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 | Email | Send To A Friend | Printer Friendly

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