Reparations- Rendering Race Relations Irreparable
It is a question worth asking, yet one which might surely stump the very best contestants on ABC’s Jeopardy, the popular TV game show hosted by Alex Trebec:
“Who was Sylvester Magee?”
Born to slaves named Ephraim and Jeanette, who worked on the J.J. Shanks Plantation in North Carolina, Sylvester Magee was later sold to one Hugh Magee, who owned the Lone Star Plantation in Covington County, Mississippi and there he worked as a field hand prior to enlisting in the Union Army in 1863. Twice wounded, Magee returned at war’s end an emancipated freedman. He lived to be well over 100 years old, but his age was uncertain beyond the fact that he was born sometime in the 1840s.
On October 15, 1971, Sylvester Magee, died in Columbia, Mississippi, the last known living former slave in the United States.
In the forty-seven years since Sylvester Magee passed away, the idea of paying descendants of American slaves reparations has bubbled up from time to time as a proposed antidote to ameliorate the legacy of slavery in the United States. Controversial at its core and increasingly difficult to equitably implement, reparations have nevertheless been the occasional card played by extremists on the political left in a dubious effort to sway the African-American voting bloc.
In this year of 2019, as a run-up to next year’s presidential election, Democrats seeking their party’s nomination are feverishly queueing up to kiss the hind quarters of the notorious race-baiter Al Sharpton (remember Tawana Brawley and the hoax Sharpton concocted to gain national exposure?) at his annual convention of his National Action Network. By promising to support and sign legislation providing for reparations to those claiming to be the descendants of slaves here in the United States, these pathetic politicians do so to gain Sharpton’s blessing and potential endorsement. As an aside, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) has even introduced legislation to for a “study group” to look into the possible payment of reparations.
Just a study group? Yeah, right.
Aside from the general argument of paying descendants of slaves (now, well into the fourth generation) compensation for the involuntary servitude to which their ancestors were subjected, the proposal would be utterly impossible to implement.
Why?
- Well for instance, how would it be determined who would pay the actual reparations, aside from the U.S. Treasury? Would the payments be exacted from only the descendants of slave owners or from whites only? What about Caucasians who are descended from immigrants who came to this country in the decades following the American Civil War? Should they also have to pay?
- Then again, how would it be determined who specifically would be paid reparations? Would such payments be limited to documented descendants of slaves once held in the United States, or to blacks, in general? What about African-Americans who are descended from immigrants who came to this country in the years following the American Civil War? Should they, too, be so entitled to receive these payments? What about individuals, like former President Barack Obama, whose father was a Kenyan national and whose mother was a white American? Would individuals of similar lineage qualify to receive such benefits?
Implementation issues aside, the idea of compensating the descendants of U.S. slaves for what happened to their great grandparents, and great-great grandparents, is nothing more than cheap and exploitative means to trick African-American voters into staying on the political plantation known as the Democrat Party- a party which has really done nothing to improve the lives of African-Americans since the 1960s. Worse, to take money from one person and give this money to another, all in the name of retrospective recompense, constitutes government-forced redistribution in its worst form, and reinforces the stereotype that, somehow, black folks are incapable of improving their own lives without government assistance.
If that’s not racist, then what the hell is?
No one worthy of respect would deny that the institution of slavery in the United States was an injustice of the worst kind in our country’s history. Just as certain, no one in their right mind would dare say that race relations, in general, and the civil rights and opportunities for African-Americans, specifically, have not significantly improved since the 1950s…
…that is, unless they are race-baiters like Al Sharpton, who make their ill-begotten gains by exploiting the emotions of those of his own race and by extorting the putative political “guilt” of liberal whites and other politicians seeking his imprimatur.
To opportunists like Sharpton, and the politicians who seek his favor, “race” is nothing more than a commodity to be played in the open market of ideas, thanks to the media attention that he gains every time he opens his mouth.
Perhaps, we have not quite realized the oft-quoted dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., who longed for the day when people would be judged, not by color of their skin, but rather by the content of their character…a day when blacks and whites could sit down in fellowship, together at a table of perfect racial harmony, and join hands…
…and nothing would ensure that this dream will never come to pass, and would thus render race relations forever irreparable, than the forced payment of reparations to a select group of citizens who have never known the injustice of slavery in their own lifetimes.
That time passed with the passing of Sylvester Magee, forty-seven years ago.
-Drew Nickell, 8 April 2019
© 2019 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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