Reflections on Reparations

July 15, 2003

When I first heard blacks talking about reparations, I have to admit I started to laugh. Let's face it, it sounded exactly like the sort of get-rich-quick schemes that the Kingfish used to conjure up on "Amos 'n' Andy." And, funny as he was, he wasn't half as wacky as Al Sharpton.

We all know there is so much white guilt floating around that if you could only transform it into electrical power, America would be freed of its dependence on fossil fuels. But, come on now. Reparations?!

I recall wondering if I might be missing something. Were these people seriously demanding that damages should be paid 140 years after slavery ended? What ever happened to the statute of limitations? What ever happened to common sense? And where do people four or five generations after the fact get off demanding pay-offs? People who weren't hurt demanding money from people who never hurt anyone? It sounded to me like a whole new definition of chutzpah. Or, if you prefer, a plank in the Democratic platform.

The more I thought about it, the sillier it sounded. First of all, there's the question of where the money would come from. Obviously the same magical place from which all entitlements emanate--the pockets of the middle class tax payers.

But obviously we couldn't all be expected to kick in, could we? After all, surely black Americans couldn't be required to ante up. But, then, neither could most white Americans, whose own ancestors, by and large, didn't arrive on these shores until long after the Civil War had settled the issue once and for all.

And, heaven knows, you couldn't very well demand reparations from those American Yankees whose forefathers not only ran the Underground Railroad, but perished by the tens of thousands in that bloodiest of all wars. In fact, one could make a case that it's blacks who owe a debt to the
ancestors of those men who died at Shiloh and Bull Run and Gettysburg.

Once you get done eliminating innocent parties, who's left to foot the bill? Mainly volunteers, I suspect. People like Daschle, Kennedy, Boxer, Gore and the Clintons, people in the business of feeling everybody's pain, would be free to pony up for the rest of us. The question would still remain: What do you do about mulattoes? Would they only get to collect fifty cents on the dollar?

I'm sure when most people first heard about reparations, they dismissed it as just another of those race-baiting notions that seems to appear with the obnoxious regularity of death, taxes and Jesse Jackson. But when I thought about all the Yankee soldiers who died while preserving the Union and ending slavery, it occurred to me that there are millions of us who could line up for a piece of the reparation pie.

For instance, long after blacks left the plantation, the Chinese were brought to America as cheap coolie laborers to lay railroad tracks. And once that job was over, they were treated like curs. By custom and by law, they were restricted to the worst jobs and the worst slums.

Let us not forget women. Once reparations caught on, the ladies would be front and center with their endless list of grievances regarding life as it's lived in a patriarchal society. You think picking cotton was bad? Try packing the kids off to school, picking up the dry cleaning, shopping, driving the tots to their play dates, cooking, cleaning, and holding down a second job, all the while refraining from murdering the slob she's married to who insists on leaving his dirty socks on the floor!

Frankly, if this thing actually gets off the ground, I plan to submit my own claim. I'm short, you see, and in this country, that's a far greater handicap than being black, Chinese or female.

Finally, though, let me say that that I agree with the brave black New York Times reporter who, a few years ago, wrote that, as abominable as slavery was, he, personally, was grateful that it brought his ancestors to this country, enabling their great-great-great-grandson to be born an American.

Burt Prelutsky

©2003 Burt Prelutsky