Reparations and victimization

Wisdom of the week

[Reprinted from Issues & Views August 26, 2002]

On August 16, the day before the sparsely-attended "March For Reparations" rally (whose theme was "They Owe Us"), in Washington, DC, a panel was convened at the Heritage Foundation, where opponents to the call for black reparations had their say. Among the black participants were Gregory Kane, Baltimore Sun journalist; Joe Hicks of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture; and Jay Parker of the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education.

Below are brief highlights of speakers' remarks:

Gregory Kane: What about the descendants of John Brown, who led an insurrection to free black folks? His descendants would have to pay us! Where's the justice in that? The only one who has provided any kind of answer to that question is Dr. Ron Walters of the University of Maryland. I was debating him on a radio show. He said, "I don't want to deal with individual cases."

[Audience laughter]

That was his answer. But, guess what. If this idea is going to fly, he's got to convince each and every one of you, out in that audience, why the hell you should have to pay us. And if he can't answer that simple question, of why the money would go to benefit Peter Prioleau's descendants, and John Brown's descendants would have to pay us . . . Guess what? People aren't going to pay because they'll detect that the idea is bogus.

Joe Hicks: Thirty years ago, I started my political involvement as a black nationalist. And as a black nationalist, I was very conversant with this notion of reparations. It was a discussion that was on everyone's lips who was an activist. It was part of the black power movement of the '60s, as many of you remember the rhetoric of those days. I certainly embraced the notion that the nation I lived in, the nation that has given me opportunities and all the things was a racist institution. And that's certainly the concept of "40 acres and a mule"; it was something that had a great deal of relevancy. Of course, if you updated that notion to today, it would be something like 400,000 acres and a Lexus or two.

[Audience laughter]

But, nonetheless, I was very much a believer that this was something worthy of our struggling around. Now tomorrow, there will be a gathering in the city; a march will be held. Some of you may or may not know that the theme of this march is "They owe us." Today, with all that history, with all of my former embracing of some of these concepts, I find myself strongly opposed to this notion of reparations. . . .

So, why isn't reparations for slavery a good idea? Several quick points. There is no single group responsible for the crime of slavery. In the period between 650 AD and 1600, before any Western involvement, somewhere between 3 million and 10 million Africans were bought by Muslim slavers for use in Saharan societies and the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. There was also an internal slave trade, which took place for centuries, beginning back in the 7th century and persists to this very day in places like Sudan and Mauritania, and other sub-Saharan African societies.

Second, only a tiny minority of white Americans ever owned slaves. In the antebellum South, only 1%, one out of five [whites], was a slave owner. Why should the descendants of all whites, in fact all Americans, all American taxpayers incur this kind of debt?

Third, most living Americans have no connection to slavery. The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What logic would demand that Vietnamese refugees and Russians who fled Communism and Iranians fleeing the Ayatollah and Jews and Mexicans and Greeks and Poles, Cambodians, and Korean victims of Communism--why should they be expected to pay reparations to blacks?

Jay Parker: Just to sum up where we are today, my friend Walter Williams once said, "Slave owners cannot be punished, because they're not here, and slaves cannot be rewarded, because they're not here." It's as simple as that.

Hicks: Think of the possibilities. Let's say that the government doesn't do it, but the corporations combine a major pot of money to, in fact, make this package of reparations, this fund, if you will, to be administered by black elites. Then, you've got individual black people saying, Well, wait a minute, I haven't gotten paid. You know, the black elites got their money and they're overseeing this big pot of money, giving their buddies and friends big contracts to build stuff and do things. What about me, I'm driving a cab, I haven't gotten jack. And resentment will set in because people won't like the way it's being administered, and scandal will take place, and griping and carping will continue. . . .

My scenario is this. The people who are advancing this, some of these folks are perpetual professional people. If they know that it will be rejected by the mass of American people, it won't be heard in the courts, and at some point even corporations will tire of this game and go away, what you set up is the ability to say, "See, I told you we live in a racist nation. See, they won't even pay black people what we're owed." . . .

There will still be this continuing complaint system, thereby perpetuating the black professional complaint system. I think that's really what's going on here, because most of us can see through this kind of hoax and know that it will not receive much of a hearing in a real way. But it does give, into the future, the chance for people to continually extort money for organizations claiming racial Armageddon is right around the corner.

Kane: I once wrote that if reparations are paid to African-Americans, every cent of that money would be back in the hands of the white and Asian communities inside a week.

[Audience laughter]

I got called "Uncle Tom," I got called "Sambo," I got called "traitor," and everything else. A short time later, Louis Farrakhan comes to Baltimore and says the exact same thing, practically verbatim. He got a standing ovation. Go figure!

[Audience laughter]

Hicks: What, in fact, the reparations argument does is it again refreshes the victim argument. As we all know, many of these professional organizations don't represent mainstream black Americans who work hard and do all the right things. But what it does is allow them to maintain a certain power base, and there's a realization that there's power in victimization. People get all warm and guilty when blacks generally jam whites about racism. It defers the ability for people to get out, roll up their sleeves, work hard, join everyday Americans and compete for what they get like everyone else.

This is what really should have taken place at the end of the 1960s with the civil rights movement and the progress that that brought. If the government had backed off and said, We've opened the floodgates now, we've given you what Dr. King wanted. Let's enforce civil rights laws. Let's get out of people's lives. But the real issue here is, how do we maintain the power of victimization. What happens to the major organizations that argue from this victim stance, if they need to define real issues to fight? I think there's a lot of confusion and fear of giving up the victim status in an organizational sense, and that's driving part of this reparations scheme.

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