Racial Guilt &
Reparations
There has been a LOT
of acrimonious talk back and forth the last several years regarding racial guilt
over wrongs done to “our” ancestors, and the reparations due us
because of those wrongs done.
Here are my thoughts
on that issue.
There is no such
thing as racial guilt. It is an artificial concept invented by people with huge
guilt complexes who want to share the wealth, and adopted by the greedy and
lazy. Now, before you jump all over me for my “lack of social sensitivity”,
please understand one basic item: I am a triple minority. I am female, I am
black (not in appearance, but by law), and I am Native American. If there is
anyone out there who “has reason” to jump on the ‘Racial Guilt and Reparations’
bandwagon, I would fit that profile, don’t you think?
Please allow me to
explain my premise. First of all, unless you are personally responsible for an
incident (or by your INACTION; knowing something “bad” is going on, and doing
nothing to stop it), you have no liability for that action. That includes (most
especially!) anything your ancestors did, as you could NOT have changed,
altered, influenced, stopped what they did – it was before your time, was it
not? How, therefore, do you consider yourself to be guilty of their actions?
PLEASE, please, please; do not quote to me “the sins of the fathers…”.
That would be like taking a 1 year old baby and sending him to prison because of
a crime his grandfather committed when HE was a teenager! It makes
absolutely no sense whatsoever. If that
were the case, over half the world would belong on death row awaiting
execution.
Now, on the other
hand, if something bad is happening, and you know about it, but turn your head
away “it’s none of my business!” – thus allowing it to occur, then YES, you have
guilt, and I hope it plagues you every night in your sleep! Or, if you actively
participated… but then, that’s a no-brainer, isn’t it??
Now, on to
reparations. If the offense did not happen to me, HOW can I demand to be paid
for “my suffering”?? My ancestors were sold as
slaves (most often by their own kind – other Africans! Check your history,
people.), shipped halfway around the world to live an existence I wouldn’t wish
upon my dog! In fact, I’d shoot someone who did many of those things to my
dog! However, they did NOT happen to me. I cannot demand payment for that –
it’s asinine!
As for the
descendants of slaves; As bad as things were in the United States (and
elsewhere in the world – the US wasn’t alone) for displaced Africans after
slavery ended (legally), as much as I abhor what was done to them (and some of
my own ancestors, don’t forget!), they were still better off than
they would have been in Africa! No, I’m not crazy, think about it. There is
STILL slavery, prejudice, rape, wholesale slaughter and genocide going on to
this day in Africa! And the disease! Yes, what was done by the
standards of the rest of the ‘white’ population was horrid.
Compared to what they would have had in Africa? Think about that for just a
moment or two.
On another side, I am
Native American; Apache, to be specific. My ancestors were chased off their
land, they were slaughtered simply because they were in the way of greedy
‘white’ men who wanted land and their way of life was not understood. They were
eventually reduced to poverty on some of the worst land (and damn little of
that!) in the entire US and cheated and lied to repeatedly by the government
they were told would ‘take care of them’. Poor bastards. Stuffed onto
reservations with little or no funding for educational programs, health care and
extremely poor general living standards. We wound up with several generations
of uneducated alcoholics (NO, not all Native Americans are alcoholics – don’t be
ridiculous. But when booze is the only thing plentiful and cheap, and hope is
in short supply – you wind up with a propensity for alcoholism). Again, it did
NOT happen to me. Demanding the government PAY me for what was done to my
ancestors is so stupid, that we won’t even go there. Please show me where
I suffered from this?
Yet another facet of
my ancestry, had events not gone the way they had, I would be a Duchess, a
Princess; or at best, a Queen. My Great Uncle was Francesco II, the last King of
Sicily, and he died without issue. My Grandfather would have been the successor
to the throne. Should I file suit with the current government of Italy because
of what Garibaldi did to my family? After all, they killed my Great Uncle, and
a few members of the family barely escaped - shouldn’t I be due SOMETHING?
Please. Let’s get real here. The Italian government would laugh themselves
sick were I even to try!
Now if the last is a
ridiculous example, why shouldn’t the first ones also be? The premise is the
same; something bad was done to my ancestors, therefore I’m owed!! And the fact
that my “standard of living” would be so much better, only makes the pot
sweeter, does it not? No, it simply underscores the idiocy of the entire
“Racial Guilt and Reparations” concept.