[nc] Well then, just for the record let me say that just because your Brigade Commander and you support Socialism and Communism, I personally don't believe that that alone makes either one of you a Stalinist or Sado-Masochist or, necessarily, a fellow traveller. OK?
[nc] Also, just for the record, had I voiced support for reparations you would have quoted me doing so. I have seen little need to digress to discuss at length something that is not relevant and is not happening. The entire issue has absolutely nothing to do with anything I have posted by Lerone Bennett, Jr., and is just smoke being thrown by Non-Sequitur to obfuscate the fact that he is unable to discuss the relevant issues on the merits.
[Non-Seq #2777] I will point out that it is not I who labeled your hero Lerone Bennett a Marxist-Stalinist, but others.
[nc] Well then, just for the record let me say that others did not label Lerone Bennett a Marxist-Stalinist, Non-Sequitur did. The links provided by Non-Sequitur do not support the claim made by Non-Sequitur.
[nc] Indeed, when the Brigade comments on African-American history or issues, from the Brigade's sources one might begin to think that they believe original source material for African-American studies is either the Old Testament or the Talmud. And so we are treated to the African-American expertise of David Horowitz, Harry Jaffa, et al. Were I to seek knowledge of Irish history and affairs, I would expect some of the sources to be Irish. I would be unlikely to ask a Jewish philosopher about the events at Burntollet bridge, or how to pronounce Maghera. I would not seek out Dr. Jaffa to enlighten me about the Rossville flats or Free Derry corner. And if I seek knowledge of African-American history and affairs, I would expect some of the sources to be African-American. Not so with The Brigade. You have your close-minded little group of sources, and your sources do not include African-Americans.
It is not that there is any shortage of African-American sources. There are conservative, intellectual African-American sources. For some strange lily-white reason, The Brigade does not include such sources, not even when purporting to propound knowledge of African-American history and affairs.
One need not dredge up David Horowitz. One need not wrongly label anyone a Marxist or Stalinist. One may readily find African-American intellectuals who oppose reparations. One may do just fine quoting such African-American luminaries as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams.
Dr. Thomas Sowell, A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1958; A.M. in Economics, Columbia University, 1959; Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1968.
Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College.
Thomas SowellJanuary 4, 2002
The reparations fraud
Self preservation is said to be the first law of nature, and this applies not only to human beings but also to organizations and movements. The March of Dimes was set up to fight polio but it did not disband when polio was wiped out by vaccines. Nor did civil rights organizations disband after civil rights laws were passed. The fatal mistake made by those who imagine that they can appease movements and organizations with concessions is that concessions are incidental trophies for those who receive them, but unmet grievances are fundamental to their continued viability.
Back in the 1930s, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought that he could buy off Hitler with concessions to avoid war. More recently, both Israel and the Clinton administration discovered that offering even the most extraordinary concessions could not buy off Yasser Arafat. For either Hitler or Arafat to have made a lasting peace would have been to say that his grievances had now been met -- and that would have been a devastating blow to the movement which provided his power.
Against this background, it may be easier to understand why a demand can be made and a crusade launched to get something that everyone knows in advance will not be given -- reparations for slavery. No way are millions of white, Asian, and Hispanic Americans going to pay reparations for something that happened before their ancestors ever set foot on American Soil. Even those whites whose ancestors were here before the Civil War know that most of those ancestors -- whether they lived in the North or the South -- owned no slaves.
Seen in this light, the demand for reparations may seem like an exercise in futility. However, seen as a source of a lasting unmet grievance, it is a stroke of genius to keep blacks separated from other Americans and an aggrieved constituency to support black "leaders" in politics, organizations and movements.
This demand also mobilizes a certain amount of support or sympathy among whites, especially those in the media and in academia, where such support or sympathy costs nothing, and allows those who give it to relieve their own sense of guilt, while risking other people's money -- and national cohesion. Some white politicians can also benefit at little or no cost to themselves by expressing sympathy with the reparations cause or even voting for meaningless apologies for what others did centuries ago.
For these various groups, reparations is a win-win issue. For everyone else, including the vast majority of blacks, it is a lose-lose issue.
Blacks have already begun suffering losses from con men who have asked them to sign up for their individual shares of the reparations -- and have then stolen their identity and used it to defraud them. But this is just a down payment on the losses from this futile crusade.
In a democracy, a minority that is no longer even the largest minority cannot afford to alienate, much less embitter, the majority which ultimately holds the political power in the country. Too often, unending demands and grievances from black leaders and spokesmen create the impression that most blacks want something for nothing. In reality, most blacks lifted themselves out of poverty before the civil rights laws or the welfare state programs took effect.
Not only do most whites not know this, neither do most blacks today, for their leaders have taken credit for this progress by depicting it as the fruits of their civil rights movements and political efforts. But the poverty rate among blacks fell by half between 1940 and 1960, before any of the major federal civil rights legislation or the vast expansion of the welfare state under President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.
Between 1940 and 1960, black males' number of years of schooling doubled. How surprising is it that doubling your education raises your income? In short, most blacks raised themselves out of poverty, but their leaders robbed them of this achievement and the respect it deserved -- in the eyes of blacks and whites alike -- by making it seem like a concession from the government and a product of agitation.
Pointing blacks in a direction from which little can be expected, and away from the enormous opportunities open today in the economy, is a formula for personal frustration, even if it benefits "leaders." But then, that frustration is itself a benefit to "leaders," who need a constituency with a sense of grievance.
Walter E. WilliamsJuly 12, 2000
Reparations for slavery
If the November elections put Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, we can expect John Conyers, D-Mich., to introduce legislation that would set up a committee to decide who would qualify for reparations for slavery, whether they should be compensated in cash, land or some other payment, and how much each black person would receive. City councils in Chicago, Houston, Detroit and several other cities have already called for Congress to hold hearings on reparations.
First off, let me say that I agree with reparations advocates that slavery was a horrible, despicable violation of basic human rights. I'd also agree that were it possible slave owners should make reparations to those whom they enslaved.
The problem, of course, is both slaves as well as their owners are all dead. Thus, punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is out of the hands of the living. Reparations advocates, however, want today's blacks to be compensated for the suffering of our ancestors.
If we acknowledge that government has no resources of its very own, and that to give one American a dollar government must first confiscate it from some other American, we might ask what moral principle justifies forcing a white of today to pay a black of today for what a white of yesteryear did to a black of yesteryear? We might also recognize that a large percentage of today's Americans, be they of European, Asian, African or Latin ancestry, don't even go back three or four generations. Are they to be held accountable and taxed for slavery and why?
Then there's the fact that white slave owners aren't the only villains in the piece. In Africa, Moslems dominated the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. Africans also engaged in slave trade with Europeans. In fact, there was plantation slavery in some parts of Africa, such as the Sudan, Zanzibar and Egypt. Thus, a natural question arises: Do reparations advocates hold those who sold blacks into slavery subject to reparations payments? After all slavery, of the scale seen in the western hemisphere, would have been all but impossible without the help of Africans and Arabs. Incidentally, President Clinton apologizing for slavery in Africa, of all places, is stupid -- apologizing to descendants of slave traders for slavery in America.
Walter E. WilliamsFebruary 7, 2001
Does America owe reparations?
Johnny Cochran and a group of successful trial lawyers plan to bring class-action suits against the federal government and some private companies they say profited from slavery. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has already introduced HR 40, titled "Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act." HR 40 has 48 co-sponsors and a number of them, such as Jim Traficant, D-Mich., and Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., are white. Slavery was a gross violation of human rights. Justice would demand that slave owners make compensatory reparation payments to slaves. Since both slaves and slave owners are no longer with us, compensation is beyond our reach.
* * *
The reparations movement would be little more than an amusing side-show were it not for the damage it can do to blacks. It misallocates time and resources that could be more fruitfully spent elsewhere.
There's a growing black-owned and operated private school movement that addresses the fraudulent education of the public school system. Resources of the reparations movement could be used to add more private schools. High-powered reparations lawyers could use their legal skills to make court challenges of numerous state and local monopolistic regulations that stop people from getting into business, such as taxi licensing laws, cosmetology regulations, and restrictions on jitney and limousine operations.
I'd like to see lawyers bring class action suits against public school systems in cities like Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit and New York for producing fraudulent education -- certifying youngsters as high school graduates when those youngsters can't perform at seventh- and eighth-grade levels.
There's a reparations issue completely ignored: Blacks as well as whites live on land taken, sometimes brutally, from Indians. Do we blacks owe Indians anything?
WALTER WILLIAMS: There is no tooth fairy or Santa Claus giving the government money for reparations. Now... So that means that the only way that the government can give one American citizen one dollar is to first, through intimidation, threats, and coercion, take it from some other American.
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