Posted on 03/27/2002 9:03:28 PM PST by kattracks
In a warm-up match for the forthcoming battle over slavery reparations, MetLife Inc., the nation's largest life insurance company, recently announced it will set aside a quarter-of-a-billion dollars to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by former black policyholders.
Nearly 60 years ago, MetLife sold life insurance policies to blacks that were more expensive and provided fewer benefits than policies marketed to whites. For this past practice, MetLife shareholders, employees and policyholders will pay a steep price. In its defense, MetLife claimed the statute of limitations had run out for the plaintiffs. Furthermore, it argued, the company began phasing out race-based underwriting in 1948 and hadn't used race at all since the mid-60s. In any event, the company also claimed that selling these weekly-pay burial policies to low-income, inner-city customers made perfect sense because most had difficulty paying larger monthly premiums. Besides, the actuarial cost of insuring blacks — whose life expectancy was much shorter and incomes much lower — was dramatically greater than insuring middle-class whites.
None of these arguments, however, persuaded a New York appellate court, which rejected MetLife's motions for summary judgment and paved the way for a full trial. Sensing a public relations nightmare, MetLife crumbled and wrote the check.
Meanwhile, the slavery reparations movement — including high-profile black lawyers such as Johnnie Cochran — has just filed a new lawsuit against Aetna, CSX and FleetBoston claiming they profited from the American slave trade prior to 1865.
Although the slavery reparations lawsuits will eventually target the U.S. government, most observers — even the pro-reparations activists themselves — understand that getting the courts to find for the descendants of slavery and against the federal government, 137 years after the institution was abolished seems remote.
So Mr. Cochran, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the others really have their sights leveled on corporate America. They anticipate that the cry for help from the two-dozen or so blue-chip corporations they target — who, like MetLife, face litigation and boycotts — will pressure the federal government to fashion a legislative remedy.
But even if the federal government doesn't offer them a bailout, the reparations lawyers know it is in the court of public opinion where most racial-bias lawsuits are settled. Texaco, Denny's, Coca Cola and others have settled specious bias claims rather than have Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Jackson and the members of the Congressional Black Caucus call for a nationwide boycott of their companies.
This is not some big, secret strategy for the reparations crowd, either. Randall Robinson, author of "The Debt," the manifesto of the reparations movement, was quoted in USA Today as admitting, "Once the record is fleshed out and made fully available to the American people, I think companies will feel some obligation to settle. Regret is not good enough. Aetna made money derivatively at least, from the business of slavery … Aetna has to answer for that."
And judging from how most of corporate America has responded to racial-bias allegations in the past, they will pay up once again, even though polling results indicate only 11 percent of white respondents believe corporations that made profits from slavery should make cash payments to black Americans who are descendants of slaves.
But frankly, in a perverse way, many of these companies deserve their fate. Once they started down the road of paying for lawsuit protection in the form of diversity training, affirmative action hiring and promotion, and cultural awareness, they were doomed. Every Mafiosi knows that once a business starts paying him for protection, the premiums grow larger and larger until he gets it all.
MetLife should have gone to court and fought. Other American companies, however, should learn an important lesson from this: elevating an individual's race as an element in contracting, hiring and promoting won't indemnify your company from a racial-bias litigation. In the end, every American pays for this capitulation since companies inevitably pass on their expenses to consumers.
But most tragically of all is the cost borne by black Americans, who ultimately pay the steepest price for this corporate surrender. As author Shelby Steele has noted, too many blacks suffer "from bad ideas, from ignorance, fear, a poor assessment of reality and from a politics that commits them to the idea of themselves as victims." His voice is complimented by National Public Radio's Juan Williams who has stated that slavery reparations "would tell Americans . . . that blacks, especially poor blacks, are a broken people who must be treated as wards of the state. Black people would be more highly stigmatized and negatively stereotyped than ever before."
Our society struggles to overcome the myth that many blacks are simply unable to make it in America. Slavery reparations are tailor-made not only to foster a sense of black victimhood, but further reinforce the stigma of black inferiority.
If corporate America takes the easy way out and abandons principle, it won't be a surprise — only a shame.
Ward Connerly is chairman and Edward Blum is director of legal affairs at the American Civil Rights Institute.
Although the slavery reparations lawsuits will eventually target the U.S. government, most observers — even the pro-reparations activists themselves — understand that getting the courts to find for the descendants of slavery and against the federal government, 137 years after the institution was abolished seems remote.I don't think it's so remote. This is America, a country suffering from advanced PC dementia.
Are we seeing history repeat itself? I hope not.
They mean they want the taxpayers to pay for it. Doesn't anyone have any backbone anymore?
I have spent my life fighting racism, but when that fight becomes theft from me for something that I did not do and that my ancestors fought against tooth and nail for the last two hundred years, then I must consider that the tree of liberty is in need of watering. I, and my ancestors, never owned a slave, and owe nothing to African Americans. Yet, we have stood shoulder to shoulder with them in their struggle throughout the decades. We did not do so only to be robbed in the end by the very people we have defended. The people bringing these lawsuits should tread carefully, lest they lose the support of those that have been to the mountain top and did not see reparations on the other side. We saw equality of opportunity. Not theft.
Bring it on.
It is simply not true to say that these policies were race-based in any way. I was a debit agent of Met Life from 1966 to 1968, which was a few years after the last weekly policies were issued. Most of the insurance premiums I collected were paid on a monthly basis, but there were about $100/week of the old weekly policies also. The town where I was the agent (South Amboy, NJ) was lilly-white, and populated almost entirely by folks from working class Catholic ethnic groups.
For a few months I also collected premiums in an area which had mostly black policyowners, and they had a smaller percentage of weekly policies than my main 'debit'. It is only fair to say that most of these black folk had moved into the community only recently (it had been block-busted), and they had policies which had been in effect for a shorter period, so were less likely to be the older weekly policies.
I've said it before, and everyone always ignores me, but I'll say it again: I support reparations wholeheartedly.
I think we owe it to all of the descendents of slaves in this country to restore them to the condition in which they would be today if we had never dragged them over here from Africa.
In fact, I feel so guilty about it all, I think we should restore them to the condition in which they would be, not only if we had never dragged them over here, but if we had never subsequently colonized Africa either.
Let's hear it for truth and justice!! Am I all alone in my crusade?
Jesse Jackson has made many millions derivatively from slavery
Nope.
Everyone sits quietly on their couches, hoping that if they bite their lip and don't say a word, the thought police won't paint "hater" accross their forehead and drag them into the papers and onto the T.V. as the opening act of the next 2 minutes hate.
Won't work though. We're all haters now and we're all getting carted off to the sensitivity training camps one way or another, one word or another.
Stay Safe !
The last weekly policies were sold in 1963, I think, and I doubt that a pervasive use of race, if it had existed, would have vanished without a trace in 3 years. I can assure you that, as a 'field underwriter', insurance agents asked numerous health questions, and a number of questions related to occupation as well as lifestyle, even back in the 'dark ages' of the 1960's. In addition, questionable answers, marginal health answers, or larger insurance amounts would result in exams at physician's office, or an investigator from a bonding type company out checking on the applicant's background. (This was all authorized by the applicant, as part of the application process).
This simply seems to be a question of debit insurance (weekly or monthly) being sold to poorer people in urban areas, regardless of race. The markup on this kind of insurance is greater than other types (usually called 'ordinary' insurance) for reasons having to do with its being issued in smaller amounts, with a similar fixed cost, the underwriting process. In addition there were payments made to agents for collecting this insurance, 14% for weekly insurance, 6% for monthly debit insurance, and 3% or less for ordinary insurace. I do not know if these collection fee differencials, which were built into the premiums for the debit policies, are considered part of this 'race-based' overcharge or not. Since this kind of insurance was sold in urban areas, to people of modest means, it means that it is associated with a higher percentage of black customers, because blacks in the north tend to be poorer and residents of urban areas, as compared to whites.
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