Posted on 09/10/2002 1:14:13 AM PDT by Landru
by Fred Reed
On the Web I find that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, is demanding that whites pay reparations to blacks. It's because of slavery, see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of other professional blacks.
I guess he'll send me a bill, huh? I feel like saying, Let me get this straight, Hank. I'm slow. Be patient. You want free money because of slavery, right?
I don't blame you. I'd like free money too. Tell you what. I believe in justice. I'll give you a million dollars for every slave I own, and another million for every year you were a slave. Fair enough?
But tell me, how many slaves do you suppose I have? In round numbers, I mean. Say to the nearest dozen. And how long were you a slave?
Oh. In other words, I owe you reparations for something that I didn't do and didn't happen to you. That makes sense. Like lug nuts on a birthday cake.
Personally, I think you owe me reparations for things you didn't do and never happened to me. I've never been coated in Dutch chocolate and thrown from the Eiffel Tower. I'll bet you've never done it to anyone.
I want reparations.
Kinda silly, isn't it?
But if we're going to talk about reparations, that's a street that runs in two directions. You want money from me for what some other whites did to some other blacks in another century.
How about you guys paying whites reparations for current expenses caused by blacks? Not long ago blacks burned down half of Los Los Angeles, a city in my country. Cities are expensive, Hank. Build one sometime and you'll see what I mean. Whites had to pay taxes to repair Los Angeles for you.
You can send me a check.
Now, yes, I know you burned LA because you didn't like the verdict in the trial of those police officers. Well, I didn't like the verdict in the Simpson trial. But I didn't burn my house and loot Korean grocers. Over the years blacks have burned a lot of American cities: Newark, Detroit, Watts, on and on. Now add in the fantastic cost over the years of welfare in all its forms, of large police forces and jails and security systems in department stores. I can't live in the capital city of my own country because of crime committed by blacks. Toss in the cultural cost of lowering standards in everything for the benefit of blacks.
See what I mean?
Now, I'd view things differently if you said, "Fred, blacks can't get anywhere in a modern country without education. We know that. We need better schools, smarter teachers, harder courses, books with smaller pictures and bigger words. Can you help us?"
I'd say, "Hallelujah! Hoo-ahh! Not just yes, but hell yes. Let's sell an aircraft carrier and get these folks some real schools and get them into the economic mainstream." I'd say it partly because it would be the right thing to do, and partly, because I'd like to add you guys to the tax base.
The current custodial state is expensive. I'd just love for blacks to study and learn to compete and stop burning places.
But is it going to happen?
You may not believe it, but I, and most whites, don't like seeing blacks as miserable and screwed up as they are. I spend a fair amount of time in the projects. Those places are ugly. It's no fun watching perfectly good kids turn into semi-literate dope dealers who barely speak English.
It just plain ain't right. But, Hank, what am supposed to do about it? I can't do your children's homework. At some point, people have to do things for themselves, or they don't get done.
Maybe it's time.
I'll tell you what I see out in the world, Hank. I think blacks are too accustomed to getting anything they want by just demanding it. True, it has worked for over half a century. Get a few hundred people in the street, implicitly threaten to loot and burn, holler about slavery, and the Great White Cash Spigot turns on.
Thing is, whites don't much buy it any longer. Most recognize that what once was a civil-rights movement has become just a shake-down game. Few people still feel responsible for the failings and inadequacies of blacks.
Political correctness keeps the lid on -- but everyone knows the score.
Which scares me, Hank. On one hand, blacks hate whites and incline toward looting and burning. (The whites you hate are the ones who marched in the civil-rights movement. Ever think about that?)
On the other hand, whites quietly grow wearier and wearier of it.
Not good.
On the third hand (allow me three hands, for rhetorical convenience), blacks keep demanding things.
As I write, you demand reparations for slavery. Blacks in Oklahoma (I think it was) want money for some ancient race riot. Other blacks reject the Declaration of Independence, blacks in New York hint broadly at burning and looting over a trial, yet more demand the elimination of the Confederate flag, and the federal equal opportunity apparatus, which means blacks, wants to sue Silicon Valley for not hiring nonexistent black engineers.
That's a lot of demanding for one month, Hank. What happens if whites ever say, "No"?
Now, how about you? You've got a cushy job up there at Harvard, and you can hoot and holler about what swine and bandits whites are. I guess it's lots of fun, and you get a salary for it. But don't you think you might do blacks more good if you told them to complain less and study more?
For example, if you want blacks to work in Silicon Gulch, the best approach might be to find some really smart black guys, and get them to study digital design, not Black Studies.
That's how everybody else does it. It works. Then blacks wouldn't feel left out, and racial tension would decline.
Sound like a plan?
Just out of curiosity, how many hours a week do professors of Afro-American Studies spend in the projects, encouraging poor black kids to study real subjects, Hank?
I wanted to highlight the really good points--but they are all really good.
Now you're talking!
Bulls-Eye...MUD
Like lug nuts on a birthday cake.
So far as I can tell, Keyes, Sowell and Williams oppose this idiotic call for reparations.
Those who are NOT descended from AMERICAN slaves need to sit down and shut up. Under even the most tortured, leftist, idiotic (redundant!) logic (oxymoron!), these people have no standing. And those who ARE descendants of slaves now calling for reparations need to remember a few things:
They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ON THE PLANET! Had their forebears NOT been sold to the slave traders, the blood of their ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago. Their ancestors would have been killed outright or worked to death by the OTHER black who captured them in one of the interminable tribal wars still raging on that sad continent. These modern day would-be "plaintiffs" would not even exist.
And should the great-great-great grandchildren of the approximately 3,000 SLAVE OWNING BLACK plantation owners in this country also be subject to PAYING reparations?
If so, how do we find THEM?
Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.
Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice:
“Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
What about the millions STILL living in slavery, held there by members of THEIR OWN RACE in Africa and elsewhere today?
Do you suppose THEY are NOT targets of these reparations whores because they have little or nothing of value for which they can be EXTORTED?
And how about the MILLIONS of WHITES and ASIANS who have slavery in their backgrounds?
Next problem!
In other words, it's time for the Right to put up or shut up.
The "shake-down game" never ends no matter what is going on in the world.
This man had more than his fair share of both wisdom AND horsesense.
...as usual, Dick; excllent comments.
There've been many injustices & crimes committed against peoples of many differing & varied ethnicities & religions while "in" this country.
However, any injustices performed were by man, against his fellow man.
Just as injustice in other places around the globe has ocurred, since the beginning of time immemorial.
In any event, we can *fix* those injustices, past; now.
We possess the power; &, soon we'll have the will.
"Fixing" institutionalized sabotage on the other hand, inflicted by the present ilk of Liberal-Socialists?
That I'm afraid is another matter, altogther; &, *that* is what we're dealing with, now.
This Leftist bunch have done their damnedest to engineer thier sabotage in such a way "fixing" [it] will be extememly difficult; which, assumes it can be "fixed" a'tall.
If I were black?
That one reality *alone*, would gall me more than anything which happened 400 years ago.
What the Liberal-Socialists have effectively done, is to rob a person -- any person -- of their *future*, while condemning 'em to live in the past.
That's a fact.
A more incideous, egregious "Hate Crime" perpetrated against people of any kind & having more damaging, debilitating long term consequences would be very difficult to find. -IMO-
Frankly, what they've done is flat-out criminal.
Just articulating what's happened at the hands of the Liberal-Socialists can get a sane, rational person sized for a tinfoil hat.
...it's that nuts.
A more incideous, egregious "Hate Crime" perpetrated against people of any kind & having more damaging, debilitating long term consequences would be very difficult to find. -IMO-
What you've described here is both correct and the sine que non of the problem. Without the systematic, deliberate attempt to undermine the will and self-worth of a people, we wouldn't be having these problems such as we have today. A struggle of a just cause's, which had been won, spirit has been usurped and used as the foundation of what we have now which began in the late 1960s:
The Marxist Laboratory.
Show me an advance in Leftist policy that did not have some reference to the "poor" and "underpriviledged" minorities (blacks) since then. Just one.
Who has benefitted from such policies?
Is it sinking in now?
Therefore I charge the Left with being the biggest dream destroyer on this planet. I charge the Left with being the biggest murderer on this earth with its abortion mills of death put into the inner-cities. I charge the Left with being the biggest liars on this planet. And I charge the Left with being the biggest hypocrites on this planet, with their living high off the hog of capitalism while preaching the heresy of socialism in the name of those they purport to fight for.
You, Landru, have just hit a mammoth homerun. What the Left has done is indeed a "Hate Crime." And I thank you for your stance with those American blacks such as mhking, Trueblackman, mafree, T Lady, and swheats who know better. I can't speak in their names, but I thank you on behalf of them anyway.
On the secular level, the Marxitization of a people has destroyed it. And what we call "conservatism" is its only effective cure on that secular level. The demarxitizing has begun, and it's not going to stop.
Oh, yes. Their foundations of deceit shall crumble and crumble soon.
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