Reparations: Obvious Thievery, a Scam by the Unscrupulous

It’s the silly season when political lightweights seem to think because they have a constitutional right to run for political office, that makes them qualified to run for office. This political cycle we are seeing a host of Democrats running for President when they should be running for the hills - or the state line. To break away from the crowd of clowns, some have espoused socialist, scandalous, and silly programs, only to become more ridiculous.

Reparations mean paying huge sums of money to living blacks for the enslavement of deceased blacks. This is a promise that meets all three criteria: socialist, scandalous, and silly. Even the European Union demanded its members pay reparations to fight “structural racism” in the EU.

Professor Walter Williams asked, “What moral principle justifies punishing a white of today to compensate a Black of today for what a White of yesterday did to a Black of yesterday?” No one seems to want to answer to that question. A question asked by a black man, by the way.

Of course, slavery has always (under all conditions) been a scar on the face of humanity. There can be no excuse or exoneration, although there can be some explanations.

Some Conservatives suggest that there are no negative residual effects from slavery but that is fallacious thinking. Of course there are. During slavery, it was illegal to teach slaves to read. Later, their schools were inferior, as was their education. There were Jim Crow laws that prohibited Blacks from riding in the front of a bus, requiring them to drink from "Colored" water fountains and so on. There were lynchings by bigoted, vicious whites who often tried to justify their crimes with the Bible.

The Klan was formed by Democrats and intimidated, even killed, “uppity” Blacks. I refuse to be identified with that white crowd, but I believe that too much time has passed, too much money has been funneled into the black community, and there is too much risk for a racial explosion to consider any additional reparations. Blacks have received enough “reparations,” and few have even been willing to say, “thank you.”

A Jamaican attorney by the name of Anthony Gifford wrote a paper titled, "The legal basis for the claim for reparations." It was very interesting and extensive, although not convincing. In the lengthy treatise, he never dealt with the African chiefs who were responsible for selling black slaves. After all, you can't have a buyer unless you have a seller. In this case, the sellers were black. Gifford tried to put all whites on a guilt trip, but without success.

American law has supported the thesis that sellers are even more responsible than buyers, and their feet have been held to the fire. It started with tobacco companies who forced no one to buy their products but were forced to pay billions for tobacco-related deaths. Then it was the food industry that provided consumers with unhealthy products which hastened death. So shouldn't we hold  the African chiefs who captured and sold their brothers responsible for slavery? After all, the white famers couldn't have bought them had the not forst been sold by their tribal chieftains to the slave traders who brought them to America.

Gifford really made a dumb statement when he said, "What figure can be placed on the psychological damage inflicted by a system which is still deeply racist?” Sorry, counselor, it was not about race but about people enslaving people. Blacks owned blacks and whites as slaves! Whites owned blacks and whites. Slaves of all races were taken in war for thousands of years. Slavery was a matter of being conquered and sold. In Rome, there were more slaves than free Romans!

While there is racism in America, Canada, and England, institutional racism (except in Islam) is a thing of the past unless you happen to be a white, a Christian, a home schooler, a creationist, a gun owner, or a male. Then discrimination is permitted, even encouraged, by many elements of society.

Attorney Gifford asked, "Can it be proved that the slave system destroyed old and flourishing African civilisations [British spelling], and if so, how is their value to be measured?" Gifford is assuming that removing the slaves from their homeland resulted in Africa being a "dark continent." He is suggesting that Africa would be a flourishing continent had it not been for slavery. However, what had they done during the previous thousand years before the major slave trade started?

And what could the good attorney be referring to when he spoke of "flourishing African civilisations"? Rejecting the ridiculous claim that Egyptians qualify as Blacks, name one “flourishing” black civilization. Africa was called "the dark continent" because the lights were out. White colonists came to the jungles and built towns, highways, railroads, hospitals, schools, churches, farms, etc., and eliminated some diseases that had lashed the face of Africans for centuries. They built great cities and established order and real civilization and, yes, got rich doing it. A large number of Blacks also got rich.

Then the colonialists (many of who had lived in Africa for many generations and considered it their home) were forced out by fear of death years ago. Now the cities are now decaying, decadent, and deadly places to live; the jungles are overtaking the villages; modern machinery is rusting on overgrown farms; elevators don't function; people are starving by the millions, while others are dying from strange, vicious diseases. These "nations" are ruled by black opportunists with huge foreign bank accounts and large appetites for luxury that would make a Byzantine emperor blush with shame. Whites are being raped and murdered and their farms confiscated while the media, black politicians, and preachers in America are as silent as the Sphinx. They are silent because they are sanctimonious hypocrites. It is bad enough to be a hypocrite, but to be a sanctimonious hypocrite is appalling.

Let me remind black extremists that white Englishmen and Americans abolished the slave trade that had been going on for thousands of years among all races. To be more accurate, it was white Christians who led the charge in abolishing slavery in England and the U.S. That's not a racist statement but a fact that all educated people know, but are too timid to admit in "polite" company.

It is not unreasonable to remind all interested parties that "reparations" were attempted during Reconstruction and have already been paid during our day in the form of welfare! Remember the war on poverty? American taxpayers have spent trillions of dollars in welfare payments with a hugely disproportionate percentage going to blacks. (I'm critical of welfare to whomever: Blacks, Whites, corporate, international, except for people who are unable to work.)  Over 41% of welfare recipients are black, but they only make up 13% of the nation. And blacks only paid about 6% of the total welfare budget. Then you must add to all the federal money, the fellowships, grants, loans, etc., to promote black advancement in our nation. Enough reparations have already been paid!

Get prepared for a major political battle. The late Congressman John Conyers of Michigan annually introduced reparation legislation since 1989 to set up a commission to study whether reparations should be paid, and he was always supported by the Congressional Black Caucus. A column in the Chicago Tribune (at one time a great Gonservative paper) commented on reparations: "The tide may have turned on this issue, and the country will be much better for it." 

Cities such as Dallas, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, etc., have passed resolutions supporting the study of reparations. The conclusion of these "studies" is pre-determined. The September 2016 issue of Harper's did a story entitled, "Making the case for racial reparations" and gave 14 pages to the issue with four attorneys who have been involved in large class-action suits. Those attorneys are going to file a class action suit to require racial reparations. And those attorneys will receive up to half of any awards!

Add to all that, some black Harvard intellectuals are acting as cheerleaders for this massive shakedown. Randall Robinson's The Debt is being used as the "bible" to justify the scam. Other attorneys are preparing litigation against large businesses that allegedly made a fortune on slavery. I suppose that means ship manufacturers since slaves were brought here on ships, manufacturers of handcuffs and manacles since slaves were chained together, whip-makers since whips were used on some slaves, and on and on it goes. And where it stops, nobody knows. I say, "It should stop here." Americans will not stand for it, and there will never be enough money to satisfy the "victims."

Black ministers should stop trying to extort hard-working Americans and instead spend their valuable time exposing and abolishing slavery in Sudan and West Africa. But those blacks don’t seem to be important, probably because they don’t have bank accounts.

Honest, decent Americans of all races should tell those politicians and preachers to keep their hands in their own pockets and stop picking ours. There is a principle I used in one of my books dealing with welfare: “Anytime I get money I did not earn, then someone earned money he or she did not get - and that is thievery."

Reparations are undisguised thievery, a scam by the unscrupulous.