ART4PREZ.COM
Reparations
Since the payment of "reparations" can mean different things to different people, I want to make it clear that my contention is with the blanket payment of taxpayer money to people based solely on the color of their skin – which is how "reparations" is coming across to many white people like me. However, I do wholeheartedly support specific court decisions that have attempted to right some of the wrongs of the past and have ruled in favor of the families of Americans of African descent who, for example, received justice for property that was stolen from their ancestors:
But these are cases that have specific plaintiffs and defendants, and a specific harm caused that can be identified and adjudicated--cases that any person of any color should be able to bring to the courts.
I may even support some proposals that want to target rich families that owe their wealth to slave labor—but only if a class action lawsuit from specific descendants of those slaves can be brought against specific defendants, and be adjudicated by the courts. But overall, I believe any large scale, blanket financial compensation for Americans of African descent is unworkable and is a Pandora's box that will only serve to inflame already heated divisions with our society.
I recommend two articles for your consideration. The first is an article by CNN which I believe does a good job examining some of the more popular reparations proposals and discusses the challenges of implementation.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/us/slavery-reparations-explanation-trnd/index.html
The second article deals with the time, energy, and expense involved in figuring out how to fairly distribute funds from the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund to the families of 9/11 victims. I think this offers a modern day example of how "free money" brings out lawyers and lawsuits to address the overwhelming number of complaints of unfairness in how that money is being distributed (which in the case of reparations, could also include how that money is being raised). I think there were only around 3,000 families affected and it took years and 1600 hearings to adjudicate the disbursement of funds, and I believe some cases are still pending. Here is an excerpt from that article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11th_Victim_Compensation_Fund):
The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) was created by an Act of Congress, the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (49 USC 40101),[1] shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001 to compensate the victims of the attack (or their families) in exchange for their agreement not to sue the airline corporations involved. Kenneth Feinberg was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be special master of the fund. He developed the regulations governing the administration of the fund and administered all aspects of the program.[2] Legislation authorizes the fund to disburse a maximum of $7.375 billion, including operational and administrative costs, of U.S. government funds.[3]
In the United States
Feinberg was responsible for making the decisions on how much each family of a victim would receive. Feinberg had to estimate how much each victim would have earned in a full lifetime. If a family accepted the offer, it was not possible to appeal. Families unhappy with the offer were able to appeal in a nonadversarial, informal hearing to present their case however they wanted. Feinberg personally presided over more than 900 of the 1,600 hearings. At the end of the process $7 billion was awarded to 97% of the families. A non-negotiable clause in the acceptance papers for the settlements was that the families were to never file suit against the airlines for any lack of security or otherwise unsafe procedures.[4]
A stumbling block to settlements was the fact that many of the World Trade Center victims were highly compensated financial professionals. Families of these victims felt the compensation offers were too low, and, had a court considered their case on an individual basis, they would have been awarded much higher amounts. This concern had to be balanced against the time, complications, and risks of pursuing an individual case, and the real possibility that the airlines and their insurers could be bankrupted before being able to pay the claim.
This is a separate fund from the similarly named September 11th Fund, and from the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company.
Can you imagine this multiplied by hundreds or thousands? Again, I believe it is totally unworkable and will only add fuel to our racial strife as people of all color will cry foul. Note that only $7 billion was awarded to families, which according to my math, meant that nearly $375 million was spend on administrative overhead.
I also would argue that we, in fact, have actually been paying reparations since the civil rights movement with affirmative action programs, funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and some welfare programs directed at the black population.
Also, a fact not largely acknowledged is that many black leaders in Africa were willing participants in the slave trade with America. It is historically documented (at least according to a PBS documentary on slavery) that African tribal leaders often enslaved the armies of those they defeated in battle, a portion of which they were very willing to sell to the white man. Even today, blacks enslaving blacks in Africa is still quite common. There are frequent reports of black militants kidnapping and enslaving black school girls as well as black militants kidnapping young black boys and forcing them into child armies. But please don't interpret this as me making excuses for our early settlers' practice of slavery. I just want to point out that it's not just the white man who has blood on his hands.