July 7, 2006
Here we go again. The specter of slave reparations has reappeared, and this time it looks as though it's picking up steam. The inroads this go-round have been made in the churches. Recently, the Moravian and Episcopal Churches both publicly apologized for their church members and some church officials owning slaves. They both promised to battle racism, a laudable endeavor. However, the Episcopalians went further. They also launched a national probe into church slavery links and into whether the church should compensate black members. “This matter is growing in significance rather than declining,” Charles Ogletree told CNSNews. Ogletree is a Harvard law professor and a leading reparations activist. “It has more vigor and vitality in the 21st century,” he says, “than it's had in the history of the reparations movement.”
We can all agree that slavery was an ugly, long chapter in our nation's history. It certainly was not peculiar to the South but was prevalent across the entire nation at one point. It also needs to be noted that, while it was deplorable, it was perfectly legal and socially accepted by the majority of those living concurrently with it. Episcopalians are now uncomfortable in learning that some of their bishops once owned slaves and they feel the need to pay somebody – anybody – in order to have this guilt taken from them.
There is nothing for them to feel guilty about. That's not to say that slavery wasn't horrible but it was another time and another people. Nobody who owned slaves is around today to account for their behavior. Even if they were, no court of law could convict them. It is expressly unconstitutional to convict someone of a crime because of their behavior prior to the law being changed. Similarly, there are no slaves still alive to bring their grievances before a court of law or a court of public opinion.
Slavery is part of our history as a country – both black and white – but it is not an issue today. Of course, the matter of reparations is wholly untenable. It is impossible to separate those who directly came from slaves from those who directly came from slave owners. In my case, my ancestors were poor dirt farmers, closer, in fact, to slaves than to slave owners. Reparations, in reality, is a redistribution of wealth. We would take sums of money from the tax coffers, regardless of who had paid into them, and give them to people simply because of the color of their skin. That would mean that corporate executives and multi-millionaires would receive a check just because they're black.
What a ridiculous notion. Instead, we should try to correct the mistakes we're making now. In a hundred years we'll look back on our hideous welfare system as one that disproportionately trapped black families in government dependency and poverty. We will, at long last, discover and acknowledge that we replaced one dreadful institution with another, one perhaps even more destructive. Radicals of that day will demand reparations for stunting the growth of black America but it will be 100 years too late.
Instead of fixating on the past, as these reparationists are doing now, how about turn your sights to the future. Where do you think a segment of our population that now has a 70 percent illegitimacy rate, where the government has nudged out the father as the breadwinner, will be in another hundred years? Stop your bellyaching about the past and concentrate on the present. It's only by rectifying the mistakes we're making right now that we can prevent a future that is most assuredly dim.