History doesn't support the call for reparations

In "Pilgrim's Progress," Faithful tells Christian about his encounter with an old man who promised him treasure and the favors of his three lusty daughters. Faithful confessed he was tempted, but then "it came burning hot into my mind, that, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house he would sell me for a slave."

False flattery, empty promises, and historical distortion constitute the bait the "slave reparations" movement uses to entrap its victims. Charles J. Ogletree Jr.'s "Reparations about truth" (April 6) offers a tempting prize that must be recognized for what it is -- a vicious trap.

Ogletree's claim that slavery somehow exerted an "enduring and detrimental effect" on American blacks is clearly false.

The statistics commonly offered to substantiate this charge dwell on present-day disparities in black vs. white achievement. For instance, we're told that the continuing breakdown of black families is the direct legacy of slavery, since enslaved families were routinely split up and sold. In fact, slave families were almost always kept together, and in 1870, only five years after slavery was abolished, 80 percent of black children lived in two-parent homes. The black illegitimacy rate hovered around 20 percent for decades; by 1950, it had dropped to 9 percent. In 1965, however, the federal government began offering poor mothers government checks if they could prove there was no working male at home. The result? By 1975, the black illegitimacy rate had skyrocketed to 70 percent.

Historical statistics on educational performance also cast doubt on slavery as a handicap. In 1940, American blacks enjoyed an 80 percent literacy rate -- better than some European countries. In 1985, after decades of busing, which destroyed black community schools, the Educational Testing Service evaluated the literacy skills of young adults age 21-25. Only 40 percent of the blacks demonstrated prose literacy.

Incarceration rates are offered as proof of the lingering effects of slavery. The numbers are shocking. Today, one out of three black males between 16 and 29 is in prison, on probation, or within the judicial system. In 1992 there were 583,000 black men in prison and jails compared to 537,000 in college. Blacks are 44.1 percent of sentenced prisoners, while only 12 percent of the U.S. population.

And it is true that black incarceration rates are historically higher than the white incarceration rate. However, the historical direction of these disparities must trouble reparations advocates. In 1932 a black was four times more likely to be incarcerated than a white. By 1980, the disparity had risen to eight times more likely.

Certainly, disparities between the rate of incarceration for the two races persist. But is this the legacy of slavery? The state with the highest present-day disparity in the rates of black vs. white incarceration is Minnesota, which never practiced slavery, where a black is 23 times more likely to be in jail than a white. The state with the second-lowest disparity against blacks is Mississippi.

Yet, one must agree with Mr. Ogletree when he writes, "the civil-rights movement has long been organized, in part, around the notion than slavery and the legal discrimination that followed have had enduring and detrimental effects on American minorities." That is indeed the assumption. But, as black economist Thomas Sowell has demonstrated, many assumptions by and about "civil rights" are simply wrong. Discrimination, as evidenced by studies around the world, does not lead to poverty.

Chinese in Malaysia, East Indians in Africa, and Italians in Argentina faced discrimination and yet managed to build sustaining communities that enabled them to prosper. Further, economic progress for blacks was most certainly not the result of civil rights legislation. The number of blacks in professional, technical and similar high-level positions more than doubled from 1954 to 1964. Sowell also demonstrated that the percentage of employed blacks in professional jobs was the same in 1967 as it was in 1960. He concluded that "the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented no acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years."

How do we explain that in the 1960s one out of five black children went to bed hungry, but today, after an avalanche of federal civil rights legislation, it's one out of three?

Sowell offers the most convincing explanation, that the civil rights movement hijacked historic black progress for the benefit of big government. Urban Renewal programs, welfare and busing destroyed the sustaining black communities that sheltered and nurtured black cohesion and black families. Government favors that appeared beneficial turned out to be snares that have done immeasurable harm.

The reparations movement is yet another pretty promise masking a political snare. For this reason, over 1,300 black and white North Carolinians signed the League of the South's petition requesting our elected officials to vote against Rep. John Conyers' bill should it come out of committee. Reparations can only deepen the racial divide, which will benefit only those who profit from racial animosity.

the 14th amendment in full:

U.S. Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment Fourteenth Amendment - Rights Guaranteed Privileges and Immunities of Citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection Amendment Text | Annotations Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

I guess you are arguing the converse - that since the 14th disallows claims of loss for the emancipation or loss of slaves, that claims of loss from being a slave are also forbiden?

Regardless, the race hustlers have just made up a legal theory out of thin air - that descendants are due money because whites profited from slavery, and continue to profit from "white priveledge" which is a result of slavery. It passes no legal test and is purely specious, as any rational, reasonable, intelligent person can see.

They essentially raise a civil suit where the injured party is subjectively defined as desendants of legally enslaved persons(and others who have a certain skin color but whos relatives came here after slavery was abolished)and the "damage" is only a self-pitty minset that can not be quantified.

The best solution to question of white/black racial inequities is the establishment of Black City-States where the Blacks can flounder or flourish of their own accord. The Indians have their quasi-sovereign Reservations... The irony of the whole issue is that Blacks are immeasurably better off living in White America than they would have been had they stayed in Africa. Still, as bad as things are in Africa, and in spite of the recent AIDS 'epidemic' there, it was White Medicine which boosted the Child Mortality rate there from around 50%, at the start of the 20th Century, to next to nothing at the Turn of the Millenium. There are 100+ Million more Black Africans, directly due to the simplest of White Medical Advances, and due to the bleeding hearts who felt it their duty to bolster the African's ability to defy Nature's lack of sympathy for the hapless.

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