Did you know that the idea of reparations for slavery was "sacred?" Did you know that if you oppose reparations for slavery, you have "white privilege?" Neither did I. Probably because it's nonsensical.
PBS released a new America Reframed documentary of Monday about reparations and the taxpayer-funded network went all in with the bad faith smears, strawmen burning, and stereotyping of those who oppose such measures.
They even found Father Brian Paulson of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States to claim that reparations are something “sacred.” Paulson was shown asking, “What are we up against as we undertake this sacred mission?”
A montage of reparations critics intermingled with reparations supporters to add what the critics really mean then began with Sen. Mitch McConnell claiming, “Yeah, I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.”
Sarah Eisner, a descendant of slave owners and currently of the Reparations Project, claimed it is actually, “Fear. ‘What are you going to take from me?’"
No. It's not fear. That's a downright stupid accusation. It may be disgust, it may be anger, it may be frustration, but it's not fear. Let's call out the elephant in the room: Plenty of white people are tired of being blamed, as a group, for all of the nation's ills throughout all of American history, and this call for reparations — taking money away from people who have never owned slaves and giving it to people who have never been slaves — just increases that frustration.
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Now, I'm in favor of reparations for slavery. I think that anyone alive today who was a slave is due some financial recompense, which should be paid by those who held them in slavery. But all those people are dead now. They've been dead for a century or more. This is, literally, a dead issue. The entire concept of "white privilege" is a massive straw man that should be knocked down and burned; it holds that, for instance, a black Harvard-educated attorney living in a Manhattan penthouse is somehow lacking advantages granted to a white coal miner in Appalachia. To put it bluntly, the very idea is nonsensical.
For those who favor reparations for American slavery, I have a few questions.
- Who is eligible for reparations payments? How do we define "descendants of slaves" after 150 years of intermarriage? Do we bring back the "One Drop Rule?" Is someone like, say, Barack Obama, whose mother was indisputably white, only entitled to half a payment?
- Speaking of Barack Obama, who has a net worth of $70 million, does he qualify? Should his share, or half-share, of reparations payments be paid by white mechanics, shopkeepers, and fast-food workers who have a net worth in single or double digits?
- What about black people who immigrated to the United States after 1865? People from Uganda, or Nigeria, or South Africa? Is melanin content the criteria, or do we have to establish some connection to an actual American slave?
- How indeed do we establish descendency? I wouldn't be willing to accept an Ancestry.com profile. We don't have a DNA database of slaves and freed slaves.
No, I'm not fearful of the idea of reparations. I am tired of this constant demand, for a variety of reasons, to take money away from those who have earned it and give it to those who have not, no matter what the reasons. This is just the latest idea along those lines, but it's even dumber than most; taking money away from people who have never been slaveowners and giving it to people who have never been slaves, and if you're not in favor of it, you are guilty of "white privilege."
This is the purest of balderdash, rubbish, codswallop, horsefeathers, blatherskite, and poppycock. And if anyone objects to that characterization, then they obviously are fearful of 19th-century synonyms for "stupid."
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