Reparations:
An Idea Whose Time Has Come (and Gone)

Godfrey Daniel
Morphizm Political Columnist

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hang onto your wallets and pocketbooks, because there's a whole crew of self-appointed true believers that have it in mind to pick them.

The ruse this time is reparations for slavery, the latest in a long line of stupid ideas with noble-sounding titles. The perpetrators range from old-school civil rights veterans -- Randall Robinson and Julian Bond -- to ambulance chasers like Johnnie Cochran.

The argument for reparations has been around for quite some time, but it crystallized after the publication of Robinson's book, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. In a nutshell, Robinson's position is that blacks are currently in an inferior position because of the vestiges of slavery, for which they deserve an apology and reparations for the suffering that lingers to this day. Such reparations would take the form of a Trust to benefit "all African Americans."

As a predictable counterpoint, radical-turned-conservative gadfly David Horowitz has submitted so-called ads in some college and university newspapers with an in-your-face attack on the idea, and in fact, his on-line broadside sheet, Front Page Magazine, devotes much of its space to the issue of reparations. Horowitz's counter-position is that there is no one alive that was either enslaved or enslaved others, so there is no one to pay or be paid. He believes that reparations have already been paid in the form of social programs aimed primarily at blacks.

Both sides of this argument are cluttered with rhetoric and a good measure of political theater, but the issue is of such enormous significance that it must be addressed, not as an issue of money, but as an issue of philosophy.

The reparations camp is asking that the U.S. government create a class of people -- based solely on race -- to benefit financially from the tax money of all of its citizens. This is not just bad politics -- it's unconstitutional (see the 14th amendment for some light reading). It's also ironic that the group proposing this unconstitutional law is the same group the 14th amendment was designed to protect.

What the reparations camp proposes is no less than the official Balkanization of government-funded social programs, starting with blacks suffering from the "vestiges" of slavery. Next will be a program for the benefit of all Native Americans because of the obliteration of the native culture. Warming up: Chinese Americans suffering the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act. On deck: Women suffering the inability to vote during most of this country's history.

The list could turn out to be the biggest victim's registry in the modern world, and therein lies the nonsense.

I defy anyone to point to the singular long-distant historical event that caused their plight, to the exclusion of more current events. It's far more likely that an African American child's inability to score well on the SAT is a reflection of his current family situation than it is the lack the "40 acres and a mule" his great-great-great-great grandfather suffered five generations ago.

The clutter in the reparations argument tries to tie too many things together. Suddenly, slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, de jure discrimination, racial profiling, and "lack of self-understanding" are lumped together as though they are the same evil. This is rhetoric without shame:

Profiling in 2001 is to 1920s lynching as a hangnail is to a hanging.

From a philosophical standpoint, the argument is whether it makes sense to enrich one group at the expense of another, for the suffering of still another. Simply put, the problem of slavery in the United States has been solved.

It was abolished. Period.

We don't need to cloud the waters of the argument with discussions of whether Lincoln was a closet racist, or whether it could have been done better or sooner. It was an ulcerous sore on the American character, and it is now gone. We all suffer from the fact that it once existed, but we cannot go back and fix it. We have to realize that -- especially in America --looking forward is the best way to escape the millstone of the past.

The lesson we have to learn is to right the wrongs as quickly as we can, and help those afflicted with the injustice at the time it occurs.

We can't apologize on behalf of those who did the harm, because we are not they. We cannot receive the apology because we haven't been wronged. We must pledge to ourselves, and to those who would do ill, "NEVER AGAIN." This is how we right the wrongs of the past, by ensuring that they never happen again.

From a religious view, we cannot punish the offspring for the sins of the father. From a pragmatic political standpoint, is it likely that a majority of taxpayers will fund a minority organization of their peers for wrongs not even suffered by them? Unless most taxpayers discern some economic benefit to themselves, they're not likely to give their money away.

Further, an avalanche effect could ensue, where each "community" presses for its piece of the tax pie to right past wrongs, which would possibly be followed by a predictable backlash filled with the ugliness typical of rats fighting for the same piece of cheese. The details of any such program would be daunting:

• Who decides how much money is enough?
• Who is African American enough to be eligible for help? How do you decide?
  
• Is this Trust funded only once, or is it repeatedly funded? If so, for how long?
  
• If the Trust goes bankrupt, what happens?
  
• Are other minority groups covered by the Trust?
  
• Does the existence of this Trust replace other social programs intended to help blacks?
  
• How do you benefit "all African Americans?"
  
• Is the Trust administered by only blacks?
  
• When is "success" achieved? When is "The Debt" paid?

A cynic would look at the reparations argument as a way to create a new interest group -- like the NRA, AARP, Sierra Club or the oil lobby -- with an agenda that serves only its members. Its lobbyists would press the government for funds to support its pet projects, and would use advertising, political contributions, press releases, and all the other accoutrements of interest groups to keep it in the front of the line when tax dollars are passed out.

I know one thing we did right/ was the day we started to fight/ Keep your eyes on the prize/
hold on, hold on.
-- Traditional civil rights song

I have the feeling that Martin Luther King had something nobler in mind.

Too many of today's so-called civil rights leaders have become caricatures, chasing the ghosts of the past or seeing "the hairy hand of the white man" behind any and all problems that do exist.

The civil rights movement displayed amazing strength of character in the face of murderous resistance, both private and public. Those who pretend to the throne of the current movement owe more to their predecessors than this exploitative exercise in money-grubbing.

The eyes should always be on the prize, but the prize is not the public purse. The prize is equal justice and equal treatment under law. All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. When the problems were clearer, the solutions were dangerous but straightforward.

Now that the problems are much less severe, we need to be cautious about how we fix them, because a clumsy or self-serving solution will only yield trouble in the future.

Imagine yourself as a Vietnamese-American who emigrated to the U.S. in 1975 after the fall of Saigon as one of thousands of so-called "boat people." You became a U.S. citizen while learning English and working countless menial jobs to keep your family afloat. After a quarter-century of self-sacrifice and hard work, you are now secure and moderately prosperous; you diligently send money to your family in Vietnam to help them out, since two of your uncles were imprisoned for "re-education" and are now unable to work under the Communist system in Vietnam. You've been called "gook," "slope," "zip," "slant" and any number of other insults by some of your new countrymen, just because you look like the "enemy" that either they or their brothers fought against so long ago. How do you view this assignment of guilt for the sins of the past? You have no connection to the oppressors of anyone, yet you are expected to pay an expiation fee for others' sins against others' long-dead ancestors.

You know exactly how you feel -- it isn't fair.

The time for reparations has passed into history, along with the slaves and slave-owners. The post-Civil War period was ripe for this type of redress for such a horrible injustice, but the collective will was not there. Regrettably, the population at large did not back the visionaries of the time, and the slaves wound up nearly as bad as before the abolition of slavery. It was an opportunity missed, never to return.

History is replete with such issues -- we cannot change the fact that this sin was allowed to continue, but we cannot sin again in the name of erasing history. We can only resolve to remember the errors of the past, and never repeat them. We cannot equalize the past, only the present.

If we want to be kind, and attribute noble motives to the reparations proponents, we still must say no. If we want to be unkind, and suspicious of their intentions, then we must say absolutely no.

So keep your pocketbook and your common sense in view, or well-secured, and let your politicians know your verdict:

Vote no, or vote no more.