Posted on 04/24/2010 2:20:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In yesterday’s Times, the estimable scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. had an odd op-ed article entitled “Ending the Slavery Blame Game. ” What made it odd was its construction. At the heart of the piece was Gates’ very interesting summary of recent scholarship about the complicity of African tribes in capturing African people and selling them to European and American slave traders. Sandwiching this summary, however, was Gates’ bid for op-ed relevance, which was his assertion that this fuller understanding of a broader criminal enterprise would give President Obama “a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.”
Is the idea of reparations still contentious? I guess it is–if somebody brings it up. But reparations seems to be an idea that had a heyday of argument a decade ago, and was then shelved in favor of ideas more vital. But even at the time of its greatest urgency, it seemed to be one of those self-evidently good ideas that became less good once you got into the practicalities. For one thing, there was the question of where the money should come from. No doubt some of the great slave trade fortunes of the 17th and 18th and 19th have been carefully cultivated and survive, but many have been used up, or, more significantly, destroyed during the Civil War. Moreover, it seems hardly equitable to charge the people whose ancestors arrived on these shores after the Civil War with the cost of paying for slavery. It’s very hard to think how my Malanowski forebears, for example, who arrived here in 1905, profited by the institution of slavery. On top of this is the fact that a great many people struggled against slavery and died fighting it. It may seem logical to argue that the descendants of slaves should be compensated by those who supported the institution, but if that is so, is it not just as logical to argue that the descendants of slaves and others should pay compensation to the descendants of the Union troops who died fighting for their liberation? I wonder how Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan would feel about that.
But what really rankles about the idea of reparations is that is turns slavery into a civil tort–an argument over back pay. Of course it was something much worse, something profoundly more evil, a society-wide, systematic criminal conspiracy. And in his second Inaugural, Abraham Lincoln specified precisely the price that terminating the conspiracy would exact. Speaking a little more than a month before Robert E. Lee’s confederate forces would surrender, LIncoln said “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Was all the wealth sunk? Well, Richmond was burned, and Atlanta was burned, and the Shenandoah Valley was torched, and the tremendous value embodied by two and a half million slaves was struck from the books. Was every drop of blood drawn by the lash paid for another drawn by the sword? At least 620,000 soldiers were killed during the Civil War; with the limitations on record-keeping, this figure could easily be as high as 700,000. That was out of a population of 30 million. This does not include the physically or psychologically wounded, or civilian deaths caused by combat, or civilian deaths caused by a lack of food or medicine. And it in no way includes the incredible economic devastation wreaked upon the south, destruction so complete that for a century the south was poorer and more backward than the rest of the country (and let’s face it, Mississippi and Alabama still are.) The destruction fell on north and south alike: sons of southern slaveholders and sons of northern slave ship owners both died, as did the sons of families north and south who did not engage in the slave trade but who acquiesced in its existence.
And of course, some of the last blood shed belonged to Lincoln, in a futile effort to achieve the long-lost war aims of the south. Lincoln saw that the evil was not civil but moral, that the evil perpetrated was Biblical in its proportions, and that the price that had to be paid was stupendous. Those who seek reparations should visit the Union cemetery at Gettysburg or Hollywood cemetery in Richmond or any of dozens of other graveyards: there is your treasure.
"St. Batholomew’s Day Massacre"
well put. Slavery was bad. But if these people really want to get in touch with their roots, then All those who take the check should be required to renounce their citizenship and transported back to the country of origin, never to be able to return
Lets see how long they would last in their motherland.
“At great risk to themselves, my ancestor’s hid, fed and clothed runaway slaves in the underground railroad. They asked for nothing in return”
My ancestor’s did the same. Other ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
I fail to see how anyone can buy into the notion of reparations. It just seems ridiculous to me.
Do you feel sometimes everything is upside down and backwards?
“Do you feel sometimes everything is upside down and backwards?”
Indeed I do:) And I’ve been feeling this way every single day since 11/2008!!!
I don’t owe sh#t. My family arrived in 1950. My Great great grand father was emancipated in 1862 himself. By the Tsar.
Why is that? Did you or I have slaves and profit from them? No.
Did any blacks living today suffer under slavery? No.
I owe them zero. However, nothing is stopping you from handing over whatever you want to any black you see. Go for it.
If you pay out of your own personal finances – fine. Not me. Enough is enough. I'm sick of hearing this old beating drum. Obama's health care bill was back door reparations. Good grief.
Gates is a very creepy person, IMO.
Let us not forget that the first legally recognized U.S. slave owner was a black man by the name of Anthony Johnson. Mr. Johnson (a free black man) claimed ownership of a John Casor (Castor) when he purchased the property of another man to who John Casor was an indentured servant. The courts ruled that John Casor was in fact the property of Anthony Johnson for life, there by establishing the precedent for slavery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Castor
It's true that the Civil War killed hundreds of thousands of Confederate and (preponderately white) Union soldiers.It is also true that those who were killed in the Civil War would have had a lot more descendants if not for the war. The ones who had descendants down to this day, mostly were ones who survived the war.
It is also true that the institution of slavery was accepted throughout history and worldwide, up until the Christians - Protestants more than Catholics, and British more than other Protestants - rejected the institution of slavery during the Enlightenment. Southern Americans were simply uniquely situated to be the last to get the word, because they had a tiger by the tail, and knew it. But there is simply no other culture besides the Christian culture which has ever rejected the institution of slavery, and fought to end slavery as an institution (rather than opposing slavery only for themselves and their kin). The Battle Hymn of the Republic was, let's face it, a recruiting song for the Union Army. You will not find its like originating in any other language than English. Nor any at all, before the Enlightenment.
Black Rednecks and White Liberals - Thomas Sowell
All the money in the world will not resolve these problems. Some Blacks will never have self-respect, and those people will always choose to blame their lack of pride, lack of dignity and guilt in their current actions on Whites that are long dead.
More than ten years prior to that a Virginia court had entered the following decision: "Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath . . . brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away . . . the court doth . . . order [that] the first serve out their times with their master according to their indentures, . . . and that [the] third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere."
From Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (January 1898), vol. 5, no. 3, p. 236.
“And don’t forget when a black man is tops in golf”
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Tiger Woods would tell you that you are wrong! He says he is NOT black, he is “Cabrilasian”. He is part Caucasian, part American Indian, part Asian and a small part black.
Indentured servitude was the precursor to slavery, but in the case you reference, unless I misunderstand, the “life sentence” was due to a violation of an indenture agreement. In the case of John Casor, Mr. Casor was simply viewed as property to be transferred in a sale. Maybe a fine distinction, but an important one IMHO.
How much in reparations will Obama have to pay?
Many in my family are buried in Hollywood Cemetary. My ancestors ran a military hospital in Gordonsville during the War.
The only reason Lincoln didn’t send them all back to Africa was that he knew there would one day be a National Basketball Association.
If I remember correctly, people who self-identify as “African-American” are on average 20 to 25% European or “white” in ancestry.
IOW, our slave-owning ancestors were not quite as effective at diluting African blood as they thought they were.
I’ve heard of it too! I read that Monrovia was named for Pres. James Monroe also. Of course, Liberia was a name-word that referred to ‘liberation’, or liberty!
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