How did this country get to the stage of widespread rioting, looting and lawlessness in the name of racial justice? It results from the steady diet of fake history dished out at colleges and universities, along with political ideologies that debase the individual in favor of racial group identity. It’s a toxic brew.
National Legal and Policy Center is releasing a new, 65-page monograph by Carl Horowitz titled “Slavery Reparations: Revival of a Bad Idea.” Click on the cover to the right or on the button below to download.
This monograph is our response to the mob, in hopes that at least some people of good will somewhere will allow reason and civil discourse to prevail.
Last summer, the New York Times kicked its program for reparations into high gear. This “1619 Project,” as it is known, rests on the premise that American history, right up to the present, is one long act of white exploitation and oppression of blacks.
The accusation already had gained a new lease on life with an overpraised cover story in the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic magazine. Whites, in this view, enjoy unearned economic privileges and thus have an obligation to make amends by handing over their wealth to their proper owners. In other words, whites are born guilty. No individual can escape the judgment of history. This sophistry represents the affirmative action idea taken to its conclusion.
In their blind enthusiasm, supporters of reparations ignore the many aspects of slavery, and the global slave trade, that undercut their claims. They will not admit that less than four percent of all African slaves transported by slave traders were brought to Mainland North America. Nor will they admit that many, if not most slaves in the American colonies during the 17th century were whites. They cannot handle the fact that many American blacks themselves were slave owners or that various Indian tribes also owned black slaves. They gloss over the reality that virtually all black slaves brought to America already were owned by blacks in Africa. Nor can they be bothered with the fact that slavery prevails in many African countries today.
Slavery reparations, if instituted, would be economically predatory, historically blind, politically divisive, legally unconstitutional and morally repellent. Far from bringing our nation together, it would divide us as never before. We meet these demands at our own peril.
Supporters of reparations claim that a program of forced payments – current estimates run well into the trillions of dollars – would “heal” America’s wounds. Such rhetoric may sound fair and soothing, but underneath it is a shakedown. Reparations would create wounds.
But the cost will not only be monetary. The real damage will be to the truth.