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Reparations Equals Robbery of Innocents Much has been made recently of Black Americans with family lineages originating on the continent of Africa extracting payment from the United States government in the form of reparations. It seems that February being designated Black History Month and the 25th anniversary of Alex Haley's "Roots" (despite its falsehoods) has created for some a perfect time to stump for what they feel is the pursuit of a just cause. The problem here is that the cause is neither fair or just, and in nearly all cases would take payment in the form of taxes from citizens who had nothing to do with the slave trade, and from many families whose landing in America came after the slaves were freed. However barbaric the practice of slavery is, let's shatter one prevalent myth right at the outset of this column. To hear the pro-reparation people talk, no one was ever enslaved prior to the arrival of the white man on the North American continent. The truth is, slavery did not originate with the white, European settlers who landed in North America. Nearly every culture that has ever walked this earth at some time enslaved members of another. This existed for a millennium before the slave trade came to the Atlantic, and as David Horowitz has noted, "There was never in that thousand year existence an anti-slavery movement until whites-- Englishmen and Americans--created one." Yes, it was whites who ended slavery in the new world, and now descendants of those who helped put a stop to this abhorrent practice are going to be shaken down to pay? Where is the justice in that? In my opinion a major flaw in the reparations camp is that I have never heard one supporter acknowledge the fact that Black Arabs and Africans were also responsible for the enslavement of their own people. The slave trade existed in Africa before the arrival of the Europeans and had a well established route that imported Africans from the south to the Middle East and Northern Africa. Yet another fact they fail to recognize is that not all slaves in the new world were black!!! Settlers used captured Indians for labor, indentured servants, and individuals convicted of penal offenses to perform the needed work in the fields, homes and mines of the New World. Before several of you fire up your email and bombard me with diatribes about how none of this justifies slavery, spare me and save yourselves the time and effort. What I have written in this space has in no way supported the taking of any person against their will and forcing them into working for free. In the same vein, however, just because one happens to have dark skin and is tied to "400 years of oppression" does not entitle him or her to monies of other hard-working citizens. Sorry. The majority of those individuals who love to throw the "400 years" out there have never endured any real oppression in this country in their lives. You want oppression? My father-in-law fought for the Polish resistance (known as the AK) from the moment Hitler and his goons ransacked his homeland and invaded the homes of those proud people. He carried three sets of papers on him and had to know which identity he was claiming was in which pocket. To hand the gestapo the wrong set of papers would mean instant execution where he stood. One night he was rousted by some of Adolph's storm troopers, not knowing whether the jackboots had already found his other sets of papers or not. (He did manage to get out of that one, by the way.) THAT is oppression! You want oppression? In the eastern part of the country, my mother-in-law (all of 14 years old) was grabbed off the street along with her mother and loaded on a cattle car for a spot in one of Uncle Joe Stalin's gulags. (Thanks, FDR.) Welcome to Siberia! She spent the better part of four years in that ice-bound hell-hole. How many calling for reparations have been picked up and thrown into a labor camp? THAT is oppression! The final argument they always fall back on is that the precedent for reparations was set by those paid to the Japanese who were imprisoned at places such as Manzanar and Hart Mountain. Sorry guys, wrong again. Those were paid directly to those whose liberty was revoked and property confiscated, or their children if they did not survive. It did not occur 140 years after the fact, and certainly not everyone who just happened to be Japanese got their "Benjamins." The point lost on those who favor reparations is that no one group has a monopolistic claim on oppression, period. There can be no claim to the fruits of other's labor because the color of one's skin is similar to people who suffered injustices in the past. This is an evil aim, not a just cause. Even if one were able to prove his family line descended from slaves and could trace the owner's family, it is unconscionable to hold children liable for the sins of the father. This must be shown as what it is, a reprehensible quest to get something for nothing, tantamount to theft. The truth matters little to those who would have people such as my parents-in-law, who survived a multitude of real atrocities, arrived here in 1963, spoke no English and worked hard to make themselves a nice life, pay taxes on their meager retirement income to help support others with a victim mentality. Shame on you, supporters of reparations!
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