Black Reparations: The Ultimate Prize
[Reprinted from Issues & Views September 25, 2000]
What are black youth to make of the adults around them who insist that their
life chances are "limited" due to the enslavement of their ancestors,
the segregation of their ancestors, and the mistreatment of their ancestors?
Should they assume that all the black men and women who have lived since those
troublesome times were powerless to construct productive lives beyond those
past ordeals? Should they assume that they too are just as powerless to move
beyond this past adversity, unless and until bundles of money, this time in the
form of official "reparations" for the labor of those ancestors, are
delivered to them?
As readers have learned from the pages of Issues & Views, in the
years much closer to slavery than we now live, blacks founded and ran their own
towns, owned and prospered on millions of dollars worth of land, formed so many
successful businesses that it necessitated formation of the National Negro
Business League, directed their own schools and colleges--all of this long
before the 1950s.
Yet now, according to the custodians of the race, the “residue” of
the slave experience pierces so deeply into the psyches and immediate lives of
blacks, that only more monetary resources from whites can heal the wounds and
finally eliminate what these worthies are calling the "lingering negative
effects" of slavery. Could it be that the injuries done to blacks that are
lingering the longest are those caused by a perverse poverty industry, that
sprung up on the backs of the poor since the 1960s, and is crafted and run
primarily by black elites?
The demand for monetary reparations for blacks, which started back during
the days of Abolition, began as a direct demand for compensation from the
federal government. But reparations advocates have moved further on, and
resolutions now are being submitted, city by city, to selected municipal
councils throughout the country. In each case, there is a call for official
hearings to discuss "compensation to the contemporary victims of American
slavery and the century of de jure racial discrimination that succeeded
it." This past May, in Chicago, such a resolution was passed, making it
the first city to comply with the request of reparations advocates.
On the federal level, in Congress, Bill H.R. 40 is currently pending in
committee. This bill calls first for the appropriation of millions of dollars
to establish a Commission that will "study" various reparations
proposals. The prospective members of this Commission, who are described as
"experts in the field of African-American studies," will be paid as
government employees and "reimbursed for travel, subsistence, and other
necessary expenses." The members will ultimately determine the nature and
amount of compensation due to "eligible" blacks.
Like the Jewish moguls who are successfully using the clout of the United
States Government to extort funds from European governments and businesses, to
supposedly compensate Holocaust victims
of World War II, the advocates of black reparations envision billions of
dollars to be utilized for multiple financial schemes--for "collective
development," as some call it.
Already the proposals for utopian programs abound: A leading reparations
advocate suggests two massive "enterprise banks," one each to be
formed on the East Coast and West Coast--with smaller funding entities in
between. These banks will supposedly distribute funds for such noble ventures
as the creation of businesses, the building and/or maintenance of schools, and
sundry other projects to be announced. Guess who gets to administer and
supervise all this cash? Along with the Usual Suspects and old-line
povereticians are a raft of new caretakers waiting in the wings.
And on and on it goes. It would appear that the black masses are forever
doomed to be the milk cow of cunning elites. From the usurpation of a
principled leadership by rogues, to the redirection of black energies away from
indigenous economic development, to a welfare system and poverty programs that
undermined the authority of black men on their own home ground, to an
affirmative action system that thrives on the notion of black inferiority--and
now on to "reparations." One scam after another teaches young blacks
that they must forever look to whites for resources and solutions.
When, like other ethnic groups throughout history, American blacks were
pressured to do for themselves, they proved their mettle and, by the 1950s, had
grown an impressive middle class. Members of this dominant class, however,
faced with the liberating prospect of integration, proved how shallow they
were--first by abandoning their critical economic role in black communities
and, in fleeing, by eliminating themselves as a moral presence. Out of this
class came the managers and overseers of the trillions of dollars that were
funneled into the decades-long "War on Poverty"--the war that was
designed to end the misery of the poor. It is this middle class that was the
primary beneficiary of the War's largesse.
Contrary to the inventive fabrications of reparations advocates, there is
neither a straight nor curved line from slavery to the present plight of the
poor. This lie must be disseminated, however, in order to justify the current
demand for reparations. How could it be that more black families were intact
and with fathers in the home in the 1940s and 1950s (a period chronologically
closer to slavery) than in the 1970s? Why is it that income trends were
steadily rising for blacks from the 1940s into the early 1960s, but had dipped
by the 1970s? Something happened during these later decades that impacted
negatively on masses of blacks. That something had the full compliance and
assistance of the black leadership.
It was the state's corrupting social programs, driven by its promise of a
guaranteed living, that helped to foster the births of thousands of
illegitimate children to immature young people--a guarantee of perpetual
poverty. Without the economic incentives designed by liberal elites and
sanctioned by black leaders, there is little likelihood that the black family
would have deteriorated to the degree that it did, and this decline certainly
was not a residual effect of slavery. Instead, it was the culminating logic of
the principle that you get more of what you pay for and create incentives for,
and less of what you don't.
Today, illustrious black elites are going for the gold, the ultimate
prize--this time in the form of "reparations." And, once again,
today's crusade, which is expected to fetch billions of dollars, is conducted
in the name of the disadvantaged, downtrodden masses. One generation after
another has learned too well that to be black means to "play the
system," that is, to bilk, to extort, to run con games on Whitey.
Reparations will add to this repertory of shakedowns.
Copyright 1998 © Issues & Views
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