Black Intelligentsia
American slave descendants' struggle for equality and reparations has experienced any number of roadblocks, both physical and conceptual. Unfortunately, some of those throwing up roadblocks and screaming the loudest in opposition are black people. Of course, one would expect American whites that benefited most from slavery, Jim Crow segregation and institutionalized racism to object to making restitution. However, those other opponents of reparations, most notably members of the so-called "black intelligentsia," deserve special attention, because of the positions they occupy in contemporary American society. Below is an essay that epitomizes their conditioned subordinate way of thinking on this important issue. These individuals are trained in the Booker T. Washington school of thought. During slavery, we called them Uncle Toms and dismissed their tomfoolery. Today, we must recognize them, isolate their rhetoric and likewise ignore what they say about our struggle for equality and reparations, even though theirs are the only voices being heard on this important subject in mainstream media.
In addition, we must also be leery of blacks and liberal whites that claim to support slaves descendents' claims for reparations while actually sabotaging the effort and/or minimizing its potential effectiveness. To honor our ancestors, make ourselves whole and leave a legacy for our children other than genocide, we must be vigilant. We must not settle for crumbs from the table of bounty created by our ancestors' and our labor.
Reparations for slavery solve nothing
By Thomas Sowell
The first thing to understand about the issue of reparations for slavery is that no money is going to be paid. The very people who are demanding reparations know it is not going to happen.
Why then are they demanding something that they know they are not going to get? Because the demagogues themselves will benefit, even if nobody else does. Stirring up historic grievances pays off in publicity and votes.
An apology?
Some are saying that Congress should at least issue an official apology for slavery. But slavery is not something you apologize for, any more than you apologize for murder. You apologize for accidentally stepping on someone's toes or for playing your TV too loud at night. But, if you have ever enslaved anybody, an apology is not going to cut it. And if you never enslaved anybody, then what are you apologizing for?
The very idea of apologizing for what somebody else did is meaningless, however fashionable it has become. A scholar once said that the great economist David Ricardo "was above the unctuous phrases that cost so little and yield such ample returns." Apparently many others are not.
The only thing that would give the idea of reparations for slavery even the appearance of rationality is an assumption of collective guilt, passed down from generation to generation. But, if we start operating on the principle that people alive today are responsible for what their ancestors did in centuries past, we will be adopting a principle that can tear any society apart especially a multi-ethnic society like the United States.
Even if we were willing to go down that dangerous road, the facts of history do not square with the demand for reparations. Millions of immigrants arrived in this country from Europe, Asia and Latin America after slavery was over. Are their descendants guilty, too, and expected to pay out hard cash to redeem themselves?
Even during the era of slavery, most white people owned no slaves. Are their descendants supposed to pay for the descendants of those who did?
What about the effect of all this on today's black population? Is anyone made better off by being supplied with resentments and distractions from the task of developing the capabilities that pay off in a booming economy and a high-tech world? Whites may experience a passing annoyance over the reparations issue, but blacks - especially young blacks - can sustain more lasting damage from misallocating their time, attention and efforts. Does anyone seriously suggest that blacks in America today would be better off if they were in Africa? If not, then what is the compensation for?
Sometimes it is claimed that slavery made a great contribution to the development of the American economy, from which other Americans benefited, so that reparations would be like back pay. Although slave owners benefited from slavery, it is by no means obvious that there were net benefits to the economy as a whole, especially when you subtract the staggering cost of the Civil War.
Should the immoral gains of dead people be repaid by living people who are no better off than if slavery had never existed? The poorest region of the United States has long been the region in which slavery was concentrated. The same is true of Brazil - and was true of the 18th century Europe. The worldwide track record of slavery as an economic system is bad. Slave owners benefited, but that is not saying that the economy as a whole benefited.
The last desperate argument for reparations is that blacks have lower incomes and occupations than whites today because of the legacy of slavery. Do the people who say this seriously believe that black and white incomes and occupations would be the same if Africans had immigrated voluntarily to this country?
Slavery itself was not unique to Africans. The very word slave derives from the name of a European people - the Slavs, who were enslaved for centuries before the first African was brought to the Western Hemisphere. The tragic fact is that slavery existed all over the world, for thousands of years. Unfortunately, irresponsible demagogues have also existed for thousands of years.
This article was published July 16, 2000 on the editorial page in The Birmingham News. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif. A web page that lists his vast credentials and impressive educational accomplishments can be found at http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/BIOS/sowell.html.
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