Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too
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David Horowitz -10 Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea
Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and
Racist Too
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2001
One
There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery
Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of
African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the
ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their
descendants too?
Two
There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits
The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only
whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for
Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as
well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is
so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most
prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per
capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks
living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.
Three
Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others
Gave Their Lives To Free Them
Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even
for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in
five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What
about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the
slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask
them to pay (through their descendants) again?
Four
America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No
Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery
The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then
after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian
refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish
persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and
Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?
Five
The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not
Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury
The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations
claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust,
Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments
in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in
each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the
injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of
reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole
qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already
been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or
slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no
distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice
itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the
manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What
America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?
Six
The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All
African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic
Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination
No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals
have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150
years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred
were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black
middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in
absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest
that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual
character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial
discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a
century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from
slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes
of whites (and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American
born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group
of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to
decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the
case?
Seven
The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into
Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.
The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for
reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a
helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and
to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what
some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and
fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood.
How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now
living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as
demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only
necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of
opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than
themselves?
Eight
Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great
Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been
made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial
preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) -
all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is
said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between
African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions
and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate
racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a
"healing," what will?
Nine
What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?
Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade
was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its
existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white
Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the
anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and
Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not
for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who
gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America
would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all
ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men
are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest
standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of
the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would
not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected
individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and
its leaders for those gifts?
Ten
The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans
Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom
Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the
descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to
isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose
implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a
long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political
left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social
contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.
For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in
their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under
attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more
assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political
left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans
-- especially African-Americans.
America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged
black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage
that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its
African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support
of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and
institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.
David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/FrontPageMagazine.com and president of
the
http://www.cspc.org/">Center for the Study of Popular Culture.