Posted on 09/08/2001 5:47:29 AM PDT by sarcasm
The wounds left by segregation on the souls of black folk lie nearer the surface than those that slavery inflicted on blacks long dead. The U.S. government's dereliction of duty during the Jim Crow era stands clear and shameful. An argument that the United States ought to pay reparations to blacks should leave slavery out of the picture and deal with more recent wrongs. But reparations advocates are too enthralled with Afrocentrism to trust living blacks' actual memories.
After the end of the Civil War in 1865, while the U.S. Army still occupied the Southern states, the federal government tried to enforce the 13th Amendment -- which ended slavery -- and the 14th Amendment -- which granted citizenship and its privileges to all those born or naturalized here. The efforts met with some early success: In the late 1860s and early 1870s, blacks voted in the South.
But these efforts were doomed because the white South would not consent to do penance. In 1869 the Supreme Court was asked to rule that the 14th Amendment required states to abide by the Bill of Rights. The court allowed that a reasonable person might think the 14th Amendment said that, but that would require changes in states' attitudes toward their citizens, especially the new black ones, that were ''so serious, so far-reaching and pervading'' that the court couldn't contemplate them.
This lack of imagination spread from the high court through the other branches of government, which increasingly despaired of bringing white Southerners to heel. In the early 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant used the Army to crush the Ku Klux Klan. But as scandals engulfed his administration, even the hero of the Civil War could do little to keep the South in line. The last straw was the contested election of 1876, in which the voters of Florida returned two slates of electors for president. In desperation for a quick solution, the North and South struck a deal: Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio would be president, and the Army would withdraw from the South.
Shortly thereafter, Southern states began passing segregation ordinances, and white Southerners began lynching blacks who defied the new racial order. In the spirit of 1876, the North left the South alone. In 1896, the Supreme Court approved the new American apartheid by ruling that blacks could have ''separate but equal'' accommodations.
The tide of white supremacy did not turn until 1957, when President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to enforce the Supreme Court's belated discovery that ''separate but equal'' was ''inherently unequal.'' Even then, the White House dragged its feet on every civil rights issue. Not until Lyndon Johnson became president did the government move seriously to enforce the laws that made blacks equal citizens.
The U.S. government's unwillingness to enforce its own laws for nearly a century remains a shocking failure of U.S. democracy, and Washington's collusion in perpetrating an unconstitutional apartheid falls squarely under the ''crimes against humanity'' provisions of international law.
The age of segregation lies well within the living memory of most of the U.S. population, and its victims still suffer the real consequences of an inability to get a good education or good jobs.
Why, then, have reparations advocates focused on the much weaker case of slavery? Slavery, unlike Jim Crow, initially was in keeping with the laws and customs of five continents. The U.S. government preserved it but ultimately undertook a costly war to end it. Slavery's direct victims died long ago.
The only thing going for slavery as a basis for reparations is that it feeds the Afrocentric therapeutic mythology of black identity. For Afrocentrists, slavery has a special place as the tragedy that separated blacks from their cultural past. Yet any of us who remember Jim Crow and its corollary of casual violence toward blacks knows that the U.S. government has much more to answer for in recent crimes.
Eric Rauchway and Clarence Walker teach U.S. history at the University of California at Davis.
Why, then, have reparations advocates focused on the much weaker case of slavery? Slavery, unlike Jim Crow, initially was in keeping with the laws and customs of five continents. The U.S. government preserved it but ultimately undertook a costly war to end it. Slavery's direct victims died long ago.
Reparations JUST BECAUSE??? If we can't convince them to give reparations for slavery, we'll try to get it for segregation...
There should be at least a dozen or so major, separate historical events for which racial guilt can be milked and the national treasury looted.
Oh good, so lets go after the African countries that contain the Tribes which so willingly sold their countrymen for MONEY and trinkits. Lets Go after Portugal and England for shipping them to us....and lets all go after every country on ALL FIVE CONTINENTS that encouraged the slavery trade. (Sar-Casm)
Gee, next we can go after the Germans for the cost of WWI & WWII and don't forget to through Italy and Japan in there then we can go after France for reparations to the families of all the classy individuals that got their heads chopped off during "Le Revolution" and make them pay for all the damage to russia and the sphinx in egypt. Gee, maybe we would could go after China for the mongrol invasions and Italy for the Roman conquests......
Have I made my point yet?
See, it's not your money, it's the government's money that will pay for 'segregation reparations' so, it's O.K. Really, it is. We knew you would understand if we put it to you that way. Feel better now?
Believe me - it's only starting.
And the Capital will be Mobile!
With so many blacks in the middle class and those who have achieved even higher levels of success, how can we conclude blacks can't possibly succeed without reparations?
I've had it too. As Dr. Phil would say, "So what are you getting out of this?" and "Let it go. The only person your harming is yourself."
No, It's called a shakedown.
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