The Case Against Reparations Sometimes a bad idea is so pregnant with mischief that it compels our attention. One such idea is now propelling a movement to secure reparations for American slavery. The seeming simplicity of this plea is truly seductive. In skeletal form the argument looks like this: Once upon a time some white people enslaved some black people; the institution of American slavery robbed "the black community" of its inheritance; the long years of servitude produced enduring harmful consequences for "the black community"; reparations are necessary to make "the black community" whole once again. It sounds reasonable and it sounds moral, but is it? Is a reparations program workable? Would attempting to carry out such a plan cause more harm than good? As usual, the Devil is in the details.
Before any wealth changes hands, these five questions must be answered with finality:
1. At whose expense will reparations be paid?
2. Who will receive the reparations?
3. Who will administer the transfer of wealth?
4. What will be the total cost?
5. What will signal the end of all reparations payments forever?
Let's look at these questions one by one.
First, who pays the bill? Many people would say "the government", but the government has no wealth of its own to give away. The government does not own a single shop, or factory, or farm. The government gets its funds by seizing the earnings of its citizens under duress. So who would really pay? Perhaps all citizens without regard to their income? Only citizens earning above a certain amount? Only white citizens earning more than a certain amount? All white citizens regardless of whether their ancestors owned slaves? Only the descendants of slavemasters? Who would have the authority to decide who pays the bill?
Because the notion of indebtedness is at the very heart of the reparations issue, the questions of who pays and who receives payment are inseparable. So to answer question two we must resolve the matter of who is worthy of receiving the debt payment. Will the debt be paid to all black people now living in America, to what is loosely called "the black community", on the assumption that all blacks have been equally disadvantaged by the legacy of slavery? Or will the payout exclude those blacks who came to America voluntarily seeking The Land of Opportunity? Will prosperous black folks get a cut? Will the payouts be confined to only the descendants of slaves? Perhaps individual black people would be excluded from the program altogether, with all the wealth being funneled into black institutions to fund "good works".
Every potential compulsory donor and every potential recipient will have a strong opinion about the worthiness of his claim to inclusion or exemption. The potential for acrimony and bitter name calling is beyond imagination. Historians will join the debate to clarify points of American and slave history. The result will be an even deeper confusion. The first casualty will be the notion that slavery, even American slavery, was a simple black-and-white racist institution.
White folks did not invent slavery; they didn't even invent slavery in America. American Indian tribes were practicing slavery long before Columbus waded ashore. The Atlantic slave trade began in earnest in the seventeenth century when some Dutch merchants hatched the idea of sailing down to Africa to buy a boatload of Negroes, who would then be transported to the West Indies where they would be traded for molasses. The molasses would then be sold in Europe for a profit. Then the process would be repeated. The Dutchmen went to Africa because that's where the slave markets were. The African and Arab slave merchants had been open for business for centuries before the Dutchmen arrived. Other European governments with colonies in the New World increased their use of African slave labor. Of the roughly 11 million slaves who reached the New World between the mid-1500s and the mid-1800s, only 4.5 percent (500,000) set foot in North America. Some historians estimate the number to be as low as 400,000. Either estimate is less than half the black population of a single American city, Chicago, spread out over two and a half centuries. A mere twenty-five years after the end of the Revolutionary War (less than half a human lifetime), the importation of slaves into the United States was declared illegal (1808). In fact, all the states had ended the importation of slaves by 1803. Superior living conditions in America resulted in an impressive two percent annual growth rate in the slave population with 50-plus births per 1000 population and only 30 deaths per thousand of the slave population. The effect of slave smuggling would have been cancelled by the roughly 15,000 slaves who were freed each year.
In 1819 President James Monroe supported legislation to allow the creation of Liberia. In 1824 the capital city of the new colony was named after him: Monrovia. Very few slaves wanted to go to Liberia, even to gain their freedom. To this day almost no black people , free or slave, have evinced any desire to go to Africa. As strained as life could be living close to whites, they have always preferred it to this available alternative. Indeed, the trickle of black Americans emigrating to Africa is lost in the comparative tidal wave of black Africans seeking a better life in Europe and North America, especially Africans with advanced degrees who can find no market for their skills in Africa.
The very existence of slavery kept the South economically backward. Because plantation businesses were immunized against fluctuations in labor costs, the South never felt any pressure to consolidate or mechanize or improve efficiency. The North invested in innovation to reduce costs while the South stagnated. The slaves were always there to answer any labor need at their own slow, unenthusiastic pace. The planter aristocrats grew rich, but southern development languished. By the time of the Civil War the state of New York alone had eight times the industrial productivity of all the Confederate states combined. The South remained the most economically backward region of our country until recently. Slavery itself was the key to the South's early strength and its later downfall.
To those who argue that the United States (meaning "the government") didn't do enough to abolish slavery, the simple answer is that it was powerless to do so. The very creation of something called The United States of America necessarily demanded the inclusion of states where the institution of slavery was well entrenched. When men argued that slavery contradicted the modern notions of human dignity and the God-given right to individual libery, the slave holders responded that slavery was supported by ancient tradition and by the example of almost the entire world outside America. Most of the world's people, Europeans included, had always lived in various states of un-freedom. Nowhere else in the world was there a clamor to end slavery, least of all in mother Africa who's countless Arab traders and black potentates had grown fabulously wealthy on the time-honored slave trade since the dawn of history. It was clear to all that there would never be an agreement about forming a "United" States of America if a necessary precondition was the dismemberment of slavery, root and branch, and the consequent collapse of the southern economy and the impoverishment of the wealthy planters who were so well represented among southern politicians. So the question of slavery was side-stepped like a sleeping mad dog that everyone knew would someday awaken.
Because the amount of political influence a state has in the House of Representatives depends upon the size of that state's population, the slave states wanted to include all slaves as full citizens for the purpose of apportioning political representation, even though the notion that the slave-state politicians would represent the slaves' best interests was a preposterous fiction. The anti-slavery forces responded that to argue for the right to hold slaves as property on the one hand and then to argue for the inclusion of slaves as full citizens on the other hand, was a logical contradiction and repugnant to boot. The abolitionists wanted to minimize the political influence of the slave states, and therefor argued that the slaves should count for nothing in the matter of apportioning members to the House of Representatives. In the long political struggle against slavery it would have been better for the slaves if their value, for apportionment purposes, had been zero. A compromise between the opposing sides allowed each slave to count as three-fifths of a citizen. Racial arsonists such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton repeatedly demonstrate their high ignorance (or low political cunning) by misrepresenting the "three-fifths" compromise as emblematic of white racism when, in fact, it was one of many stepping stones along the path leading to that glorious white-boy invention: institutional anti-racism.
The simple truth is that white folks, Europeans and people of European descent, were the first people in human history to find slavery morally repugnant and to stomp it out in their part of the planet. They also mounted a crusade to end slavery wherever they had influence. It was a frustrating, bloody struggle, but in historical terms it was revolutionary. The period 1772 to 1865 saw slavery swept out of the English-speaking world. That's only 94 years, or one generous human lifetime. It was a true moral revolution. Once anti-slavery sentiment was established in the West, the West began to export it by example, by bribery, and by force.
On June 22, 1722, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield abolished the legal status of slavery in England. He called the institution of slavery "odious". Scottish judges followed his example six years later. By 1778 slavery had ceased everywhere in the British Isles, making Britain the first-ever slave-free area on the planet. Thereafter Britain became a home and a staging area for anti-slavery activists and committees. Many writers argued against slavery, including Daniel Defoe and Alexander Pope. Samuel Johnson attacked slavery at every opportunity. Member of Parliament William Wilberforce devoted years of his life to the promotion of anti-slavery legislation. When his anti-slavery Bill came for final consideration, the entire House of Commons, including his old adversaries, cheered the diminutive Mr Wilberforce, who sat bent in his seat with his head in his hands and tears streaming down his face.
Soon after, Henry Brougham authored and promoted the 1811 Felony Act, a sweeping and severe law that inspired terror. The Act threatened any British subject anywhere in the world who bought, sold, or transported slaves. The law also applied to foreign nationals in British territory. The penalties were severe and the law was diligently enforced. It was a stunningly effective piece of legislation and it demolished the slave trade throughout the British Empire.
Much of the heavy lifting fell to the men of the British Navy, who struggled to suppress the slave trade on the high seas and in the dangerous shallow African coastal waters. The entire coast of Africa was carefully mapped all the way to the Persian Gulf so that anti-slavery operations could be conducted more safely. By all accounts, these British sailors were Christians imbued with anti-slavery sentiments who regarded their efforts to crush the slave trade as a holy mission. For the most part they received little reward other than personal satisfaction. Crews operating in African equatorial waters were decimated by tropical diseases to which they had developed no immunity. It was not unusual for more than half of the officers and men to die from disease on a three year voyage to Africa.
In 1820, Commodore Sir R.G.Collier presented his report on the status of anti-slavery efforts: "England, certainly, the whole world must acknowledge, has most faithfully abandoned the trade. America must be considered next in good intentions." He reported that the United States had sent naval units to Africa and elsewhere and "is engaged in its suppression with great sincerity." In other words, the English-speaking world was expressing is best self by struggling to suppress the Atlantic slave trade at considerable expense to itself in money and lives.
All of this is noteworthy for several reasons. First of all, you probably weren't taught these facts in school. Your children have an even smaller chance of being taught these truths. It is not politically correct to explain to children that white Europeans and Americans invented institutional anti-racism and were the heroic vanguard in the struggle against the ancient and once universally accepted institution of slavery. At no time did black Africans mount any organized effort to suppress the slave trade. On the contrary, after the England abolished slavery throughout her empire and France did the same in 1848, the tribal leaders of Gambia, the Congo, Dohomey, Senegal and other African nations sent delegations to London and Paris to vigorously argue for the continuation of slavery. The black Africans felt that the very foundation of their traditional way of life had been called into question. They fretted that anti-slavery efforts by Europeans would destabilize their world. Africans never opposed slavery in principle, they only opposed their own enslavement. One English anti-slavery activist in the Sudan found Africans completely unreceptive to moral persuasion: "It was in vain that I attempted to reason with them against the principles of slavery. . .they thought it wrong when they were themselves the sufferers, but were always ready to indulge in it when the preponderance of power lay upon their side."
An excellent example of this African perspective was unintentionaly laid before us by the artistry of the oh-so-liberal director-as-educator Steven Speilberg in his somewhat fictional docu-drama Amistad, which purports to be the true story of a slave ship that dropped anchor in a New England harbor. What was to be done with the slaves aboard the ship? Were they children of God, endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to liberty, or were they some guy's property? Well, duh! Many fine and completely fictional speeches later, the radiantly beautiful center of attention, the slave Cinque, is set free in accordance with the highest moral principles of the New Englanders. The curtain falls. There isn't a dry eye in the house. But what Mr Speilberg concealed from you, and what history records, is that the beautiful Cinque returned to Africa and, in the best African tradition became a slave trader. This film is shown in American classrooms where it serves to fuel the demand for reparations, even as it conceals the African lust to keep the slave trade thriving.
Clearly, in 1820 the young United States was in the paradoxical position of suppressing slavery beyond its borders, while slavery still existed in some regions within its borders. The truth is that before the 1850s the anti-slavery forces within America did not possess sufficient political power to overcome the wealthy planter aristocracy of the South, which itself was only a fraction of the mere five percent of southerners who owned a slave. Because the slave states could include three-fifths of their slave populations for the purpose of assigning members to Congress, the South enjoyed more political influence in Congress than the size of its free population would warrant. From 1789 to 1860 southerners dominated the federal government. Eight of the first fifteen presidents were slave owners and three more were notherners with southern sympathies. The South had also dominated the Supreme Court.
The balance between free and slave states, which favored the South, had been maintained by admitting a new free state to the Union every time a new slave state was admitted. In 1819 there were 22 states, eleven free states and eleven slave states. Missouri sought admission as a slave state, thereby threatening the delicate balance. Northerners proposed admitting Maine as a free state. So far, so good. But the northerners also wanted to impose constitutional restrictions on Missouri that would turn it into a free state. Southerners feared that if the North got the edge, the North would engineer the progressive emancipation of the South. (Yup!) The Great Missouri Debate in Congress lasted from early December 1819 until late February 1821. In February 1820 President Monroe wrote to Thomas Jefferson: "I have never known a question so menacing to the tranquility and even continuance of the Union as the present one." Finally, the southerner Henry Clay proposed a compromise, which was accepted: Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and slavery would be unlawful in the Louisiana Territory north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes.
The Missouri Compromise favored southern interests but, more importantly, it postponed any further threats to the unity of the nation for almost thirty critical years during which the North prospered, industrialized, and swelled its population. Forty years after the Missouri Compromise the North possessed the power to compel national unity. We are accustomed to speaking of the United States, but prior to the Civil War most Americans spoke of these United States. The Civil War made that difference. So to those who argue that the United States is responsible for American slavery, the answer is that prior to 1860 the United States, as we mean the term today, did not exist for purposes other than foreign diplomacy. No sooner did the free states attain the political and economic edge over the slave states than all hell broke loose and the anti-slavery crusade was on. The War Between the States dragged on for four years and left six hundred thousand Americans dead on American soil. African-American participation in the war came late and was never necessary to the ultimate outcome of the Civil War. At the end of the war the federal forces still had in reserve an armed force equal to the one they had in the field, while the Confederate Army was in rags and had nothing in reserve. Any suggestion that African-American participation was necessary for the preservation of the Union, or that blacks freed themselves, is nonsense.
Some black academics insist that the reparations package include an apology for slavery. If the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, together with the 14th and 15th Amendments which made explicit the civil rights of all black citizens, together with six hundred thousand dead white folks aren't apologies, what on Earth is? Six hundred thousand white people is fifty percent more than the estimated 400,000 black people who were brought to North America on slave ships!
The simplistic scenario of slavery as a morality play in black and white is completely false. The American slaveholder class was the original Rainbow Coalition. Any hope that black America can simply milk white folks for reparations and then move on is doomed to founder on this one fact alone. Many American Indian tribes, including the Choctaws, Chicasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles owned black slaves. What will it do to racial harmony in America when today's black folks, who were never slaves, present these Indian tribes with a demand for reparations now in the twenty-first century? Cherokee slavemasters were notoriously cruel. By the time of the American Revolution, the Cherokee had abandoned their practice of enslaving other Indians, and thereafter kept black slaves exclusively. The Cherokee also proved to be excellent slave catchers and sold their services as such. Perhaps Jesse Jackson should present an extra stiff reparations bill to the Cherokee Nation. Or perhaps he should demand cash from the Choctaw, who chose to fight for the Confederacy. The Choctaw and other tribes continued to hold black slaves even after the fall of the Confederacy and only reluctantly abandoned slavery after signing a treaty with the U.S. government in 1866.
The United States also included a large population of free blacks, among them a considerable population who had never been slaves. Free blacks were permitted to own slaves in every state except Delaware and Arkansas. In 1860 there were half a million free blacks living in America, half of whom were living in the South. Many free blacks used the vocational skills they had acquired on the plantation to earn a living and build bank accounts. They worked as carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, tailors, butchers and shoemakers. Over time, thousands of free blacks acquired the means to purchase property. Thousands of them chose to purchase black slaves. There are records of blacks buying their own relatives and then selling them again for a profit. Some blacks owned slave plantations or rented slaves to their white neighbors. They advertised in newspapers for the return of runaway slaves. The black planter Andrew Durnford owned nearly seventy-five African slaves and was forever complaining about his "rascally Negroes". The Negro planter William Ellison owned over a hundred slaves who were, by reputation, the worst fed and the worst clothed in his part of South Carolina. Though Ellison himself had been a slave, he never permitted even one of his slaves to duplicate his own experience. He never freed a single slave. Black slavemasters contributed funds and support to the Confederacy. One even boasted of his plan to capture Abraham Lincoln and raise the Confederate flag atop the U.S. Capitol building. Collectively, these black slavemasters owned over ten thousand black slaves.
Why weren't you and your children taught these undisputed facts about the black slavemasters in your local school? The answer is this: the truth confuses the simple morality tale of sinister whites and saintly blacks. The truth about black complicity in the slave trade in both Africa and in America might hurt black self-esteem, not to mention a certain tendency toward pious self-righteousness.
Given the earlier sexual maturation of African Americans, and the fewer number of years between African American generations, and the tendency of African Americans to have more offspring than whites, we can calculate that the black slavemasters could easily have at least two million descendants living in America today, which begs the question: should the descendants of slavemasters be allowed to collect reparations for slavery? If the answer is yes, then the whole project is morally contradictory and idiotic. If the answer is no, then millions of blacks would remain empty handed while their neighbors received a windfall. This would send waves of resentment through the black community. Would the damage to black unity be worth the price? Perhaps all applicants for reparations should be required to prove that they are not descended from slavemasters. All the consequent delving into America's past would quickly expose the true complexity and moral ambiguity of the reparations issue. The early enthusiasm for making a quick buck from the suffering of one's unknown ancestors would soon cool and turn to embarrassment. The vision of Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfumi and others demanding that millions of white people, whose ancestors never owned a single slave, hand over their earnings to millions of black folks who are descended from black slavemasters, is priceless.
At the heart of the reparations demand is the morally repulsive notion that white people share some sort of hereditary guilt for slavery in America. If the black community embraces this notion of hereditary guilt, then shouldn't they start the ball rolling by demanding that the black descendants of black slavemasters pay reparations also, thereby shifting earnings from one part of the black community to another part of the black community. Or would such a logically consistent plan of action split the black community into resentful factions? The reparations idea is, indeed, pregnant with mischief.
What Jesse Jackson & Company really want is for lots of white folks who never owned slaves, and most of whose ancestors never owned slaves, to give buckets of their earnings to lots of black folks, many of whose ancestors were black slavemasters. The Indian tribes whose forbears were enthusiastic slavemasters would not have to pay a penny in reparations because they are sainted minorities whose past moral shortcomings are best left unmentioned. And please don't mention the African kingdoms whose thriving slave markets lured European merchants to Africa in the first place. And don't disturb the Honorable Louis Farrakhan by mentioning the role of Arab slave traders throughout the African continent. Mr Farrakhan doesn't like to be reminded that the prophet Muhammad himself was a slavemaster. No, let's just stick it to whitey because whitey has those beautiful deep pockets.
The third question that must be answered is: Who would administer a reparations program? Because the collection of reparations funds would not be voluntary, and because the only entity that can legally use force against the citizens is the government, it would naturally fall to the already hated taxing authorities to compel the payment of reparations. (In 1994 alone, according to the Internal Revenue Service, more than twenty thousand blacks wrote "exempt" on their federal tax returns on the grounds that the descendants of slaves should receive money from the government.) But would America's "black leaders" sit idly by while The Great White Sugar Daddy of government dispensed riches to the chosen recipients. Every "black leader" knows that his influence fluctuates in direct proportion to the amount of goodies he brings home to his community. It's hard to imagine that established black organizations would not insist on playing a central role in dispensing the reparations booty. They would soon begin squabbling among themselves over who was better qualified to be the king of the mountain of cash, thereby stirring up more resentment.
Further complicating matters is question two: Who receives reparations? Some advocates of reparations have argued that all monies should be funneled into black organizations, rather than going to individuals, because individual recipients would simply pump their windfall back into the economy with no lasting benefit to the black community. They have a point.
Some years ago, Oprah Winfrey gave fat cash lump sums to several Chicago welfare families in the hope that they would use it as seed money to pull themselves up and out of poverty. Most of the recipients went on spending binges, filling their apartments with gleaming appliances and consumer electronics. (Oprah doesn't talk much about her experiment.) But if black organizations are to be the recipients of all the reparations money, how can they also be the administers of the program? That would be insane !
The most respected of black organizations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has an established history of ineptitude, inefficiency and corruption. For years the organization has been plagued by scandal, multi-million-dollar deficits and bitter in-fighting. Former Executive Director Ben Chavis used three hundred thousand dollars of NAACP funds to avoid a sexual harrassment lawsuit brought by a former NAACP female attorney. What sort of idiot sexually harrasses an attorney ! During his tenure Chavis sought to broaden the NAACP's constituency by making overatures to gang leaders, black separatists and Nation of Islam bossman Louis Farrakhan, all of which alienated more traditional members and Jewish supporters. (see Nation of Islam in this series) Former board chairman William Gibson charged $110,000 in questionable expenses to the NAACP. The organization is now led by Kweisi Mfume (born Frizzel Gray) whose modestly self-bestowed name means "Conquering Son of Kings". Mr Mfume, who was hired to be the organization's new moral compass, is notorious for having fathered five children by four women in only 21 months. One of Mr Mfume's first projects was a lavish shindig for boxing promoter Don King, who is notorious for cheating his boxing talent out of millions of dollars of earnings. At not time during the festivities did Mr Mfume mention that Mr King was also a convicted murderer. More recently, Mr Mfume undertook a noisy media offensive against the television networks, accusing them of racial discrimination in hiring black talent. It was later revealed that the campaign was just a tool to pressure NBC into giving Mr Mfume himself an Oprah-Winfrey-style talk show of his very own. He had already taped a pilot program. But when it comes to shakedowns, the all-time racial racketeer is Jesse Jackson, whose numerous anti-discrimination crusades against wealthy American corporations miraculously vanish the instant those corporations make generous "contributions" to Mr Jackson's chosen "charities". Among his victims are Viacom, SBC and Ameritech, GTE and Bell Atlantic, AT&T and TCI. Jackson accepted $763,000 in taxpayer funds for the purpose of enrolling low-income children in the KidCare program. Operation PUSH signed up only 151 families. Other community groups would have charged only $7,550 for the same service. In 1996 Dorothy Rivers, who sat on the board of directors of Rainbow Push, was convicted of helping herself to $1.2 million dollars of taxpayer money and spending it on furs, Neiman Marcus clothing and a Mercedes Benz. She was later pardoned by Jackson's close friend Bill Clinton. It was recently revealed that the Reverend Jackson had been looting his own Project PUSH to pay off his long-time mistress and the mother of his love child, Karin Stanford.
Could such people be entrusted to manage a reparations fund that some advocates insist should run into the trillions of dollars? W.E.B. DuBois' Talented Tenth has turned out to be quite a collection of muttonheads. By what right could any organization claim a share of the reparations money, anyway? If the money is meant to replace a lost inheritance, then it should go to the descendants of slaves alone, and it's nobody's business how they spend their inheritance.
Should black people vote on how the money is to be distributed? Who gets to vote, all blacks, or only the descendants of slaves? Do whites get to vote on who pays reparations, or are they simply compelled to pay as a consequence of some side deal made between black leaders and sympathetic politicians hungry for black votes? Just imagine all the nastiness these issues would stir up.
The fourth question is: How much reparations is enough? The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations (N'Cobra) demands that blacks be exempted from income taxes forever. The highest lump-sum demands now run into the trillions of dollars. Two scholars, Larry Neal and James Marketti, have suggested estimates of $1.4 trillion and $4.7 trillion, respectively. Imagine stuffing one million dollars into a box. Now imagine stuffing one million dollars into each of one million boxes. That's one trillion dollars. The good people (mostly white people) of America have already spent several trillion of their dollars on Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. It didn't create paradise on Earth. It didn't heal the problems of the black underclass. It didn't mend the fabric of the black family. On the contrary, the arrival of a gush of gift money diminished the need for family cohesion in the face of adversity. A black woman had no need of a black man as long as the government (white taxpayers) gave her a check every month. In the 1920s eighty percent of black children were living in stable two-parent homes. The black family had survived slavery intact. The Great Depression and the welfare state it inspired, were far more destructive. After decades of government largesse, seventy percent of black children are now born out of wedlock. There is such a thing as poisonous compassion. To blame slavery for the sorry state of the black family is to disregard the historical record. What is ailing the black community can't be cured with money.
The fifth and final question is: What will signal the end of all reparations payments forever? The question is morally problematic. Do the black people now living have the right to strike a one-time deal regarding reparations that all future generations of blacks must accept? What if, after receiving trillions of dollars, the black community decides that it hasn't been properly healed? Can they keep demanding more money until they decide that they are finally healed? If future generations of blacks are unhappy with their lot, can they re-open the reparations issue? Clearly, an open-ended deal is no deal at all. No self-respecting people would allow themselves to be used as a perpetual cashcow, and no self-respecting people would allow themselves to degenerate into a posture of permanent parasitism. No, the only acceptable reparation would be a fixed sum transfer. After that, the door would be slammed shut on the reparations issue forever. But when the transient swell of cash has been spent will the black community be healed and whole and happy? Will they feel victorious?
In practical political terms the five questions asked in this article present an insurmountable barrier to any cash-transfer reparations project. What purpose would it serve anyway? Three quarters of black America is already living a middle-class American existence, which places them head and shoulders above most of the world's population. The black underclass is not starving, it is just the underclass. Ninety-seven percent of America's officially poor people own a color television set. Starving people do not own consumer electronics.
Only education can elevate the underclass. The underclass must embrace education. That won't happen as long as anti-intellectualism remains the hallmark of black "street culture", and as long as black street culture defines what it means to be authentically "black" in contemporary America.
To put it more bluntly, American blacks have already profited handsomely from the suffering of their ancestors. Those ancestors were already slaves before they were transported to America. Slaves in Africa had little chance of gaining their freedom. But the community of blacks in North America would become the beneficiaries of a philosophical and moral revolution that was developing in the Western World, a revolution that created institutional anti-racism and expressed its democratic sentiments in powerful legislation such as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the American voting rights acts, the English anti-slavery Bill and the 1811 Felony Act. Again and again Western governments demonstrated their resolve to enforce these laws. African folkways, by contrast, did not favor democracy. There was never an African abolitionist movement. Slavery is still practiced in Africa today. American journalists have gone to Africa and purchased black African slaves. White abolitionist organizations are buying the freedom of African slaves today. With few exceptions, contemporary black America has maintained a posture of studied indifference to the plight of today's African slaves, preferring to spend its energy pestering white America with pleas of "What have you done for me lately. Talking about the real suffering of real slaves today would diminish contemporary black America's claim to number-one victim status. Lord knows, they have a hard enough time trying to trump Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.
The left-wing leadership of black America wants to sue the very culture that freed them. Lincoln said that slavery was an offense to God, and General Sherman punished the South by burning it to the ground. The United States has paid enormous deference to blacks. Trillions of dollars in welfare, scholarships and jobs have been lavished on black Americans. Black America has already elicited more charity from its so-called oppressors than any race in history.
The argument that losing touch with old tribal traditions has hurt black America is nonsense. Africans know all about their tribal roots and folkways and it hasn't helped them to run their countries worth a darn, or fight rampant disease, or suppress their slave trades, past and present. African Americans, by contrast, have created a uniquely African American culture that is a fusion of many different folkways and a uniquely American experience. This culture has spread its influence over the whole world and will continue to influence American culture far into the future.
A taste of possible things to come appeared in a recent article in the New York Daily News, which informs us that a black community group is "outraged" because the government won't give them buckets of the taxpayers' earnings to finance a week-long celebration of the planned reinterment of bones from the old African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan. The bones were unearthed a decade ago by construction workers.
When he heard that the General Services Administration had denied the request for $350,000 for the big party, a spokesman for the Committee of Descendants of the Afrikan Ancestral Burial Ground, one Charles Barron, ranted: "This is the second killing of our ancestors", ignoring the abscence of any evidence that they had been killed the first time. Expenses for the hoped-for party would have included $200,000 for videotaping the shindig and $50,000 for a written obituary for the 400 skeletons. The group wanted $55,000 to pay speakers, including $2500 for the preposterous racist theorist Professor Leonard Jeffries. The videotaping would have included 10- to 20-minute interviews with each of the 31 members of the Committee of Descendants of the Afrikan Burial Ground at $1500 per interview. And it just wouldn't be a party without the requested $90,000 for an open bar at committee member Doris Porter's private club.
When he heard that the taxpayers wouldn't be paying the enormous liquor bill, the enraged Charles Barron shouted: "We're sick of this exploitation!"
Brace yourselves folks, this is just the beginning.
Copyright 2001
Thomas Clough
Recommended reading:
The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson.
The End of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza.
Time on the Cross by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman.
Is there just a microscopic thread of logic and reason anywhere in that argument. Just one? 
