Thoughts on Slavery Reparations

Republican Assembly of Illinois Newsletter ^ | 2-6-04 | Frank Penn

[spintreebob]

Feb, 2004, Federal District Court judge Charles R. Norgle dismissed "without predjudice" a lawsuit bought by descendants of slaves seeking reparations from corporations they say profited from slavery. The legal implications of this lawsuit have been argued at length in many venues. As a result, I have been led to some personal ruminations on this issue.

I have always been mystified by racial grievance mongers who pontificate on the glorious Nirvana that their lives would be had they only been left in Mother Africa, notwithstanding the general quality of life there. Since most American blacks have some measure of Caucasian genealogical ancestry, and since slavery was the transmission belt that enabled the mixing of their black and white ancestor's gene pools,(whether by rape,semi voluntary or voluntary associations) than what they are really saying is that they and their decendents would rather not exist.

I acknowledge the kidnapping and suffering of my African ancestors, and the resultant decades of slavery, oppresion, and discrimination that amounted to a monstrous crime for them. But the result was me and my family living in a nation that provides the most liberty and opportunity for any African descended people on earth. I am profoundly grateful to be here. I welcome the opportunity for any clarifcation of the historical record, and should that clarification reveal more evidence of the often bestial nature of the American institution of slavery, than we should unflinchingly face and acknowledge it. The historical record should be properly contextualized, and honestly examined without any attempt to inflate the crime beyond the actual truth of the injustice. The endless racial navel gazing, racial identity posturing, and puffed up grievance mongering should be rejected for the PC irrelevance that it is.

Sometimes it seems as though the race industry merchants and class action lawyers would divide us into warring ethnic enclaves with mortar pits in the streets sniping at each other ala the Balkans, all of them seeking racial spoils with government help. This is nothing more than a cultural Marxist wealth redistribution scheme.

[CSM]

You really need to wake up and smell the coffee. I will give you a real life example from my life. After serving in the Army and while paying for my own college education, out of my own personal savings, I decided to try to take advantage of some of the programs available for low income people. I was making less than $4,000 per year and paying in excess of 3 times that for my college expenses. I decided to take a trip to the local SS office to fill out the applications for Medicare. All I wanted was health coverage to take care of Emergency Trauma care.

What answer did they give me at that office? I was told by the clerk that I was a white boy and I should get my ass out there and earn more. These benefits weren't for whites, they were for minorities because white people can always find work. That is just as rascist as what you describe.

So, as a white person I didn't qualify for financial aid. As a white person I didn't qualify for help from the social programs set up to help low income persons. In fact, as a white person I would have to perform to higher standards for admission to that same college.

Yet, I now get to pay slightly more than half of my income into the tax rolls to fund all sorts of benefits that I will never get the chance to use. In fact, in the temporary situation that I tried to use them I was turned down because I was white. You need to realise that racism is racism, regardless of which race is being given advantages because of their level of pigmentation (or lack thereof).

The type of comments you are making are showing that you excuse racism, in order to make up for past instances of racism. Racism is a major obstacle to some people, but many people are able to climb that wall, dig under that wall or find their way around that wall and become successful. Others just keep beating their head against the wall and use it as an excuse for their own inability to conquer it and move on!

[IronJack]

No way that those events were anything other than appalling.

Too general an indictment. I think each case needs to be examined on its own merits.

On a frontier where little or no institutionalized judicial system existed, lynching was an expedient vehicle for dispensing justice swift and certain. I suspect the victims were actually guilty as often as they were innocent. Not that that's a particularly good track record, but the false impression from modern propaganda is that crowds of citizens were just milling about looking for someone to hang.

I don't mean to be an apologist for brutality, but I think it's important to view history as it happened, not as we see it from a hundred years away.