Slave Reparations

Posted on August 4th, 2008 by the lion

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Recently, Obama was asked whether or not he would support reparations, in the form of payment, to decedents of black slaves. Obama stated, “I have said in the past — and I’ll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed.”

He came under fire for these remarks from the likes of the NAACP and the National
Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. The NAACP and the NCBRA stated that Obama was just pandering to “demographics” in this country and that he could not support reparations and still win.

Obama stated that an apology is appropriate, but reparations would not help close the gap between blacks and whites, in America, and could actually make things worse. He stated that reparations “would be an excuse for some to say, ‘We’ve paid our debt,’ and to avoid the much harder work.”

This is my opinion on the subject:

Good for him. If anyone, ever, offered me money in return for the loss of the God given freedoms of my ancestors, I would be greatly insulted. No amount of money can make up for what happened in the past. Freedom is priceless, human dignity is priceless.

For those people out there that feel that something must be done, I say to you: stop living in the past. Demand that something be done about the atrocities occurring now. Demand better schools in inner cities. Demand better educational programs for working adults, better day care programs for single parents.

A long time ago, I was told something I will never forget. In Europe and Asia people don’t talk about the atrocities of the past. Over thousands of years, they have learned that the best way to let a wound heal is to clean it up, bandage it and leave it alone, vowing to never injure themselves in the same way again. We must clean up the mess that slavery left by truly treating all equally and giving no special treatment to anyone. We must bandage this mess by insuring that no one is left out of the political process. And we must leave it alone. Stop the apologies, none will ever be enough. And we must vow, here and now, to never allow anyone to have their basic human rights stripped from them again.