Reparations Or Liberty

By Richard Moss, MD

January 16, 2023

 Among many tell-tale signs of the tectonic fissures dividing the nation, perhaps the most telling is the call by prominent Democrats and others for reparations.  A recent proposal by California governor Gavin Newsom calling for reparation payments of some $223,000 per black resident pushes the matter once again to the fore.  Reparations refer to compensatory payments made to the descendants of African slaves brought to America through the Atlantic Slave Trade.  It is unworkable but speaks loudly of the state of our politics and culture.

Proponents of reparations argue passionately about the stain of slavery, the long, dark shadow cast by this cruel institution across the American soul.  They say this great evil, the original sin of slavery, has cursed the nation at its inception, at the founding, and in our founding documents.  The country is thus irredeemably marred and defective, and the blot of that dark inheritance is fixed in our moral DNA.  Reparations proponents claim this insidious legacy lives on in America, in the systemic racism that pervades the nation, and in the disparate outcomes of blacks and whites in all sectors of society today.

But there are counter-arguments.  We begin with the obvious.  Slavery ended in America 150 years ago by something known as the Civil War; roughly 750,000 soldiers died in that cataclysm, a great and bloody cleansing of the nation over that mortal sin.  Furthermore, slavery is illegal in America and has been since the 13^th amendment was passed and then ratified by the states on December 6, 1865, thus abolishing slavery.  No one alive today in America is a slave or slaveholder, and sons and daughters are not responsible for the sins of their parents – let alone distant ancestors of more than a century ago.

 At America’s inception, many of the Founders and newly formed states deeply opposed slavery.  But some southern states demanded that the slave trade be protected.  To obtain broad support to ratify the Constitution, the framers made concessions to pro-slavery factions.  Had they attempted to eliminate slavery at the time, a political impossibility, there would have been no nation or Constitution.  The Founders were painfully aware that the existence of slavery clashed with the belief that “all men are created equal,” but they also understood that they could not resolve the terrible inconsistency at the time.  But they had planted the seeds for ending slavery in the founding documents and the principles of the American Revolution, and they established states and a central government robust enough to ultimately eradicate the institution in a later generation.

 There are other complexities to the matter of reparations as well.  There were 3,000 “free black” slaveholders who owned some 20,000 slaves.  American Indians were also slaveholders and held them well after the end of the Civil War.  Most Americans, even in the antebellum south, did not own slaves.

Black Africans, too, enslaved (other) blacks and sold them.  The Atlantic slave trade began there.  Without this, there would have been no slaves brought to America or the Americas.  Perhaps, sub-Saharan Africa should pay reparations?

 Most Americans today, including blacks that came later, have no relationship to slavery in America as they or their ancestors came after the Civil War (with the two great waves of immigration that began in the late 1800s and 1900s).  It would be improper to link them to slavery in this country.

 Further, the reparations claim is not based on specific injury (such as Jewish victims of the Holocaust or Japanese-American victims of “internment” under FDR) but on race.  It perpetrates a new injustice against those who committed no crime for the benefit of those who are not victims.

 There is also little evidence that individuals living today are disadvantaged by a slave system that ended 150 years ago.  There are many successful black people in America today including black entrepreneurs, black millionaires,billionaires, and a black President, among many black success stories – even as the black middle class is prosperous and growing.

 Furthermore, poverty, unemployment, and incarceration rates for black Americans were shrinking in the decades preceding the expansion of the liberal welfare state in the ‘60s, in some cases bettering their white counterparts.  Blacks were coming out of poverty and entering the middle class despite actual institutionalized racism at the time.  Most black children then were raised in two-parent families.

That earlier progress halted and retreated dramatically since the onset of the federal welfare system and its associated social and cultural pathologies.  These policies and behavioral factors explain racial disparities today far more than “systemic racism” or the “legacy of slavery.”

 Many Americans are mixed race, with complex ancestries that would be challenging to sort out for reparations claims.

 The Civil Rights Act and Great Society Programs that began in the ’60s already represent trillions of dollars in wealth transfers to blacks through welfare payments, subsidies, and preferential treatment based on race (Affirmative Action).

 Slavery, furthermore, was not unique to the United States.  Bondage in North America was a small percentage of slavery in the Americas.  Brazil, for example, had 4 million African slaves compared with 400,000 in America.  Cuba had 800,000.  In total, about 12 million African slaves were brought to the Americas, through the Atlantic Slave Trade, 95% of which went to South and Central America and the Caribbean, while less than 5% went to America. Would reparations account for this other over 95% as well, and if so, how?

Then there was the Arab Muslim slave trade, which had existed since the 8th century when it began enslaving Africans; it persists to this day.  It enslaved as many as 17 million people from the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa.  Muslim slave traders between 1500 and 1900 transported approximately 5 million African slaves.  Arab Muslims also enslaved more than 1 million Europeans (whites or “Slavs,” hence the word “slave”) between the 16^th and 19^th centuries, more than double the number of black Africans brought to America.

Western (white Christian) nations ended slavery, beginning with Great Britain in 1833, a universal phenomenon involving all races and cultures that dates back more than 5,000 years to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and beyond.  But slavery persisted in other parts of the world, particularly the Muslim World.  Indeed, only a handful of Muslim nations officially ended slavery, and then not until the late 20^th century.

 Further, there are some 40 million slaves worldwide today including nearly 10 million in Africa, many of them black Christians enslaved by Muslims.  In fact, there are more slaves today than during the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, those in forced labor, being trafficked, or otherwise owned, exploited, or enslaved.  Yet those clamoring for reparations, so concerned with American slavery that ended 150 years ago, have little to say about slavery today.

No, reparations are not likely to bind the nation’s racial wounds, rather they will rip them apart, but perhaps that is the point.  Peddling “race” in this way has been a major growth industry in America and many who traffic in “racism” have benefitted from it.  But they have also done great damage to American blacks, race relations, and the nation as a whole.

 Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, candidate for Congress in 2016 and 2018, author, columnist, local investor, and small businessman, residing in Jasper, IN.  He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph, available on amazon.com.  Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com. Visit Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, Getty, GAB, TruthSocial, and Instagram.

The City-County Observer posted this article without bias or editing.