If I were to get a check in the mail today from the US government because my great, great, great-grandfather was enslaved, I’d burn it.
The idea of compensating blacks because of slavery is outlandish and pointless. Some people argue blacks still suffer economically from the repercussions of slavery and should receive compensation to make up for this setback. There are major flaws in this thinking.
How black do you have to be to receive payment? Not all blacks are descendents of enslaved Africans.
If you only have to have one relative that was enslaved at some point to be compensated, the people receiving payments would include people that don’t identify themselves as black. I doubt too many people in support of reparations would support this.
Yes, blacks do still suffer from the aftermath of slavery. However, all blacks should not receive reparations Obviously, some of us have managed to overcome the economic impact of slavery.
Do you know how rich Oprah is?
How do you decide whether the current state of a person’s finances is because an ancestor was a slave? A person’s bad financial situation may be because of poor economic planning. All of our problems are not a result of slavery.
There’s also the argument that Jewish people and Japanese-Americans received reparations because of their ordeals. The difference between those payments and reparations for slavery is that the money they were given was handed to those who actually endured the events, not to their descendants.
We really need to think of the implications of making non-black taxpayers foot the bill for the massive endeavor. The bitterness harbored by non-blacks because of the payments would cause much more damage to future blacks’ success than slavery ever did. Millions of people had no direct connection to slavery because their families immigrated to America after the Civil War.
Reparations would also have a devastating effect on the economy.
The United States is already under economic strain and struggling to develop a plan to care for the large number of aging baby boomers. It is not feasible to find the funds to pay the trillions of dollars reparations would require.
It’s time to be honest with ourselves. There’s currently no logical way to make reparations work without demolishing the US government or any progress that blacks have made since slavery.
Jason Hutchins, 18, is a freshman business student from Athens, Ga. He is a Famuan Page Designer. He can be reached at je_hutchins@hotmail.com