Reparations?  Where's Mine?

by Joseph S. Bommarito

Advocates of reparations to black Americans for “centuries of enslavement”—I count two centuries in this country, but I’ll allow the plural—pursued a day of activities on August 17 on the National Mall. Touted as the "Millions for Reparations March," it was expected to draw 100,000 people from across the country. I’m not sure how 100,000 equals “millions.” I blame public education for that failure. The actual count was reported to be in the thousands. 

The tone of the rally was typified by New York Councilman Charles Barron, who won my heart by saying, “I just might walk up to the nearest white man and say, ‘You don't understand, it's a black thing,’ and slap him for my mental health.”

Reparationist Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, Chairman of the National Black United Front, provided a list of 19 grievances entitled “Millions for Reparations Rally: They Owe Us!” He didn’t immediately define “they,” certainly not as succinctly as Edmond O’Brien did in the movie “The Wild Bunch” when he uttered that memorable line, “‘They?’ Who is ‘they?’ Why just plain and fancy ‘they.’”

After commenting about self-determination, independence, and “assuming responsibility for repairing ourselves,” Worrill continues, “. . . part of our internal repair is to . . . demand external reparations from those governments, corporations, and institutions that are responsible for our historical and continuing state of oppression.” Now it’s clear who “they” is. Deep pockets. Those with—I hate to be crass—money. No mention of the African and Arab slavers who carried on their commerce in human flesh centuries before and decades after the era of trans-Atlantic slave trade. Those are the “they” who don’t have any—here’s that word again—money. You can’t get—sorry—money from a stone, and most of those folks are now walking around with rocks in their pockets.

Worrill continues, “Part of our internal repair is to consciously understand that ‘We Are Owed’ and have a historic responsibility to demand reparations from those forces of white supremacy that continue to benefit from what they did to us that lingers on as part of the vestiges of our enslavement.” Crawling through the underbrush of obtuse rhetoric, we finally get to the point. It’s the white supremacists that he’s after! My wallet is safe. 

But wait. To the politically correct, I am a supremacist due to my melanin-impoverished skin. In “Notes for Yet Another Paper on Black Feminism,” Barbara Smith wrote, “. . . it is safe to assume that 99.44 percent of [white men] are racists and sexists.” It’s a simple mathematical equation to her. W = S. White equals Supremacist. Ms. Smith’s remark is not racist, however. Members of oppressed groups can’t be racist, by definition.

So Worrill wants my money because I am a white supremacist who somehow benefited from slavery, or because I am responsible for some continuing state of oppression. That answers the “what” and “who.” But how? I sincerely doubt that Worrill will approach me on the street and ask me to take him to lunch. Frankly, I think he’s talking big bucks.

Dr. Gloria Randle Scott says it’s simple: Just calculate the value that slaves added to their owners’ businesses and back charge the businesses now through a “retrogressive analysis”—I took statistics in college and never heard of that one—for what they denied years past. The business makes up its reparation payment through higher prices charged to its customers. No problem.

Whoops! Problem. Some of the people who would pay higher costs to businesses are the descendants of slaves and would therefore be back-charged for their own enslavement. But Scott could probably offer some type of remedy, perhaps a “retro-descendent analysis” that would correct for this.

My grandparents came to this country long after slavery was abolished, as did many others. Everything they earned and built was due to their own hard work. Their descendants should be exempt from paying reparations, just as the descendants of black people who arrived after slavery should be exempt from receiving reparations. We should be off the hook through “retro-immigration analysis.” 

Reparationists are fond of pointing to payments made to survivors of the Rosewood, Florida massacre and to survivors of concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were “interned.” But there’s a common thread. All the beneficiaries were survivors, still alive, and were recompensed for actual harm done to them. There are no living survivors of slavery, just a bunch of chronologically-challenged “me too’s.” 

Now, about my reparations program. My people have suffered injustices that go way back, long before the settlement of this continent. My roots are on the island of Sicily. Sicilians have been owned, oppressed, suppressed, repressed, and generally taken advantage of for 3,000 years and more. It’s documented. I’ll see your two centuries, Dr. Worrill, and raise you three millennia. 

Starting around 1,000 BC, the long-established Sicilians were exploited by Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, early Germanic cultures, Longobards, Goths, Angevin French, Aragonese, and the Spanish. The Moors ruled for a time. (It’s indelicate of me to say so, but they were people of color, oppressors, slavers, from Africa. Got your checkbook out, Dr. Worrill?) The Normans got their share off the backs of my people, and finally the Italians moved in, took over, and are still there. Our native language is practically extinct, our history—that little that is our own—is threatened. I have a longer list of oppressors than Worrill does, and I’m sure that it adds up to a lot more in reparations, including interest. 

But I’m not running around trying to loot anyone descended from the oppressors of my ancestors. The only way this type of “reparation” can be made is through government force. In the interest of maintaining my own independence and self-responsibility, I will not ask the government to use its coercive power to forcefully expropriate the earnings of other people in order to make my life more pleasant. That’s not justice. That’s not what the rule of law is about.

Reparation is compensation for an injury. It is restitution for clear and provable harm. That’s real justice, not some made-to-order “social justice” through which innocent people are forcibly relieved of their property in favor of professional victims who feel put upon because their ancestors actually were put upon. Worrill and Scott and their ilk must first make their case that I harmed them. Take me to court, prove it. Any other form of “reparation” is just another politically-motivated government program for redistribution of income. Welfare. Legal plunder. So much for independence and self-determination and for assuming responsibility. Why be responsible when you can get someone else’s money? 

Slavery was a despicable practice that robbed life, murdered liberty, and raped the concept of property. It was an injustice. Attempting to rectify an injustice with more injustice 135 years later only adds to the injustice in the world. Enough, already.