I’m not sure what got me thinking about the topic of “Reparations” today. For those of you who are not sure what I’m talking about, just go to Google and type the word “reparations” and you’ll get oodles of hits.

You’ll find links to websites advocating reparations, white papers, blogs, speeches from local, state, and federal officials, etc. You’ll find no end of opinion going back and forth on the issue.

I could go on at length myself, having heard this debate many times, and I generally do not favor reparations. The reasons against this idea are legion.

First of all, we fought a huge war to free blacks in the 1860’s. That is actually how my family earned its citizenship. We were tired of being hungry and oppressed by the English in Ireland, I guess, so came to the US on the promise of citizenship for anyone that enlisted into the military for the duration of the war. So my great great great great great (I think) grandfather came over and joined the US Navy in the fight against the Confederacy.

After the war ended, he was given an honorable discharge, which he then used to apply for citizenship. We still have the paperwork given to him by the Navy in fact. He was honorably discharged on November 8, 1865. And in writing this post, I just realized that, in a little over a month, my family will be able to celebrate 140 years of US citizenship… Whoa!

But I digress…

That war was huge in terms of costs, especially when you consider that more Americans (black and white) died in that war than any war before or since. Unfortunately, the scars of that war still remain. The confederacy is DEAD, yet people continue to take pride in flying the old confederate flag.

And so the emotional scars of a terrible war remain, and there is no doubt in my mind that those scars have adversely effected the hopes and opportunities of blacks in the US. It took another 100 years AFTER the Civil War before we really took on the issue of institutionalized racism in this country. Thanks to people like Martin Luther King, we are all freer today.

Then, in 1964, President Johnson declared a war on poverty and since then, we’ve poured untold billions into efforts to equalize society. Has it been just billions? Doubt it. How about tens of billions? Maybe.

It’s probably more like hundreds of billions that have been spent to try and “repair” some of the very obvious disadvantages that African Americans have had to live under since before we were even a nation. Despite all the money that has been spent, problems persist, that is sure and certain.

Are we a perfectly free society today? Yes and no. The racism we deal with today is much more subtle and I firmly believe it continues to adversly effect blacks in this country. At the same time, overt racism is far less prevalent today.

All this to say, I still lean away from reparations. First we should look into how much money the US has ALREADY spent to try and repair some of it’s past errors. I’m betting the money spent is daunting in size.

Then we need to see what programs have made a difference and which ones have not or, worse, have hurt more than they helped. With every government program comes consequences that were never intended, much less planned for. Welfare, for example, helped those in poverty, but it virtually destroyed families below the poverty line because it paid women for NOT getting married. By the way, it just so happens that single-parenthood is one of the leading causes of poverty.

So, what welfare actually does, in effect, is help create the conditions which keep unmarried women in poverty, as opposed to the intended purpose of helping them get out of poverty. At the same time, welfare did more to destroy the family unit in poor communities than communism.

Your tax dollars at work.

So, what would be the impact of what I like to call “The Big Payoff,” and how would the federal government pay it out? Would they make payments individually or to interest groups to be distributed?

You know that this is what these special interest groups want, right? Just pay them the billions and then they’ll distribute it from there. Rightttttttt! That’ll happen.

And WHO gets paid; meaning, which families? What if the government is unable to verify someone’s status as a bonafide descendent of a slave? What if some parts of the family tree had actually been slave OWNERS, as some African Americans were in those days, while other parts had been slaves? Do they get a partial payment?

I’m sure the issue is more complicated than any of us can imagine. After all, some African Americans were brought over as slaves but earned their freedom during the American Revolution. The Continental Army, after all, was the most integrated army the country would see right up until the Koren War.

But do freedmen (as they were called) deserve some compensation? If memory serves, I don’t think any Continentals ever wound up being paid for their service during the American Revolution… Perhaps we need to track down their heirs and pay them too?

Oh my head!!

But lets say all the details are worked out and legislation enacted to recompense African Americans who were wronged… Then what?

Will all be forgiven? Will organizations promoting this cause simply disband? Will they issue an official pardon? Will they drop the issue altogether, or will they continue to target companies which were once remotely or directly connected with the slavery industry?

All those are important questions. And I’m sure there are a thousand more relevant questions I’ve failed to ask here.

But my big question is this… Will money REALLY resolve all grievances once and for all?

That is what I want to hear from groups like NCOBRA, ARM, The Rainbow Coalition, and the hundreds of other groups, large and small, which are calling for reparations. If the US government makes the Big Payoff, then what?

Inquiring minds want to know.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com