Should white America, or the United States government, pay reparations to African Americans for slavery?
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I answer emphatically NO! First off, it is illegal; where in the Constitution did we delegate authority to the federal government to make amends for past transgressions against specific groups? And where does it bestow the ability to punish the children for the sins of the father?


How would we determine who pays? Most whites never owned slaves. At the height of slavery, according to the 1860 census, less than 2% of Americans were slaveowners. In my state of Vermont, we never had legal slavery. Must Vermonters pay for what others who look similar to us did in the past? Further, many slaveowners were Jewish, Native Americans or blacks themselves. Thousands of blacks owned slaves in the South, and so do their descendants receive money from whites who never owned any slaves while their ancestors did? Some areas of Louisiana and South Carolina had a higher percentage of free black slave owners than the white community in which they lived. Do they pay other blacks for owning them?


Every race of people has been enslaved; it is just a matter of how far back. Whites enslaved whites, whites enslaved blacks, blacks enslaved blacks, blacks enslaved whites, and so on. So where do we draw the line?


Also, if they do not see it as unfair to punish later generations who do not own slaves, then it is not unfair for modern disadvantaged blacks to be unfairly treated. You cannot have it both ways; you can’t make modern whites suffer for sins they did not commit and also claim modern blacks should be treated fairly. Otherwise, you are creating a new disadvantaged racial group; you are not ending racism and mistreatment but promoting it.


If anyone owes anyone money, would it not be the blacks, descendants of both free and enslaved blacks, who today owe America money? Blacks in America are better off financially, medically, and materially than anywhere in Africa. They are still reaping the rewards of their ancestors being brought here as slaves (as many white who are ancestors of slaves also do).


Remember, Africa was the original center of slavery; they enslaved each other and other races as well. It was white colonial powers that eventually pressured African societies to abolish slavery. Freedom is a “white privilege idea”; it did not derive from pagan Africa. Meaning blacks owe America twice, once for benefiting from this country, and secondly for whites ending slavery in Africa (to the extent that it has) and freeing blacks in predominantly white countries. Nevertheless, today’s black African countries are never asked for reparations, only white, Western ones. For that matter, neither are Arab nations, even though the Arab slave trade began centuries before the transatlantic trade and continued after it, probably transporting more enslaved people in total over its long history. One has to wonder why the white countries are singled out in this way.


However, there is one entity that I think ought to pay reparations to all its people, and that is the United States Government. Nobody has been more oppressive, stolen more forced and unwilling labor and wealth from a greater number of people than the politicians in D.C. As professor Jason Brennan points out, “we are not volunteers, we are conscripts, we cannot opt out, we are forced into it...governments do not merely advise us to follow their rules...they enforce their laws and rules with violence or threats of violence.” In the “land of the free, but home of the slave,” our government places a heavier financial burden on us today than slaves faced in the Old South; they steal our money without our consent and place us in prison if we avoid paying, where we have far less liberty than even slaves had.


Should they not start paying us? Or at least stop treating us as tax slaves? Why are we blind to the most oppressive group, the government, focusing instead on a small minority of white slaveowners so long ago?


​Let’s stop looking at ourselves as various races, but rather as people, as friends, not enemies, then we might just realize who is committing the true crime today and who sets us at war with each other. We are so busy fighting amongst ourselves that we fail to see the cruelest master of all.

A famous image used to portray the brutality of slavery in textbooks, documentaries, and other media is of a runaway slave commonly referred to as “Peter” or “Gordon.” This image, of a former slave with a lacerated back, is then depicted as giving the standard treatment of slaves, who, we are told, often faced a gruesome whipping for misbehavior. However, there is more to the story.



The University of Edinburgh published an article in Edinburgh Research Explorer titled “‘A Typical Negro’: Gordon, Peter, Vincent Colyer, and the Story Behind Slavery’s Most Famous Photograph” by David Silkenat. The author writes that the story behind the image “was largely fabricated and much of what we think we know about ‘Gordon’ may be inaccurate.”


The familiar context of the image leaves one to imagine that the plight this slave was in, and endured, was normal, typical of the South. The truth of the matter is that laws were in place to prevent harsh punishment and to protect slaves equally to free whites. And whipping was far less common than generally believed.[1] For example, in their attempts to make slavery seem far worse and harsher than what really existed, Silkenat asks, why are there not far more images of such treatment? The abolitionists loved this image and did everything they could to reprint it, copy it, and proclaim it to the world. Why would they need to if this were the typical slave treatment? They should have hundreds, thousands of such images to spread. Why only a few? Instead of proving the harsh treatment of the millions of enslaved Southern blacks, they depict only the mistreatment of one. Their argument somewhat proves the opposite of what they desired, that the mistreated slaves were rare. The absence of evidence in this case is, if not itself evidence, at least indicative.


This image and accompanying article in Harper’s Weekly appeared at a low point for the Union, after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Many believed the North could not defeat Lee and the war would drag for many more years. Most did not desire such a thing. Further, Silkenat wrote, “The Emancipation Proclamation, only months old, remained deeply unpopular among major segments of the Northern populace. So too was conscription, with the first Federal draft of soldiers into the Union army scheduled for July 1863.” It appears, then, that the image was published as a tool to drive Union support against the South. Later in the article, he says “Although the image may have played a powerful role in persuading the Northern public about the merits of emancipation and the enlistment of black soldiers, it did so at the expense of the individual experiences of the real Gordon and Peter.” In other words, it was intentionally misleading the public to garner support for continuing the war.


It is not, as is often portrayed, an example of White supremacy and the cruelty of a master to his slave. In fact, when the whipping of Peter occurred, the master was not even on the plantation! Like many drivers on the plantations that used the whip, (and many did not) those who used the whip on the plantation were more often other slaves, not White masters.


Often left out is that “Peter” was, by his own account, whipped severely as a punishment for attempting to kill other slaves, including his own wife (he said that he had no recollection of doing any of this, but had been told by others that it happened). He was possibly guilty, then, of multiple accounts of attempted murder.[2] And when the master returned to the plantation, he immediately dismissed the overseer from his position upon seeing the excessive nature of the whipping, implemented as a punishment for his crimes. So it was the result of one slave implementing punishment on another for a crime done, or attempted, against other slaves. The slave used excessive punishment on the other. The only time a White individual interfered was the master, who removed the driver for excessive abuse.


In modern times, we would place a man accused in the same way as Peter/Gordon in prison, or perhaps a mental institution, where he could face even harsher treatment than a whip, and would have still less freedom than a typical Southern slave enjoyed. One can look up endless images of brutality in prison, police brutality, in the military, in schools, and much more. Why do we not condemn all such institutions like we do slave owners and slavery? Why do we not carry our all-encompassing prejudice against Southerners due to one example and apply it to the above groups and situations? It's because we know you cannot take one example and apply it to a whole group of people or an institution. Yet it seems we forget this principle when it can be applied to Southern Whites.


Further, many in the Northern press pointed out that worse had been done to pro-South or anti-war “copperheads” in the North, including women. The Boston Courier asked to have the images of this mistreated slave published side by side with those of a woman who was brutalized for having Southern sympathies, to see who received the worse treatment. Of course, this never occurred, as it would have been inconvenient for the desired narrative.


Bad things happen in all societies, and the pre-Civil War South was certainly no exception. But we should not use one iconic image of somewhat uncertain provenance to demonize an entire society and everyone in it. It happened then, as the result of a directed propaganda effort, but there is no reason to let it continue today.