will destroy America as we know it. Race relations are already strained, and a successful reparations bill might be the spark that ignites the race war that Charlie Manson has dreamed about for so long. People of all races need to be rewarded for their individual merits and achievements, and chastised for their individual mistakes, and we can only be held accountable for what we do NOW. Living in the past will kill the future.