The legacy of our nation's most costly war still resonates today in many ways. As statues are pulled down and our nation's history is rewritten, the subject of America's past racial slavery has once again come to the forefront. In the past year, several states and numerous cities, universities, and corporations have rushed forward with commissions and charged them with the responsibility of developing plans for racial reparations for Black Americans for the slavery and discrimination they and their ancestors have faced in America. California's commission appears ready to review a draft plan amounting to trillions of dollars and will make its recommendations public in July 2023. San Francisco, already financially bankrupt, appears ready to discuss a proposal which is asking for up to $5 million for every Black citizen in that city. New York state will soon convene its committee on racial reparations. As the year progresses, it's likely that many more cities and states will convene panels composed of social justice and diversity experts who will amplify the call for racial reparations.
There are many issues to consider when examining racial reparations. What about mixed race persons with partial African-American DNA? What about those African-Americans who enslaved others, as in the case of Kamala Harris? What about those of Caribbean Island ancestry who were enslaved by governments other than the United States? Will Native Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and perhaps Hispanics soon be eligible based upon the likelihood that some ancestor once faced discrimination in America?
One factor that will never be open to discussion is: what has been the financial and human cost to white and Asian American citizens who have been systematically discriminated against through this nation's Affirmative Action policies? For sixty years, all white males--and now it's claimed Asian Americans--have experienced real racial discrimination as African Americans and other minorities are granted "preferential treatment" in myriad programs. Such has been the case, whether its in school admission policies, government contracts, or in countless employment hiring and promotion decisions. Go to any company bulletin board in the employee lounge and you can read their proudly displayed flyer that they are an "affirmative action" employer. How does our society tabulate the financial cost of such legally promoted racial discrimination? Since colleges and corporate America generally refuse to make public the test scores or experiential qualifications of applicants by race and gender, arriving at any accurate figure of is impossible. Occasionally, information is revealed such as one school's admittance that every Black law school applicant had a test score BELOW that of the lowest white male who was accepted. Might it reasonably be inferred--on the basis of academic merit, anyway--that each and every Black law school applicant at this school cost some white person his/her seat at the table of opportunity? This is invariably the case at almost all colleges and universities in the nation. How many hard working and studious students were denied acceptance at the Ivy League or to medical school so that less prepared Black applicants could be accepted? How many majority applicants have been repeatedly discriminated against in the last sixty years? Is such systematic discrimination for over half a century against hundreds of millions of American citizens not to be discussed? It's safe to say that hundreds of millions of individual white Americans have suffered collective harm from these practices so that 'American society' could benefit. These same individuals are now going to be tasked with paying racial reparations to others? This irony and injustice, of course, will never be mentioned in the reparations debate.
One other fact that will not be mentioned pertains to the history of global slavery. By concentrating solely upon slavery in what is now the United States, we can avoid some very real and ugly historical truths. For example, more Europeans were sold into slavery in North Africa than the number of Africans sold into slavery in the British North American colonies that became the United States. Moreover, people of color from Africa and Asia Minor enslaved Europeans on a massive scale for a much longer period of time than Europeans enslaved Africans--from the eighth century until Thomas Jefferson's campaign to end white slavery by Africans in the early nineteenth century! Nor is it mentioned that Americans are the only people in history who have fought a devastating war to free millions of people of another race from slavery. Most Americans are unaware of the facts regarding European vs African slavery compiled in the poster below. Whether any of these facts will surface during today's debates over reparations is doubtful.
Any look at the world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will find that slavery was a sin practiced by both whites and people of color. One other point, often ignored, is it was Western civilization that did the most to eradicate the sin of slavery from the world--often over the objections of local non-white tribal chieftains and the long standing traditions of people of color.
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