Reparations for Slavery

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.