Reparations for Slavery?

The return of a terrible idea.

March 6, 2019 By Gregory Hood 106 Comments

Just since the mid-term elections, reparations for slavery has moved from the fringes to the mainstream. Democrat presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julian Castro have endorsed the idea. Marginal candidate Marianne Williamson wants outright cash payments for blacks, but others are leaving the concept vague. “I’m not sure anyone’s very clear [about what it means],” said Senator Bernie Sanders recently.

There is a precedent for reparations. In 1988, Ronald Reagan signed a bill to pay Japanese-Americans who were in relocation camps during the Second World War. Of course, their situation was different: They were actual survivors—and presumably actual victims—whereas all former slaves are long dead. And depending on how beneficiaries are defined, some blacks who immigrated well after the Civil War might be eligible, including Barack Obama and reparations advocate Kamala Harris.

 

Who would pay the bill? Many whites immigrated after the end of slavery, and even most whites whose families were here during the Civil War hardly benefited from it. Descendants of Union soldiers could say that their debt was settled at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Cold Harbor.

 

One of the arguments for reparations is that American economic development required black slavery. “Not only have the people responsible for building this country not benefited from their own labor, but they have been oppressed because of it,” writes Michael Harriot in The Root. “And still, America hasn’t paid its bill.”

 

This is a silly argument. At the time of the Civil War, the South was much poorer than the North and accounted for only one-tenth of the nation’s industrial production. Moreover, on a per capita basis, the presence of blacks made the United States no wealthier than other white nations, especially given its abundant natural resources and immense size. The idea that slavery—or the mere presence of blacks—made the country rich is a delusional assertion by blacks who want to inflate their own importance...............

 

The idea that blacks somehow “built” America leads to the obvious question: Are whites better off because there have been blacks in America? Whatever they may say out loud, judging by where they choose to live and send their children to school, most whites certainly don’t think they benefit from the presence of blacks today. Nor are they wrong.........Paul Kersey has noted that blacks with a mule cart protested the launch of Apollo 11, demanding more welfare instead of space exploration. It’s depressing to imagine what whites could have accomplished if they were not hobbled by diversity.............

 

Thus was born one of the central lies of American race relations: that whites benefit from the presence of “black bodies.” Of course, it is whites who create the successful societies from which blacks demand concessions. Many American blacks may hate whites, but insist on access to white schools, neighborhoods, and countries. From Malcolm X to Keith Ellison, “black nationalists” start their careers with cries for independence and self-determination and end with calls for more handouts. Murray Rothbard observed in 1993 that black nationalism is a “phony nationalism” and a “drive for an aggravated form of coerced parasitism over the white population.”

 

David Horowitiz correctly noted in a 2001 article that “reparations have already been paid . . . in the form of welfare payments and racial preferences.” “If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a ‘healing,’ what will be?” ...........

 

So who depends on whom? The answer is obvious. The long-term effect of slavery was to saddle white America with the permanent albatross of diversity. Non-whites have benefited enormously from access to white communities and a once-white country, which is why they continue to flood into a nation supposedly defined by “white privilege.” They depend on us; we don’t depend on them. If anyone deserves reparations, we do..........To Read More.....