There is a growing movement in the United States that is calling for reparations for the indignation of slavery institutionalized early in this nation’s history. The arguments for reparations are:
1. The unpaid imposition of slavery did not compensate the slaves for their labor and the government should now make up for this wrong.
2. The institution of slavery in this country has had a holdover effect keeping black Americans in poverty to this day.
3. Slavery was a wrong imposed on a single race, specifically black Africans, by another race, white Americans.
First, there is not a single former slave alive today. If there were, they would certainly be due just compensation for their labor. But the ancestors of atrocities do not deserve compensation in any way. As a precedent for this point of view, look at how the compensation of slave labor during the holocaust of World War II has been handled. The thousands of people that survived that inequity are being compensated by both the government of Germany and by the companies that gained from their forced labor, and rightfully so. But their children have no inherited right to collect for the uncompensated labor of their parents. Certainly the grandchildren and great grandchildren of American slaves never experienced the appalling life of slavery, and therefore, they have no claim for themselves.
Secondly, blacks do not have a monopoly on living in poverty in this country. According to the latest census data, approximately 22 percent of blacks live in poverty. Hispanics have a similar high percentage living below the poverty line, 21 percent. American Indians have an even higher rate of over 25 percent. All this current poverty cannot be attributed to a disgusting institution that was ended 150 years ago. It can, however, be attributed to present-day governmental policy. There should be a monumental effort made by the government, at all levels, to get all Americans out of poverty.
Lastly, slavery could not have existed without the complicity of black Africans who supplied most of the unfortunate humans that were sold into this dreadful condition. It was not just whites who kept this wretched institution going for over 200 years.
In addition, there were over 100,000 white Americans that paid the ultimate retribution during the Civil War, when they gave their lives in combat to end slavery. The reparation debt owed to slaves was paid a long time ago when the North won the Civil War and freed them.
To use the abhorrent history of slavery as the catalyst for any present day action, designed to benefit only a single race, is clearly not justified. If the argument were changed to one that would strongly encourage the government and business to do more to help all people in poverty today, then it would be a cause truly deserving of immediate governmental action and widespread support.
Arlington
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