Posted on 12/11/2001 12:51:44 PM PST by laurav
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:38:51 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Bush administration is trying to run roughshod over this country's only independent federal civil-rights agency.
In a late-night ceremony last week, the White House had a judge swear in Peter Kirsanow as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which earlier this year chastised Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, and Katherine Harris, the secretary of state, for their role in last year's election debacle in Florida.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
But I repeat myself.
Thank you, Mark Twain.
Slavery spawned wealth
In protecting slavery — arguably this country's greatest generator of wealth during the first half of the 19th century — the federal government made it possible for many families and companies to reap substantial financial benefits from the misery heaped upon slaves and the generations of dispossessed African-Americans that the Jim Crow period produced.
Some newspapers that are still around today profited from ads they once ran on the buying and selling of slaves or the apprehension of runaway slaves. More than a few people whose family's wealth is rooted in the antebellum economy and benefited from the enslavement of millions of Africans are well off today because of this connection. It's likely that some of this ill-gotten gain has been used to capitalize businesses or endow universities. Some insurance companies, such as Aetna, that insured slaveholders against the loss of their human property benefited from slavery.
They all owe much to the descendants of slaves. This debt should be paid in some fashion to all African-Americans regardless of the mix of their bloodlines. Miscegenation was a spoil of slavery. White slave owners routinely had their way with black women. The linear successors of these offsprings are the most obvious proof of the cruelty inflicted upon slave families.
It's doubtful that this nation will ever fully pay the huge debt it owes to African-Americans. But there can be little doubt that the debt exists.
DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.
A Letter to the Editor of USA Today
FrontPage Magazine | March 30, 2001
Dear Editor,
LIKE THE CAMPUS AGITATORS who smeared the editors of a campus newspaper that printed my now famous ad on reparations, DeWayne Wickham needs a lesson in civil discourse. I was marching for civil rights for African Americans before he was born, but Wickham smears me as someone with views close to David Duke. That is a lie. I am a fierce supporter of Martin Luther King's vision of a nation without racial preferences. I work with inner city charities to help African American children who have been left behind. The views I expressed in my now famous ad on reparations are identical to those of 70% of the American people (according to an online Time poll).
In my ad, I argued that reparations for slavery 136 years after slavery was ended will only inflame racial passions, and set group against group. Recent Hispanic immigrants will be asked to pay reparations to multi-millionaires like Johnnie Cochran. Wickham replies that the "government" will pay. There are two things wrong with this argument.
First, the government doesn't have any money that doesn't come from taxpayers. Second, the government Wickham wants to sue, ended slavery, freed the slaves, instituted the Civil Rights laws and has given him the opportunity to be a well-paid columnist at one of the nation's most important newspapers. What does he think taxpayers owe him?
David Horowitz
by DeWayne Wickham
The embargo exists for no good reason, except to pander to the Cuban exiles' hope of regaining the privileged positions they held before Mr. Castro came to power.
In this piece of drivel that was published in Useless Today the liars and lawbreakers become the "good guys" and the the Bush Administration which is seeking to obey and eforce the law. Why does an allegedly reputable newspaper publish this twaddle? Why does an allegedly competent editor let this get past his red pencil?
Are you as ashamed of your profession -- journalism -- as I am of mine -- law?
Congressman Billybob
One of the most ridiculous articles I read was in the April 21st, 1998 edition of USA Today by some clown named DeWayne Wickham. Mr. Wickham asserts that the Boulder race is violating affirmative action by their new policies. How absurd!
Affirmative action is an American policy in the work place. There is no room in sport for such politically correct nonsense.
What we need here in America is more competition with the greatest runners in the world, not less. We should study them and find out what works and why. They're obviously doing something right.
Useless Today deserves " such a pranging" in the immortal words of Lt, Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) in Dr. Strangelove.
Congressman Billybob
You need to read post # 55 about the "six hour dinner with Fidel Castro" to have a further index of where this author deWayne Wickham, is coming from. Our "Red Zone" audience will get really fired up over this story.
Congressman Billybob
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