Friday, February 22, 2019
Elizabeth Warren is proposing reparation payments for
slavery.
This, of course, is a ridiculous idea – since nobody alive
today white or black had anything to do with slavery.
But it also poses some logistical problems since unlike with
Native Americans, it is difficult or most likely impossible to tell just which
African American gets how much if anything at all, even with sophisticated DNA testing.
Do those whose answers were raised as freed slaved in the Border
States get less reparation than those in the Deep South?
Should there be some measure to determine an amount for
those smuggled out of the south by the legendary Underground Railroad – and should
those brought out earlier such as nearer to 1800 get less than those brought
out later such as the eve of the American Civil War?
Should those who could not get out at all get more than
those who did escape?
Or perhaps Warren is proposing one blank check for all
African Americans, each getting an equal share of some as yet to be determined
pot of money – much like the fund reserved for the first responders who got
diseases after cleaning up the mess as a result of the 9/11 attack?
Since slaves, unlike Native Americans, did not have land of
their own – except for what the abolitionist carpetbaggers stole from their
former masters after the war – we can’t return land, and cannot expect to see
black operated casinos any time soon – unless, of course, Warren intends to turn
over the former Trump Plaza in Atlantic City (before it gets torn down.)
The idea that white people should play people of color for
crimes committed by their great, great, great grandfathers and mothers seems
more than a little ridiculous, unless you happen to be a U.S. Senator pandering
for the black vote in order to get elected president.
Warren’s idea, however, does have some merit is you are
looking to more recent history in which people of color have been pushed out of
their urban homes to make way for a new urbanism.
Warren’s call for retribution, of course, ignores the
billions of dollars, of tax dollars that have gone into helping African
Americans and others over the last five decades, aid to school districts, affirmative
action and other programs.
The United States since the Civil Rights Movement of the
mid-1960s has moved mountains to help remedy the ills of more contemporary African
American communities, dedicated solely for the purpose of providing better
opportunities for blacks in Americans.
Radicals – even further to the left than Warren – claim racism
has prevented these programs from achieving the goal of lifting blacks out of
poverty. But the more these radicals accuse white people of being racist, the
more racists white people become --
partly because they and their parents and grandparents have paid a hefty price
in taxes to pay for the programs that should have and could have helped black
communities.
The real crime against African Americans in the late 20th
and early 21st Centuries does not involve White Supremacists at all, but
well-meaning liberals – like Warren – who indeed should bear the cost of
retributions.
Whites fleeing the cities after the Great Migration of African
Americans from the south to the north after World War II left a landscape of
ruin in city centers – such as still exists in places like Paterson and Detroit
– deplorable housing, crumbling schools, water filled with lead or worse, and
massive crime – issues the kids and grandkids of these whites soon learned
firsthand when they decided to return to the cities after odious laws such as
those passed by Rockefeller and Giuliani – made the streets safe again.
This reverse white flight created atrocities of their own.
People of color were rousted out of their homes in a series
of slum clearance some refer to as “delivered vacant.” This means that
redevelopers to build housing for whites occupied did everything possible to
get the poor tenants out, including threats, beatings, even burning in a
campaign that equaled or surpassed the KKK’s lynching of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
But the white people who moved in aren’t the breed to wear
MAGA hats – in fact, quite the opposite. They are many of the same people who
support Warren’s call for retribution, and who are the most outspoken about
accusing conservative whites of being racists.
But it isn’t conservatives living in the spaces people of
color formerly occupied; it is not conservatives that are redeveloping the
cities so fast that people of color are being squeezed into smaller and even
more pathetic parts of the cities with a bleak future as to whether they will
have a place to live at all in the future. It is the liberals who are doing
this – new urban self-righteous people like Warren who want other whites to pay
for their crimes against humanity.
So it is fitting that those who scream the loudest about
racism but are conducting a holocaust of their own against blacks the city
should pay retributions. But instead of giving land back to Native Americans
the way Richard Nixon did, these city dwellers should be finding a way to fix
up the schools African American kids are forced to study in, build better
housing, provide better food, and remove the lead from the water poor urban
black kids are forced to drink.
Or at least, if urban liberals aren’t willing to do that
much, maybe they can let poor black people sleep on their couches.