Establishing the Blame

By Broadside Opinion Columnist Michael Gryboski

African-Americans have come a long way. It was seldom easy, but through civil war and civil disobedience, basic human rights were finally allotted to all humans in this Republic. Now that arguably the greatest challenges have been conquered, some have decided to take a new course.

Intellectuals, mostly from the political left, want to fix the wrongs of history through monetary reparations for the descendents of black slaves. One organization founded to advance such a goal, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, believes that the descendants of slaves should receive, as they put it, “payback for centuries of stolen labor, cultural degradation and dehumanizations.”

Interesting, but there are many problems with their idea, namely one simple question that begins the whole process: who is going to pay?

It would seem obvious at first: white people. Problem is this goes under the assumption that all white people were involved in American slavery. Remember, there were plenty of communities, in the north as well as the south, which held abolitionist convictions. Then there is the Civil War, with hundreds of thousands of European Americans being killed or wounded. Should the descendents of those who dedicated their lives to emancipation be lumped together with those whose descendents owned slaves? In addition to Caucasians who fought against slavery, let’s not forget that we are a nation of immigrants, many of whom showed up decades after slavery was abolished in the United States. Millions of Poles, Russians, Greeks, Armenians and other white ethnicities arrive well after Reconstruction.

Some note the lacking involvement for most of white America’s ancestors, so they turn to the government as a means to get compensation, citing the reparations given to Japanese Americans after World War II. As many know, during the Second World War, President Roosevelt issued an executive order calling for the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, largely out of paranoia.

Eventually, the federal government gave minor reparations to those who endured the degradation of such conditions.

However, the two dark chapters of history are far from congruent.

Firstly, the reparations were paid to the people who endured the mistreatment, which would be impossible to do for African-American victims given. It’s been 143 years since slavery was abolished. Secondly, the government itself performed the Japanese internment, whereas slavery was a private institution. As with forcing the descendents of 20th century European immigrants or 19th century abolitionists to pay reparations, placing blame on the government cannot be adequately justified.

Those willing to concede that may restrict the reparation payments to only those whose ancestors were directly involved, but then one comes across another blame problem, something that historians often entitle “the guilt of West Africa,” blacks were sold into slavery by their own people.

As recorded by University of Ghana history professor, A. Adu Boahen, “[a]t the beginning of the nineteenth century, the external economy of virtually the whole of Africa depended on the slave trade to the Americas, the Indian Ocean islands and India, Europe and the Middle East.” So, according to that model of blame, debt-ridden, unstable West African governments should pay black Americans for their centuries of abuse. Regarding Africa’s involvement in the slave trade, Pres. Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal said, “If one can claim reparations for slavery, the slaves of my ancestors, or their descendants, can also claim money from me . . . Me, personally, how can I be responsible for what my ancestors did, in the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th centuries?”

Maybe we should apply Wade’s statement to all parties in this dispute. How can any of us be held responsible for what our ancestors did? Do we have some sort of retroactive brain control in which we can determine the behaviors of people who died generations before we were a thought? The whole idea of reparations, whatever positive intentions found, is just not an effective idea. The massive amount of research needed to determine who had slave owners as family and who didn’t would be a chaotic enterprise, ripe with opportunity for fraud and distortion. There would also be situations where people would have both slaver and slave lineage, begging the question of whether or not they would pay reparations to themselves. But beyond all that, there is the simple problem of accurately placing blame. If the best the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and groups like them can do is simply say all white people should pay, then they are blaming a whole race for a complex issue. Isn’t that bigotry?