The Reparations Question, or Where to Send My Check

I recently received an email that I’m guessing came from a black woman. She asked me where I stood on reparations. My response was that I’m not really big on reparations, but if she really insisted, I would give her my address so she could send me a check.

You see, this is how I look at the reparations matter. There are a number of different theories on how the human race became dispersed across the planet, but if you talk to most reparationists, they generally subscribe to the theory that homo sapiens first appeared on the scene in Africa and "migrated" from there across the planet, so let’s take their theory to its ultimate conclusion. It goes like this: The first homo sapiens appeared on the scene some 200,000 years ago in parts of Africa. If you want to go further back, some type of early humanoid species was on the scene, say, for example, in the Ngorongoro part of Tanzania, millions of years before that. The earliest signs in the area at Laetoli in Ngorongoro are humanoid footprints that have been preserved in volcanic rock for the past 3,600,000 years.

Now if you dig long enough, you may find Jimmy Hoffa's skeletal remains in New Jersey, but that’s almost as far back as ancient history is going to go in New Jersey and many places, including Detroit, Hollywood, Norway, Sweden, Bulgaria and Poland. So the entire homo sapiens thing started around Tanzania and the like.

Now going along with this theory, I’m thinking if the first humanoids and homo sapiens were in Tanzania and nearby regions and then dispersed from there, then my far-off, very distant ancestors came from that region also, and somebody had to have chased my ancestors off their property and out of the area. Or do you think all my ancestors just chose colder climates for the fun of it?

There might have even been bloody battles where some of my ancestors may have been maimed or killed before my surviving ancestors were run off the fat of the land.

Admittedly, yeah, we evolved so our skin got much lighter, so we could survive in the colder climates. But I’m thinking, my ancestors left an area near the Breadbasket of the World to freeze half the year and, say, become potato farmers? Something ain’t right.

Now it wasn’t only white people's skin color that evolved and had to adapt after being chased away from the breadbasket, our entire body structure did. I tend to agree with the former basketball player Charles Barkley, who said that white men shouldn’t dance in public. You see, us white men have lost all ability to shake, boogie and get down. And as far as basketball is concerned, well it’s a fact that white men can’t jump. And as far as those new after-touchdown end zone dances in the NFL, have you seen any white guys try to pull those off? In fact, there is perhaps a psychologist somewhere that would probably agree with the theory that there are less white men scoring touchdowns these days because they fear they just don’t have a good after-touchdown dance.

So bottom line, white men are scoring fewer touchdowns in the NFL. They are completely missing out on the $100 million NBA basketball contracts, and they probably aren’t having as much fun because they can’t shake, boogie or get down. And this all can be traced back to the fact that our ancestors were chased way the hell away from where homo sapiens first walked the planet.

Reparations? Well, I am not a big believer in government getting involved in things, but the next time someone talks to you about reparations, make sure you take the argument to its logical conclusion. And that ultimate conclusion would mean that Allen Iverson, Michael Jordan, Johnnie Cochran, Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, Snoop Dogg, Barry Bonds, Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, Willie Mays and the like should be writing some very big reparations checks.

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