Slavery Reparations - Again

You may also want to compare the BoGlo Article to the AP article, since they seem to have trimmed out all the portions that speak against reparations. (how convenient)

So this stupidity is raising it's ugly head again, or is that still?

Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum. Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into a sophisticated, mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.

The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say that focusing on slavery shouldn't be a top priority or that it doesn't make sense to compensate people generations after a historical wrong.

Yet reparations efforts have led a number of cities and states to approve measures that force businesses to publicize their historical ties to slavery. Several reparations court cases are in progress, and international human rights officials are increasingly spotlighting the issue.

I don't personally care if private organizations choose to play the reparations game. I do object to the point where the government of states starts trying to punish private companies for historical activities that were fully within the law of the time. That touches on the complete lack of perspective of history and forces the "sour grapes" meme to an extreme that is frankly unacceptable.

About six years ago, the issue started gaining momentum again. Randall Robinson's "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," was a best seller; reparations became a central issue at the World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa; and California legislators passed the nation's first law forcing insurance companies that do business with the state to disclose their slavery ties. Illinois passed a similar insurance law in 2003 and in 2004 Iowa legislators began requesting -- but not forcing -- the same disclosures.

There you go. If some company stock owner had slaves, the company is a pariah of the rest of time. That makes perfect sense to me. I'm sure that I'll be unemployed soon for the rest of my days because I have an ancestor that was a pirate, or maybe it will be the minister in the family tree that will do me in. (He was a convicted horse theif.) Though maybe this will balance out with the American Indians and the one African-American in the family tree. (Maybe I should be demanding reparations?)

Reparations is just a bad idea from the point of deciding who should pay whom. My family has links to the earliest colonies in New England and none of the records show any ownership of slaves. The fact that at least two of my ancestors fought and died in the Civil war also brings up the question of what is owed the family who sacrificed their blood to free the slaves. But I suppose I'm muddying the waters by asking.

Here's a bit that the BoGlo leaves out:

Reparations opponents insist that no living American should have to pay for a practice that ended more than 140 years ago. Plus, programs such as affirmative action and welfare already have compensated for past injustices, said John H. McWhorter, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

"The reparations movement is based on a fallacy that cripples the thinking on race - the fallacy that what ails black America is a cash problem," said McWhorter, who is black. "Giving people money will not solve the problems that we have."

Welfare isn't even a reasonable argument. Though he does have a point that handing people cash won't solve the problem.

If the reparations debate is gaining steam, I think we're seeing the PC world of the alleged "progressives" starting to spin out of control.