SOME INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

“But that isn’t fair to me!” How often have you heard that complaint? Well, I raised my children on the saying that “Who says life is fair?” They never understood it – until they grew up. But often life isn’t fair and, like we discussed in last week’s column, focusing upon victimization brings its own severe and lasting problems. So what about today’s movement to make reparations to descendants of slaves? Can we ever pay them enough to overcome that victimization? We all agree that slavery was wrong, and often vicious, and that it is a true stain upon who we are as a nation. But, having acknowledged that truth, what do we do now? If fairness is an issue, a program of reparations would have the monumental task of determining which Black people now in our country are actual descendants of slaves. And should we include actual descendants who are no longer living in this country? Come on, let’s be fair! How about some who had a distant relative as a slave, but their more direct relatives all came here from Haiti or Indonesia? Or what about non-slave-descendants who suffered from our nation’s Jim Crow laws? Do these people get a half slice? A quarter? None? What is fair? Assuming they otherwise qualify, should people like basketball great Lebron James get a share? How about singer Dionne Warwick? And then, if we want to pursue fairness, what about the descendants of Native Americans? In many ways we treated our Native Americans worse than the slaves! For example, are you familiar with the book Ishi: Last of his Tribe by Theodora Kroeber (Bantam Books, 1964)? The book describes how Ishi’s tribe was violently wiped out by the invading White man in California in the early 1900s! In fact, some local governments actually put a bounty on the heads of tribal people, and paid off per scalp in cash. Why should their descendants not receive reparations? Or how about descendants from the Chinese laborers who helped to build our railroads who along the way faced strong and lasting discriminatory treatment? The list goes on and on, but it is politics and emotion, often along with the desire to buy people’s votes, that are running this show, not “fairness.”

Okay, but should reparations be made in some cases? And the answer is “Of course.” For example, paying reparations to the Japanese-Americans who were themselves actually placed in internment camps during World War II was appropriate. And when it was shown that descendants of slaves had owned “Black’s Beach” here in Southern California, and that the government wrongly took it from them by eminent domain, deeding that property back to the prior owners’ descendants was also appropriate. So the bottom line is to trace specific situations of illegal abuse to people and, where appropriate, make reparations of some kind. But then there is another inconvenient truth: probably most descendants of slaves have a better life now in this country than they would have had in Africa had their ancestors never been brought here as slaves in the first place. Should that factor in? I believe that it should! But how it should be considered is another question. (Sorry to relay this to you so late in the game, but Life is Complicated!)

So here is how I would publicly address the reparations issue and thus avoid numbers of other divisive arguments, like 750,000 Civil War dead and affirmative action serving as reparations, and focus more upon bringing us all together. I suggest that we install a program that strongly facilitates the children/descendants of all slaves to receive a truly quality K-12 education. How can that be done? By instilling a program that empowers their parents to choose how the government money will be spent for their education. And, most of the time, the parents will choose – and receive – excellence! So how can we all be assured that all children/descendants receive such a quality education? Because we will make this program available for all parents of school-age children! Not only will this approach not be divisive, it will work – for everyone!

Quote for the week: “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.” Oscar Ameringer