Monday
July 11, 2005
REPARATIONS THE BEST WAY?: Mary
Mitchell began her column in the Chicago Sun-Times
last Thursday with this:
"I
don't know what it will take for the folks in control of this
country to understand that reparations for slavery is going
to happen. I can't say when it is going to happen, but it will.
Despite legal setbacks, black conservatives and David Horowitz,
reparations is the best way to build a bridge across
our great divide. Otherwise, African Americans and
Caucasians will just keep sniping away at each other."
(emphasis added)
Whether Mitchell
is a naive idealist or simply detached from reality, the truth
is that it's hard to think of anything that would tear open America's
tender racial scars faster than to have the government start cutting
taxpayer-funded checks to African-Americans based on claims of
being fifth and sixth generation descendants of slavery. Even
America's
first black president understood how hopelessly problematic
reparations would be and what sort of damage they would do to
the country.
Mitchell
continues with the shallow, cynical suggestion that an apology
for slavery is only "sincere" if accompanied by a stack
of crisp, green bills:
"Yet, a sincere apology is a hard thing
for most of us. When we've wronged someone, I mean really shamefully
wronged them in a way that you wouldn't want anyone to know
about, saying "I'm sorry" can get stuck in your throat.
That's why reparations has been a hairball
in America's throat for a century."
For the record,
in 1998 Bill Clinton told the world that America was "wrong"
to have taken part in the slave trade. In 2003 President
Bush called slavery "one of the greatest crimes of history"
and said that Christians (a less than subtle reference to America)
had "added hypocrisy to injustice" by tolerating slavery.
Just last month the
United States Senate unanimously adopted a
resolution "in the spirit of true repentance" apologizing
for the injustice of lynchings committed in America. Who can argue
these expressions of regret aren't sincere?
The problem, which Mitchell clearly fails to grasp,
is that neither more words nor more money will do much of anything
to solve whatever racial problems still exist in America. The
President and the Senate could apologize for slavery every day
for the rest of the year to little effect.
Likewise,
a check for $10,000 or even $100,000 deposited tomorrow in the
bank account of every African-American in the country with even
the most distant ties to slavery won't do anything to solve the
underlying problems that continue to plague black culture like
fatherlessness, drugs, crime and violence.
One thing
such payments unquestionably will do, however, is to engender
a sense of bitterness among a vast majority of Americans from
all walks of life who, while they may sincerely be sorry about
slavery, don't feel culpable for a moral abomination that ended
more than 140 years ago. - T. Bevan 12:05 pm Link
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