Henry Gates Deflates the Reparations Balloon
Africans have been aware of their countries’ role in this evil trade. In 1999, the president of Benin shocked an all-black congregation in Baltimore when he fell to his knees and begged their forgiveness for the “shameful” and “abominable” role that Africans played in slavery.
Just how invested were the African kingdoms in the slave trade?
When British abolitionists were finally able to suppress the slave trade in 1808, rioters protested in the streets of cities in what is now Ghana, and the king of Nigeria said to the British:
Your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.
This old chief has been proven partially correct. Slavery continues to exist in African nations today, most notably in Sudan, Ghana, Mauritania, Benin, Gabon, Mali, and the Ivory Coast, where tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people are enslaved.
Professor Gates has shown a great deal of intellectual honesty by dropping a hand grenade in the midst of the greatest hustle of “victim studies” — the notion that whites alone were responsible for slavery.
The arguments surrounding the demands for reparations have been full of overstatement, melodrama, distortion, and absurd theory. Since the 1960s, militant figures like H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X have engaged in saber-rattling that, all too often, was able to spawn sappy, weepy white guilt.
The result was a cottage industry specializing in racial victimization. The centers for this industry are to be found at major American college and university campuses, where “black studies” departments perpetuate beliefs in all sorts of racial nonsense — including the demand for slavery reparations.
There needs to be more truth-telling of the kind found in Gates’ book. For too long, black academics and guilty white allies have been perpetuating fraud.
As the arguments about Africa’s involvement in the slave trade — made by conservatives like me — have been discounted by the race-hustlers, perhaps Gates’ involvement in this debate might finally open the door for reality to be heard. Gates makes it clear that the international slave trade existed in a complex world — it wasn’t simply a cartoon about good guys and bad guys.
In 1971, the brilliant Albert Murray wrote South to a Very Old Place. Within, he writes of a conversation between himself and Robert Penn Warren. Warren tells Murray that slavery was a terrible human business and every element of it was defined by the intricate human shortcomings or virtues of those involved on either side of the issue.
Yeah, I know. Here’s hoping that kind of thought doesn’t prove too deep for the everyday race hustler to comprehend.
I’m glad to see some sense come to this issue. Good for Mr. Gates. I originally cut Gates some slack on the police incident because I, too, might have been indignant if accosted by police in my own home. That does not excuse the president’s unconscionable remarks, however.
Thomas, I too was surprised the police asked him to leave his own house. A police friend informed me that it’s protocol to clear a house where someone has suggested a crime might be in progress. How much trouble would the officers had been in IF there was someone in the house who attacked Prof Gates after they left? The cries would have been that the police would not protect a black man. This was a no win. The person who reported the possible crime will never make that mistake again.
…debunking the theory popular among black race-hustlers: that slavery reparations are owed to blacks…the slave trade would have been impossible on the scale it occurred without African business partners.
Gates has done that very interesting series on PBS, where celebrity types are surprised to learn to whom they might be related, as a function of genealogy and DNA.
He is very good interviewing them, which has forced me to re-assess an impression I had developed after the infamous event in Cambridge.
Since the 1960s, militant figures like H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X have engaged in saber-rattling that, all too often, was able to spawn sappy, weepy white guilt…The result was a cottage industry specializing in racial victimization.
And all their descendents in real time, the relentless race baiters and hustlers, the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons, Rev. JWrights, Louis Farrakhans…
“workin’ to keep the hate & resentments alive and well”
I’m inclined to agree with you on this. I can’t speak for everything Gates has ever said or written, but I watched all of his PBS documentary, and I thought that his commentary was insightful and complex, hardly the stuff of race-baiting.
I was disappointed with the Cambridge incident, but I can at least say that Gates is a far more complex figure than, for example, Jesse Jackson, who I heard speak in person just a few years ago.
“This view is a romanticized version promoting the notion that Africans were somehow just “kidnapped” by evil white men — the version promoted in the old television series Roots. ”
I just finished re-viewing the Roots series on DVD with my older kids. In the scene where Kunta Kinte is captured in Africa his captors are very clearly black. The first white face is only seen at the seashore when the “cargo” is being loaded onto ships. So, the producers of Roots did a reasonable job of depicting the native African hand in the slave trade atrocity.
I think that there is a pretty good case that can be made for reparations.
Instead of money, though, reparations should be in the form of 40 acres and a mule or a tax credit for the value of a mule (about $1,500). The Federal Government has millions of acres of land. Why shouldn’t most of that land be in the private sector? Let everybody who thinks that they qualify register for a lottery that will award clear title to 40 acre lots including mineral rights. Those who cannot prove descent from people held in slavery in the United States can be prosecuted for fraud.
Just like the random luck of birth, some people will get title to 40 acres of empty desert in Nevada, some will get 40 acres of forest in Oregon and others will get 40 acres of ANWR with millions of dollars of oil ready to be drilled.
Yosemite and the Grand Canyon should be excluded from the lottery but just what other land should be kept by the Feds will be subject to some contention. Imagine all the fun in Congress as white Democrat environmentalists try to exclude all the federal land with any value from the reparation lottery and the Black Caucus makes common cause with Republicans to get as much land with energy resources into private ownership.
Shouldnt Arizona land holders on the border with Mexico get first crack at any federal land further north? Manily, so that the border can be properly fortified and militarized.
No. Let’s build it on the Mexican side–exercise (eminent domain). You know…, for the greater good of all LEGAL US Citizens. After all, it is the illegal entrance against which we’re defending. If illegals weren’t crossing, we wouldn’t need a fence.
If we are talking about reparations, what about reparations for the families of all those dead Union soldiers who fought to free the slaves? Not only that, how about reparations for the northern slave owners in Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kansas, and western territories who did not rebel against the union and had their legal property taken without just compensation in violation of the fourth amendment. Forty acres and a mule were set aside for former slaves in Oklahoma. It was taken from Cherokee land because the Cherokees sided with the Confederates. BTW, Brazil ended slavery without a war in 1888 with just compensation for owners. Also Saudi Arabia did not end slavery until 1962 and Mauritania did it in 2008. I say reparations all around. I want mine.
Slavery continues in Saudi Arabia to this day, they just don’t admit to it. You might recall that the children “camel jockies” were recently freed? They were just the ones who could be identified. Also, many “concubines” through the Moslem countries are actually slaves, but women don’t count, for some reason.
Slavery, though not labeled as such, exists in all cultures and societies. Here in America, welfare is the most insidious form of slavery exceeded only by the promises, lies and deceit of politicians who say and promise anything to get a vote and then ‘sell us out’ to special interests, large campaign contributors and lobbyists to feed their greed and lust for power. We elect them to REPRESENT US but do they??? No!!! and HELL NO!!! Do they honor the Constitution which we all revere and upon which our country was founded? Again, NO!!! and HELL NO!!! And is their CONTROL and OVERSIGHT of every aspect of our lives growing? YES!!! and HELL YES!!! Is there something we can do about it? YES!!! Be an informed voter and VOTE!
“I think that there is a pretty good case that can be made for reparations.”
Then make the case. You only state what would, in your mind, be a good reparation. You don’t make a case for reparations.
Reparations, if considered at all, should be limited to repatriotization. If there is land to be given to descendants of slaves, then it should be the land of their ancestors, from which the ancestors were taken. Giving away federal land to people who have already taken billions of dollars from the federal budget is absurd.
OK. Here’s the case. Wealth is created by transforming resources from lower value use to higher value use. Almost any real estate owned by the government will be put to a higher value use in the private sector. There is some political demand for slavery reparations. This political energy can be harnessed to transfer millions of acres of land and enormous quantities of mineral, energy, grazing and timber resources into the private sector. Increasing the wealth of this country would go a long way to reducing the unemployment rate as well as improving the quality of life of everybody who lives here. Putting these resources into the hands of random citizens is probably as good a way as any to make this happen.
The moral premise that people who never owned slaves owe something to people who were never slaves is, of course, absurd. The premise that the heirs of slave owners are owed compensation is even more absurd. However, some people have some moral objection to the idea of people receiving unearned wealth from some random mechanism. The people who would be make wealthy by this scheme would not deserve their good fortune any more than Paris Hilton, Ted Kennedy or anybody who got into an Ivy League school on a legacy admission but they certainly don’t deserve their good fortune any less. Rather than engage on a quest for cosmic justice, we ought to take advantage of political currents to accomplish some real good.
I can trace my entire family back to the Western part of the Russian Empire, 1900-1930. Do I have to pay into this reparations fund? An awful lot of Americans’ ancestors weren’t even in this country in 1865, especially those of us with ethnic backgrounds other than Western European. Good luck figuring out how to handle that issue.
You bought into the reparation obligation by proxy when you from yours accepted your green cards and life in the American Empire and support for its enabling, Anglo-Saxon culture.
I’m just giving you the answer you’re going to get, which is the same one I, as a naturalized American, was once given, with a straight face. Their face, not mine.
I think you’re owed reparations from the families of former Russian aristocracy…after all, they held slaves in the form of serfs.
So did the Austrians.
I think we combine your two solutions, and I assign my debt from descendants of the Czar (though really, from the Russian communists, since they stole everything from the aristocracy), to descendants of American slaves. Let them bother each other and leave me alone!
I think you’re owed reparations from the families of former Russian aristocracy…after all, they held slaves in the form of serfs.
A slave is not a serf. A slave in Rome and Greece (not as clear cut for slaves in Christian countries including post Colombian America) wasn’t a person but a good like any other, who had no rights (of course) and could be sexually used or put to death just for the sake of it. Legally.
A serf is a person who is attached to a piece of land and cannot leave it. That means between other things that his children cannot be taken away from him and sold in the other side of the world. Technically, serfs weren’t sold they just changed masters when the land was sold. And to put them to death their master had to mount a pretense of them being guilty of a crime. In medieval times it wasn’t unheard of free men accepting to take a land on the condition they would become serfs of the owner.
Though it may be new to reparation advocates, none of this information is new to anyone who’s honestly examined slavery.
This has been a feature of the discourse for decades. To imply now that Gates is the first to mention it would be dishonest, were your ignorance of American history not so blatantly obvious. Frankly, what you’re saying is: “I didn’t like Gates when he talked about something I didn’t want to think about [racism], but I like him now that he seems to be going after people I don’t like.” This is the kind of stupidity that represents the political thought of the right wing. Its a system of fantasy wish fulfillment, not a political platform.
Did anyone ever say that Gates was the first to bring this particular point up?
The point of the article is that when an obvious race baiter like Gates can recognize reality, then finally progress is being made.
As to your assumptions about other people’s racism, that’s just further evidence of your own.
No – We still don’t like Mr. Gates. Just willing to cut him a little slack for his honesty – which is particularly exception when this subject is discussed.
Principal – You are so anxious to look down your patrician nose at Mr. Hicks that you are unable to comprehend what you read: it is Professor Gates who comments that there has been “little discussion of the role Africans themselves played” in the slave trade. If that role has, in fact, been “a feature of the discourse for decades,” your comments about dishonesty and ignorance would be better directed to Dr. Gates. But that wouldn’t quite fulfill your fantasy, would it, old top?
Slavery is acceptable in Islam, and the Qur’an, Hadiths, Sira, and Shari’a law contain an extensive body of knowledge on the institution of slavery, and on the treatment and management of slaves. In fact, the capture and use of the forced labor of slaves—highly educated slaves, artisans, farmers, harem slaves and eunuchs (the estimated death rate for field castrations is over 90%), soldiers and general workers–and their sale, along with the capture of tangible booty, were the chief sources of labor and income that propped up the various parasitic Muslim empires that were imposed on the countries and civilizations that were conquered or occupied by the mostly illiterate warriors of Islam; when such “unbeliever” human capitol was used up, Muslim empires started to decline.
This article does not say whether Gates discussed Muslim’s predominant role in the slave trade, but Muslims were the ones who–over close to 1,400 years–created the ancient traditional system for the capture, transportation, holding and sale of slaves that spanned much of the known world (and still functions today in some Muslim countries or countries with large Muslim populations), and this system was the template for the later and smaller Atlantic slave trade that we are all much more aware of.
One estimate has the 1,400 year long Muslim slave trade processing 17,000,000 “unbeliever” slaves–most of them Blacks from Africa, but an estimated 1.5 million of them Europeans–captured and enslaved by Muslim raiding parties (razzias) that over hundreds of years repeatedly raided and spread terror and destruction throughout the coastal areas of England, Ireland, Iceland, Italy and the Mediterranean. Moreover, there were also larger Muslim raiding parties that captured slaves, terrorized and looted parts of mainland Europe—France (for many decades there was a large Muslim military encampment at Arles), Germany, Poland, Hungary and, particularly and extensively, the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe (the word Slav being the origin of the word “slave”).
Muslim’s didn’t create the system, they just restarted it and extended it far beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire which was the first of the Mediterrainean empires to have a truly organized slave trade. But the trade itself is as old as history in the Mediterrainean basin.
Amen, someone who knows “real” history. Just one added fact. The bulk of the Africans enslaved by Muslims were young girls and women. The reason: for sexual enslavement.
Good Grief! You must be “smoking something.” If 40 acres is being given away, call me black and put my name on the list.
After all, I deserve it b/c….. ummmm let me think…. b/c I have lived in a country that affords all its citizens liberty and all the benefits that come with liberty. My life is what it is because I have been free to pursue opportunities afforded by this great USofA.
Reparation is nothing more than foolishness dreamt up by foolish people…. who have also lived lives in a “country that affords all of us liberty and all the benefits that come with liberty.”
If you were using satire, I apoloize for the smoking something. If not, then please put down the pipe.
Racist!
OsamaHusseinIslamObama 2012′
(the terrorist-Uighur-ACORN-media choice)
-It’s never too early to campaign-
I share Joe Hicks’s trajectory re Gates, and now have to give Gates kudos for mustering such intellectual honesty about a contentious issue that for too long has been conveniently ignored by race hustlers. Hugh Thomas, in his book The Slave Trade, relates the story of an African chieftain who made 250,000 pounds annually from the slave trade at a time when the wealthiest of the English nobility made 12,000 pounds annually from his estates. Painting slavery as a black/white issue does violence to the truth: it was a white and black vs. black crime. No racial solidarity whatever was in evidence.
Sadly it sounds like the real culprit wasn’t just black or just white, but good old capitalism
. I am a capitalist apologist, which is why I said sadly.
Once it is all decided that it was both sides that were culpable, inevitably we have to have a scapegoat, a whipping boy, a villain, someone to blame and point all our ire towards. I sense that once this new meme is out there and accepted by all sides in this debate – that when the dust settles – the new evil villain will be our good friend Capitalism. That will be a sad day. Capitalism is already under fierce fire. To use it to replace race anger will be just another step in the evolution of the bitterness of man.
It takes a lot more than the presence of money, to make a system capitalistic. The systems that you describe have few of the values and mechanisms needed to qualify as capitalism.
The Arabs took their captives east. Where, in the Middle East, Arabia, the littoral of the Indian Ocean, is there anything like Jamaica, or, for that matter, Alabama.
What happened to those millions?
It was called the Ottoman Empire. Slaves were simply dispersed more widely. And the concept of industrial agriculture never took root in Islam. That was a construct of the Northern European cultures.This does not relieve the onus on Islam for their embrace of slavery long after it was abolished in the West. Then we can also discuss the concept in Asia.
They did not sell all their slaves East. The history I was taught said the black slavers sold to the Moslems in the early years and the Moslems sold to the “Christian” slave traders who took them to the Western Hemisphere. After a while, the “Christian” slave traders started dealing directly with the black slavers.
So, there weren’t as many headed East as you might think.
I’ve heard this supposition before, and since I have, no other theory fits nearly as well.
Who would know better where to find their quarry? And how to safely capture them?
Historically, the losing side of any war, could only look forward to imprisonment, slavery or death.
The strongest tribe would then have a ready market for their continued tribal expansion; the puzzle pieces fit the historical record.
It is my understanding that this horrific practice continues today in the Middle East (abet on a much smaller scale).
Thank you Henry Gates, for without you, the theory would not hold the same credibility.
Another Inconvenient Truth of slavery is the exact mechanism by which the practice of indentured servitude (by which countless immigrants worked off the cost of their passage to the New World) was converted to outright slavery. One Anthony Johnson, himself an African indentured servant who had earned his freedom, had gone on to acquire servants of his own. One of them, a John Casor, wished to have the remainder of his contract transferred to a different master (Robert Parker), but Johnson petitioned the colonial court that “hee had ye Negro for his life”.
Yes, that’s right… Not only were the overwhelming majority of black slaves in America sold by blacks, the very first Massa was also a black man.
Somehow I doubt that fact is covered in the African Studies courses or during Black History Month.
I don’t think reparations are owed but if we must do it for political reasons what about the following? First off, who is eligible is kind of mysterious but let’s say that somehow that is worked out and it amounts to about 14% or so of the population here is what you get: a five year income tax abatement. This will be available to all eligible citizens alive on a date certain, say Jan 1 ’15, after that the program is closed. The abatement can be started at any time but it runs for five years consecutively. If you have no income or, say, keel over on Jan 2, this will be an alienable instrument to any other eligible person. You can bequeath it, you can sell it. Of course currently many, many income earners pay no net income taxes but it is unlikely, it seems, that this can persist.
“…perhaps Gates’ involvement in this debate might finally open the door for reality to be heard.”
Unfortunately, he’ll more likely be thrown under the bus along with Bill Cosby. Few people are willing to have a truly honest discussion about race and slavery. Just as few are willing to honestly discuss the Native Indians in America and white settlers.
J Milam
Yes We Can build a http://www.NewNation.org YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!
WARNING TO MODERATORS: above is link spam for a “White Nationalist” site.
Just walk the Union Civil War Cemeteries. One Union war dead for every six black slaves freed.
When was the last time ANY black leader went to a Union Cemetery on Memorial Day?
HMM?
Who owes whom what?
Instead of money, though, reparations should be in the form of 40 acres and a mule or a tax credit for the value of a mule (about $1,500)…Just like the random luck of birth, some people will get title to 40 acres of empty desert in Nevada, some will get 40 acres of forest in Oregon and others will get 40 acres of ANWR with millions of dollars of oil ready to be drilled.”
Ummmmm…there are 640 acres in a square mile, which would mean a square mile of land for every 16 blacks. Assuming about 40 million blacks your plan would require 2.5 million square miles of land. The United States is only about 3.8 million square miles in area. That would mean giving black Americans 2/3rds of the land in the US. Good luck with that.
The contribution of African slaves to the antebellum American economy is vastly overstated. Free states had a free population about 3 times as large as the slave states, and slaves comprised only about 1/8th of the total population (4 million out of 31.4 million). The North also had a disproportionate share of the wealth. Slave labor was economically useful mostly because it was cheap. It made economic activities profitable that would not have been otherwise, like all the restaurants today that have sustained themselves thanks only to the glut of cheap, illegal labor.
Over 500,000 Americans died in the Civil War, including over 300,000 mostly white Union sailors and soldiers. The debt has been paid.
40 acres and a mule was to be given to each freed slave, if I’m not mistaken, not each descendent of a freed slave, 6 or so generations later.
So if reparations in today’s money were made today (not that that would ever happen in reality but let’s just say…) wouldn’t they be have to be shared by the descendents of each freed slave?, sort of like an estate divided among heirs?
Also, how many blacks came here from other countries, post-slavery? Hatians, Dominicans, Nigerians, Ethiopians, Brazilians, etc…
In other words, not all 40 million blacks in America would get reparations. Only those descended from AMERICAN slaves (a good chunk of those 40 million certainly do not fit that category), and there would have to be some way of determing how much one descendent could claim. Many people who are not even black could probably prove some American slave ancestry.
Then comes the question, who pays for it? I would assume everyone who pays taxes would foot the bill. We don’t get to choose what our tax money goes to and what it doesn’t, right? So really, you could potentially see reparations being paid for by everyone, including blacks, going to anyone who could prove ancestry, including some whites!
It’ll never happen.
Knowing our system of government, which I’m generally in favor of, if not always happy with, there’d be some form of counting generations, likely modeled after the benefits awarded Native Americans and their descendants. My brother-in-law is about as white as you can get, but could qualify for education and other benefits if he registered since his great-great (3x-great?) grandma was Sioux, I believe. He’s at the cut off point though. What would be interesting, and possibly ironic is how many white people who could trace their ancestry to include a southern black-slave could then qualify.
As if ‘reparations’ were ever going to be enough for the race hustlers…
When I was teaching in the Berkeley Unified School District as a sub, I had an elementary class that had some young black children during African-American History Month.
Those kids were shocked when I told them about the black slave traders and I will never forget the look on their faces.
That alone answers the question as to why this easily known historical information is suppressed.
I got kicked out of one site on-line for pointing out the one-sided reporting on race which all began on this issue.
The entire issue of black racism, black complicity in crimes against the black race is taboo.
don’t forget the Arab slavers as well….we wouldn’t want to leave them out. Hell, they’re still practicing slavery; in the literal sense and in enslaving women under wahhabism.
First, I find it laughable that reparations are due anybody at this point. But even if I were to grant the argument merit, I should think that my share of reparations was paid in full by the First Minnesota on Cemetery Ridge. I suppose if the other side were to press the issue, I might support turning over the battle flag they captured on that bloody day. ‘Twas bought with more than treasure.
Silly argument, all the way around.
Smoke. You are aptly named, though Bullsh67 would have been closer to the truth. This is what Gates actually writes in the op ed piece:
I suppose the rest of you must also prove that Gates is a race-baiter, instead of it being you all who racistly exclaim “race-baiter” any time someone brings up questions of racism.
Gates started yelling “racism” when the police tried to move him to a position of safety, outside the house. The police only knew that two men were reported to be breaking in, and that one man looked like he had just got there. They had no idea if there was a second man inside or if there were two men inside. They would have been foolish to just walk away without checking.
Incidently, there have been cases where a bad guy has told legal resident, “Keep your mouth shut about me being here or I will kill you” and hidden where he could keep a gun on the victim.
The police just had no way to know what was going on, without clearing the house.
don’t forget the Arab slavers as well….we wouldn’t want to leave them out. Hell, they’re still practicing slavery; in the literal sense and in enslaving women under wahhabism.
Yes, anything to avoid the American role. Ha. Ha. If you’re going to blame the present day descendents of slavery’s villains, is there a reason why you’re not implicated. You people are seriously confused.
Does anyone have a RaceBaiter to English translator?
Ok, responding to the super-Troll. We aren’t confused, we do acknowledge that part of our history and the struggles with it and from it. If you had any reading comprehension at all, you’d see that in many of the above posts. The argument is who owes what to whom, if anything. Most of us are on the side of ‘not much’ to ‘nothing’ because of the extensive generational gap, the fact that there was reparations made in various forms at various times (Liberia being the prime example- you get your own country and right to self-determination). Our country fought a war over it (yes, I know that is a simplification for all you history buffs out there), and we’ve been working out way towards equality since, mis-steps and all.
I’m not sure which Che t-shirt you’re wearing at the moment (ooohh…the stylish black or the daring red?), but maybe if you put down the pamphlet and actually sought to educate yourself, or at least learn to read critically, you’d have a more enjoyable, successful life, and maybe, just maybe, figure out how to really help those more unfortunate around you. But that’d mean effort on your part. Hmmm…effort with effect, or being a blathering, dogma spouting, cheetoh eating cartman (no, wait, cartman goes through a lot of trouble to be a bastard)…damn these hard choices in life.
Please read this piece by Barbara Ransby, which “responds” to Mr. Gates’s April NYTimes op-ed, entitled, “Ending the Slavery Blame Game,” which provides an interesting alternative take on the purported generational guilt of White America. She describes quite clearly her opposition to Mr. Gates’s position as it relates to reparations. ( http://www.ellasdaughters.org/news/139-a-response-to-skip-gates-call-for-slavery-absolution-by-barbara-ransby )
What’s particularly striking about Barbara Ransby is her history. She’s one of the few named people who we know actually went to college at Columbia during the years Barack Obama was there but, importantly, was leading some of the same “extracurriculars” that he himself says he was involved in ( and one whose name actually returns a lot of Google links!) . For example, she led the student anti-apartheid divestment efforts there and was in the BSO. She’s currently Director of Gender and Women’s Studies at University of Illinois/Chicago where Bill Ayers teaches and, in fact, not only has publicly supported him and his education work but she she also describes herself as a friend of Bernadine Dohrn. She’s also listed on the White House visitor list, along with 16 other leaders in US academic identity politics departments.
Kristen, thanks for the reference. Certainly sounds like a classmate of Obama. It’s all boilerplate that is at least as old as Frederick Douglass, and he wrote much better stuff. It seems to me that the problem with reparations is practical. The number of people in the United States who benefitted from slavery was small. All of them lost all of their wealth. It was not passed on to descendants. So, where do you find the money for reparations? Do you take it from people who had no responsibility for slavery? Do you make the argument that the USA, as a nation, owes reparations because it did not go to war soon enough? Is that it? The USA owes reparations because it did not go to war in 1820? If that is the principle, then what do we owe to the Jews who suffered in the Holocaust?
Never owned slaves, 2′nd generation american, Of slavic (Slave) descent. Exactly who do i owe, for something that happened 250 years ago and did not involve me? I think reparations are a good idea, Take the money and give up your citizenship and leave the good old racist USA. we will be better off without your presence.
Hit the Greeks and Italians up for repatriations 8D
As I recall, slavic does not directly trace to the word “slave”, but rather to the Russian word “slava”, which roughly translates to “glory”.
You used to see in the May Day parades banners with the phrase “slava sovyetskomy soyuzy” on them (“Glory to the Soviet Union”)
And “pravoslav” (old faithful) means “Russian Orthodox” both in Russian and in Hebrew slang.
The Oxford Dictionary on my Macbook has this etymology for “slave” though:
ORIGIN Middle English : shortening of Old French esclave, equivalent of medieval Latin sclava (feminine) ‘Slavic (captive)’ : some South Slavic peoples had been reduced to a servile state by conquest in the 9th cent.
(Yes, medieval Latin: in classical Latin as I learned in school, the word for slave was “servus” [hence: servile].)
The way I heard was the other way around. “Slave” derived from “Slav”.
Another great piece, Joe! And it’s great to read a reference to Albert Murray, who is most definitely a brilliant thinker and writer and who has rightly proclaimed that black Americans are the quintessential Americans. To which my unguilt-ridden white American head nods enthusiastically, YES!
There will never be reparations because you need at least some Republicans to support it. And you don’t even have to go back to the slave days to find justification for them. All you have to do is look at the Bush years to see how Bush set back minorities for generations with his racist policies.
Satire such as yours, Vinny, loses its punch when there are so many fools who actually believe the stuff you wrote was for real.
We who are partisans of the historically anti-slavery, pro-civil rights party (Republicans) have no problem with those whose political allegiance is with the historically pro-slavery, Klan-coddling, Jim Crow-enacting, anti-civil rights party (Democrats) reaching deeply into their own pockets to pay reparations.
As for Bush’s policies that you say (without any evidence whatsoever) “set back minorities for generations,” this minority says hurt me like that again! From the ranks of the Bush Cabinet rose two blacks widely touted as highly qualified potential candidates for president, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. Federal subsidies to the abortion industry, a major exterminator of black babies whose so-called clinics are disproportionately located in majority-black communities, were curtailed. The Bush Administration also notably sought to end the racialism that has become institutionalized in government agencies and government-funded universities under the guise of “affirmative action.”
The Republican Party abolished slavery in the United States and passed the 13th, 14, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. It always supported equality under the law, unlike the Democratic Party, which, in the South, supported racial segregation. Why do you say that George Bush has “racist” policies?
I have enjoyed Gates’ work for many years. I am not surprised that he would write a critical work that lays out the facts about African contributions to slavery. Also, as a creature of academia, I believe that most departments of African-American studies are not radicalized. They tend to be very laid back, they accept scholars of all interests, and they produce really interesting work. It is really interesting to compare them to departments of Feminist Studies. All of the latter are radicalized and demand total loyalty from their professors. Their work proves daily that there are an unlimited number of ways to say that Maleness is the root of all evil. Put you to sleep. Also, every little pedunk university in the USA has a Feminist Studies Program but the number of African-American Studies programs is small. Among professors, the saga of Affirmative Action has been mostly the saga of the rise to power of Radical White Women.
You have to understand that the race hustlers and many libs believe in ‘race debt’. Now if you asked those same people whether they believed in ‘blood debt’, I’m sure you would see horrified expressions.
It doesn’t matter if Gates says it or someone else, if it’s the truth it is no more believable when anyone says it than when anyone else says it. The truth does not depend on who speaks it. It is self-authenticating or it is not the truth.
Furthermore, I smell a rat. Gates is a race hustler, known to be. So what’s really going on here?
Frankly, I don’t know and I don’t care. Gates is a bad man, and that’s the truth,.
My biggest problem with the reparations argument is the theory that they are worse off for being in America, rather than Africa. The current generation are all free men and women in the US. How am I expected to believe that, had their ancestors stayed in Africa, they would be one half as well educated, well fed, and enjoy a similar standard of living that they do now?
If they are serious about reparations, should it not include a one way ticket to some point in Africa and renunciation of US citizenship?
Gates’ discovery is old news. Hugh Thomas, in his massive and definitive book “The Slave Trade” (1997, discusses how African slaves were brought to ports and ships offshore from inland, by local kings happy to profit from the defeat and subjugation of their enemites. It bears reminding that Europeans fared poorly in West Africa, often dying within weeks or days upon arrival from disease and bad water. Rounding up slaves in the interior would have been to such intruders an extraordinarily difficult task, one they were happy to leave to ruthless and greedy locals.
Yeah, I always got a laugh out of the twits who claimed the whites rounded up the slaves. First, the blacks who were enslaved were on their home turf. Second, they were generally healthy and excellent warriors. Third, the white sailors were mostly puny and sickly. And Fourth, the ships could not carry large enough crews to round up much of anyone.
As Wildman said the very word slave comes from slav the long the preferred (white) slaves of the various Muslim emirates, sultanates and caliphates. That trade went on for more than a thousand years until Russian hegemony began protecting the Slavic hinterlands. Estimates of white slaves captured from the coasts and shipping of Europe, above and beyond the Slavs captured or sold, amount to as many as two million people over the same period. Then there is the most lucrative slave trade of all – the trade between the east and west coasts of Africa and the above Muslim kingdoms. The most lucrative was from the shores of the Mediterranean south by huge caravans, dropping off punished slaves at the salt mines in the middle of the Sahara desert, loading slabs of salt on camels to be shipped south to the Gold Coast of Africa. There a pound of salt could be exchanged for a pound of gold. Then the gold and fresh slaves journeyed north to the slave markets of Islam and the gold went into the Sultan’s, Emir’s or Caliph’s treasuries.
Some of my ancestors were slaves in Egypt, around 3400 years ago, building Ramses and Pithon for the Egyptians. The Egyptians have prospered since – should they pay me reparations???
Thomas Sowell mentions this fact also, the Muslim kingdoms brought non Muslim people from the interior to be sold in the coast. I am impressed that Gates touches on this too.
most americans didn’t have an ancestor in this country at the time of slavery. most of the people who do didn’t have an ancestor who owned slaves. white people ended slavery in the united states. you want their desendents to pay reparations? this reparations stuff is just a tatic by the civil rights crowd to keep the race hatred going. by the way i’m white, i grew up in the projects. if you want to find out about racism try that one on for size.
I had an insightful comment, but I forgot what it was after I got distracted by the “Is this puppy suffering from Global Warming?” ad.
Well, he did touch on the beginning of the truth. Now will our fellow Americans consume and digest the truth and embrace it for what it “is”? To learn more about Black History (http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=88)
This type of article drives me crazy.
Slavery did not originate, nor was it exclusive, to the American South. Slavery was not eliminated by the Civil War.
Slavery is an institution as old as “civilization”, and persists to this day.
So, yes, African nations contributed to American Slavery, but that is just a small portion of a long and inhumane history
The black establishment’s insistence that it was white europeans were entirely responsible for the slave trade somehow makes me think of Nancy Pelosi insisting that drug addicts cause the drug trade. (and her – it’s cheaper and easier to treat the addict than interdiction. yeah. right. /sarc.)
If the whites in the US owe reparations to the blacks in the US, then the Egyptians owe reparations to the Jewish population worldwide.
Now, some African historians claim that the Pharoes (sp)were actually black.
Interesting. Does it all realy come full circle?
On a side note but ancillarily related, I recommend _Slavery by Another Name_ by Douglas Blackmon. It documents the continuation of legal slavery in the southern states from the end of Reconstruction to the U.S. entrance into World War II. While Gates’ book debunks the myth that Africans were prepetrators and collaborators of the slave trade before the Civil War, Blackmon’s book debunks the myth that the Civil War ended the practice of slavery in the U.S.
The full history of American slavery is far more complex than we were taught in school. My opinion is that we do ourselves no favors by continuing to propagate the simple view. In that spirit, I look forward to reading Gates’ book.
Here’s a fun fact: The African nation of Liberia was created by the U.S (it’s capital city is named after an American president) in 1840 as a homeland for freed slaves. Immediately upon arriving in their new land, the freed American slaves went about enslaving the native blacks and putting them to work on plantations. This continued until Samuel Doe seized power in 1980.
Dear Dr. Bones,
This neospecimen would stand out even in Foxcuckooland if it seriously supposes that not-so-poor Mr. Gates of H*rv*rd would ever deliberately aid and abet the Party of Big Management as it now is. Let alone the KSM.
Happy days.
President Obama would not qualify for reperations.
His book reads like a 7th grade Social Studies paper.
It really doesn’t matter who was more responsible for slavery. I would tend to side with many blacks who believe that American whites were more responsible. However, when a child is born, it doesn’t matter if he is red, yellow, black, or white, I don’t think reasonable people should hold that child responsible for what his or her ancestors did. Did we throw Dahmer’s father in jail? Did we send a bill to his house for reparations to the victims? Since skin color is something that nobody chooses, it seems silly to keep going back to the well over and over and over again. It’s hard not to believe that people calling for reparations are racists themselves, and they certainly are not interested in bettering race relations. It’s really pretty sad.
How does African involvement in the slave trade excuse the people that drove the market for slaves? If there was no market for slavery, Africans wouldn’t have been capturing other Africans and selling them into bondage. The “Look, they did it too, so we’re not responsible!” argument is about as weak as they come.
Nice attempt at building a strawman there.
Nobody has ever said that Europeans bore no guilt because African’s were also involved in the slave trade.
The argument that your side has been making is that Europeans bear full responsibility for the slave trade, which is why they, and they alone owe reparations.
This is easily refuted by pointing out the many other groups that were involved in the slave trade.
As well as many other arguments that have also been detailed above.
John oh! John how foolish you are. SLAVERY has existed in Africa since time immemorial long, long, long before a single WHITE man ever set foot there. It was Black on Black mainly but then the ARABS got involved both pre and post Mohammad. The WHITE man arrived in Africa and found a SLAVE TRADE that had been FLOURISHING for HUNDREDS OF YEARS with MOHAMMEDAN ARABS running the Slave Markets and Blacks supplying the goods from the interior. WHITE MEN DID NOT TAKE SLAVERY TO AFRICA they arrived in Africa and found SLAVERY THERE and SLAVES were virtually the ONLY trade goods they were offered.
IT STILL GOES ON THERE TODAY WITH THE VIRTUALLY THE SAME PLAYERS THE BLACKS AND MOHAMMEDAN ARABS. All EXCEPT the WHITES who fought Wars and died in their THOUSANDS to STOP SLAVERY.
But guess who gets ALL the blame??? Thats right good old WHITEY and thats RACISM and moonbat thinking writ large.
Other than using race as a means to exact reparations, which by definition is racist, how will this be implemented? Are we, like Joseph and Mary, to return to our “homelands” to sign some census in order to prove or disprove our need to contribute? And once the penalty is levied, where is the fairness in that? Do we, the assumed beneficiaries of slavery, have the power to go back in time to stop the practice? Having said that, what of the many Germans who came here to work menial jobs in mining and ironworking or the Irish who were often denied jobs based on nothing more than their ancestry? In short, why is it that one or two groups get special treatment when their plight no longer exists?
“…Slavery continues to exist in…Sudan, Ghana, Mauritania, Benin, Gabon, Mali, and the Ivory Coast….”
True, but those nations have no money. Reparations is another way to “spread the wealth around.”
“Nobody has ever said that Europeans bore no guilt because African’s were also involved in the slave trade.”
The suggestion of this very article is that since Africans enslaved other Africans, that there should be no reparations here. Thats trying to avoid responsibility for your part in slavery because others did it too.
As far as slavery in other areas of the world goes, thats not what this article was about. It was trying to excuse America’s part in slavery because Africans enslaved other Africans. What does that have to do with the validity of reparations in America…a country that was largely built on the backs of slave labor? Sorry, there is no spinning out of this one.