The  Reparations  Page

Does the idea of "reparations for slavery" make any sense in the 21st century?  Whites, none of whom are or were slave owners, would be making transfer payments to blacks, none of whom are or were slaves.  Instead of targeting specific corporations, this time Jesse Jackson and others are talking about demanding payments from white people in general.  Most of the proposed mechanisms for collection of the money are based on tax credits, but at least one calls for a 75¢ per gallon gasoline tax.  (This assumes, I suppose, that the descendants of slaves do not buy gasoline.)  In any event, it is too late.  All the slaves and slave owners from centuries ago are long gone.  It is time to move on to more realistic goals and more urgent issues.

The whole topic of reparations for slavery is so stale and uninteresting that it really does not deserve to be dignified with any further attention.  This page would be a complete waste of bandwidth except that it shows the ridiculous goals of a few people on the noisy fringe of the political left.



"The ongoing campaign for so-called Reparations rests upon the allegation that the European civilization in general — and its trans-Atlantic heirs, the founding fathers of the United States in particular — should be taken to task for the fact that they practiced slavery.  That is somewhat ironic since the Western civilization is in fact the only civilization in history to have created from within itself a successful movement to condemn and abolish slavery."

-- Srdja Trifkovic  


Reparations for slavery:  The problem, of course, is both slaves as well as their owners are all dead.  Thus, punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is out of the hands of the living.  Reparations advocates, however, want today's blacks to be compensated for the suffering of our ancestors.

Obama and the Drive for Slavery Reparations.  Barack Obama is the most radical candidate ever to stand at the precipice of acquiring his party's presidential nomination and the American presidency.  It is apparent that he is a member of an international socialist movement which hopes to use the United Nations as a vehicle to shake down U.S. taxpayers for trillions of dollars in slavery reparations.  One group, the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission, is demanding an astronomical $777 trillion.

Meet Obama's Reparations Model.  While some question the impact of preaching from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ on Senator Obama's thinking, the influence of one of Trinity's most recommended authors on Obama is clear.  Three of Randall Robinson's books are available for purchase on Trinity's website.  One, entitled "The Debt:  What America Owes To Blacks," is particularly important to understanding Obama's notion of reparations.  So who is Randall Robinson?

Obama's Stealth Reparations.  While he was an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama told a Chicago radio show host that he sought "major redistributive change" for the benefit of fellow blacks.  He was speaking in the context of the civil rights movement, and how it had fallen short of "economic justice."  Although John McCain and other Republicans are afraid to say it, his remarks can only be interpreted to mean one thing:  economic reparations for slavery.

Slavery ... until the end of time.  Slavery had a sustained history in places like Ghana and Mali long before Europeans began trading in African slaves.  Slave societies were common throughout the continent.  Sometimes slavers got caught in their own nets, as in the case of Abd Rahman Ibrahima.

Black Slaveowners:  During this country's period of slavery, many freed blacks worked for years to purchase the freedom of family members.  But a great many freemen became slave masters themselves, and for the same reason as whites — to make use of slave labor for the sake of profits.  Larry Koger writes, "By and large, Negro slaveowners were darker copies of their white counterparts."

Reparations and Victimization:  There is no single group responsible for the crime of slavery.  In the period between 650 AD and 1600, before any Western involvement, somewhere between 3 million and 10 million Africans were bought by Muslim slavers for use in Saharan societies and the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.  There was also an internal slave trade, which took place for centuries, beginning back in the 7th century and persists to this very day in places like Sudan and Mauritania, and other sub-Saharan African societies.  Second, only a tiny minority of white Americans ever owned slaves.

Barack Obama and Slavery:  When the story of slavery is told in America, as in the movie Roots, the sailors get off the boats and capture the Africans and make them slaves.  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.  When the white slaver showed up in his wooden ship, he made a business deal with a Muslim wholesaler.

Black Reparations:  The Ultimate Prize.  In the years much closer to slavery than we now live, blacks founded and ran their own towns, owned and prospered on millions of dollars worth of land, formed so many successful businesses that it necessitated formation of the National Negro Business League, directed their own schools and colleges — all of this long before the 1950s.  Yet now, according to the custodians of the race, the "residue" of the slave experience pierces so deeply into the psyches and immediate lives of blacks, that only more monetary resources from whites can heal the wounds and finally eliminate what these worthies are calling the "lingering negative effects" of slavery.




Africa ain't that great.

You should be glad you don't live in Africa.  At least a dozen countries in Africa are ruled by ruthless dictators, and all but a few of Africa's 53 or 54 countries are stuck in perpetual poverty.  The worst example is Zimbabwe, which is discussed on another page.

Africa is giving nothing to anyone — apart from AIDS.  Even as we see African states refusing to take action to restore something resembling civilisation in Zimbabwe, the begging bowl for Ethiopia is being passed around to us, yet again.  It is nearly 25 years since Ethiopia's (and Bob Geldof's) famous Feed The World campaign, and in that time Ethiopia's population has grown from 33.5 million to 78 million today.  So why on earth should I do anything to encourage further catastrophic demographic growth in that country?

Africa's Messiah of Horror:  A friend, the head of a major aid organization, tells how his workers in eastern Congo a few years ago chanced upon a group of shell-shocked women and children in the bush.  A militia had kidnapped a number of families and forced the women to kill their husbands with machetes, under the threat that their sons and daughters would be murdered if they refused. … This is ultimately the work and trademark of a single man:  Joseph Kony, the most carnivorous killer since Idi Amin.

Much-Needed Honesty about Africa and AIDS:  The evidence is there for everyone to see:  We've tried awareness, condom distribution, economic development, and much more.  But the problem persists.  That's because the spread of AIDS is inevitably linked to the question of fallen human nature.  Things like fear, weakness, and temptation do not respond to technical expertise or incentives.  They only respond to "transcendent ideals and faiths" and the moral language they produce.

The Tragedy of Africa:  African leaders, and many people on the left, blame Africa's problems on the evils of colonialism. … [But] colonialism cannot explain Third World poverty.  Some of today's richest countries are former colonies, such as:  United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.  Some of today's poorest countries were never colonies, such as:  Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan.  The colonialism argument is simply a cover-up for African dictators.

UN says Iceland is the best place to live, Africa the worst.  Iceland has overtaken Norway as the world's most desirable country to live in, according to an annual U.N. table published on Tuesday [11/27/2007] that again puts AIDS-afflicted sub-Saharan African states at the bottom.

Slavery in Islamist Sudan.  Sellers frantically began to gather up their wares and hurry away with the buyers.  The adults understood.  They recognized the approaching signs of the dreaded scourge that most people believed had disappeared from the pages of African history long ago:  a slave raid.  It was 1986 and Bok was about to see his happy world of family and village shattered forever by a centuries-old, barbaric practice that has never died out:  the violent capture and enslavement of black Africans by Arabs.

"There but for the grace of God...."  We are told by some of our supposedly enlightened, so-called black leaders that white America owes us something because they brought our ancestors over as slaves.  And Africa — Mother Africa — is often held up as some kind of black Valhalla, where the descendants of slaves would be welcomed back and where black men and women can walk in true dignity.  Sorry, but I've been there.  I've had an AK-47 rammed up my nose, I've talked to machete-wielding Hutu militiamen with the blood of their latest victims splattered across their T-shirts.  I've seen a cholera epidemic in Zaire, a famine in Somalia, a civil war in Liberia.

How China has created a new slave empire in Africa:  These poor, hopeless, angry people exist by grubbing for scraps of cobalt and copper ore in the filth and dust of abandoned copper mines in Congo, sinking perilous 80 ft shafts by hand, washing their finds in cholera-infected streams full of human filth, then pushing enormous two-hundredweight loads uphill on ancient bicycles to the nearby town of Likasi where middlemen buy them to sell on, mainly to Chinese businessmen hungry for these vital metals.



Reparations or Rip Off?  What may become the most massive attempted financial rape of the American Government and its 200-million taxpayers, for crimes which no one living committed, is now being plotted by a consortium of trial lawyers.  They are well known for their excessive class-action lawsuit successes against segments of U.S. society in the past decade.  With the claim of seeking justice, if they win, the greatest injustice ever attempted could bankrupt the government and people of the United States.

Reparations:  Must the living pay for the deeds of the dead?  Most black Americans are in the solid middle class.  In fact, if we totaled the income black Americans earned each year, and thought of ourselves as a separate nation, we'd be the 14th or 15th richest nation.  Even the 34 percent of blacks considered to be poor are fairly well off by world standards.  Had there not been slavery, and today's blacks were born in Africa instead of the United States, we'd be living in the same poverty that today's Africans live in and under the same brutal regimes.

More slaves than ever despite world ban.  Slavery is officially banned by all countries yet there are more slaves than ever before.  Today there are an estimated 27 million slaves:  people paid no money, locked away and controlled by violence.

Chinese slave children 'sold like cabbages'.  Young people — some aged under 10 — are said to have been discovered being bought and sold at a street market in Sichuan, one of rural China's most overpopulated provinces.  According to investigative reporters, the children stood in line as they were assessed like cattle, before being driven on trucks to factories in the Pearl River Delta, China's manufacturing heartland.

Apologies For Slavery and Everything Else.  I would suggest that if the black people in America want an apology for slavery, they should first demand it from their own ancestors — the ones who rounded them up like cattle and sold them to the slave traders — the ones who are still practicing slavery today.  And, by the way, the white European colonials who settled and built most of Africa, did away with slavery while they remained in Africa.  But, when they turned the countries over to the locals, slavery was reinstated.

U.N. Thugs.  [Scroll down]  It is worth bearing in mind that slavery — the most racist of practices — endures in the Islamic world even as it has been abolished in the West.  In OIC member states like Sudan and Mauritania, Arabs still keep black African slaves.  Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted by the World Court for human rights abuses in Darfur, is reputed to have black slaves in his own house. … And while Mauritania legally abolished slavery in 1980, it is still practiced secretly.

Reparations and Irresponsible Demagogues.  The first thing to understand about the issue of reparations for slavery is that no money is going to be paid.  The very people who are demanding reparations know it is not going to happen.  Why then are they demanding something that they know they are not going to get?  Because the demagogues themselves will benefit, even if nobody else does.  Stirring up historic grievances pays off in publicity and votes.

Slavery in the Land of the Free.  Unfortunately, slavery is still a widespread practice all over the world, including the US.  The Civil War may have removed the public sanction of slavery, but it is still a common underground practice.  Journalist Benjamin Skinner undertook four years of undercover investigation into "human trafficking" (a euphemism for slavery) in order to increase awareness of this international injustice.  His research and experiences are chronicled in his recent book, "A Crime So Monstrous."

Activists meet on U.S. slave reparations.  The chairwoman of the African People Solidarity Committee says white residents of the United States should support reparations for African-Americans.  Penny Hess spoke to a reporter with the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune Friday [11/03/2006] on the eve of African People Solidarity Day.

Six inconvenient truths about the U.S. and slavery:  There is no reason to believe that today's African-Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa. … In theory, reparationists want society to repair the wrongs of the past by putting today's African-Americans into the sort of situation they would have enjoyed if their forebears hadn't been kidnapped, sold and transported across the ocean.  Unfortunately, to bring American blacks in line with their cousins who the slave-traders left behind in Africa would require a drastic reduction in their wealth, living standards, and economic and political opportunities.

Wrong way on reparations.  If this act becomes law, it would require the Treasury secretary to pay reparations to "Guam residents who were killed, raped, injured, interned, or subjected to forced labor or marches," as well as to "survivors of compensable residents who died in war or survivors of compensable injured residents."  The bill could cost taxpayers $126 million.

An apology to slaves — from the catchers.  "Project Joseph" is an invitation to blacks who trace their history to the slave trade to reconnect with the land of their ancestors — and it comes with an apology, not from countries associated with slave masters or slave traders, but from the black slave-catchers of Ghana.

Slavery:  Then and now.  In light of William Wilberforce's campaign to rid his nation of slavery, it is important to remember that, for millions of men, women and children around the world, slavery is not just a historical tragedy, it is a present reality.  The "bloody traffic" that Wilberforce considered a disgrace to his nation has not yet ended — far from it.  The number of modern day slaves is estimated to be around 27 million.

Legislators to push for U.S. apology for slavery.  Five states did something over the past 12 months that no state had done before:  expressed regret or apologized for slavery.  This year, Congress, which meets in a Capitol built partly by slaves, will consider issuing its own apology.  "We've seen states step forward on this," says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, citing the resolutions of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama and New Jersey.

Panhandling for reparations.  Frances Miller's early attempts at starting a conversation Wednesday were a little rough.  "Hey, sister, are you a descendent of slaves?"  she called out to a woman who looked African American, scoring a glare.  Miller sat on Northeast 15th Avenue at Broadway — a volunteer in the National Day of Panhandling for Reparations.  She and others across the country asked white passers-by to pay reparations for enslaving black people, and then they gave money to black passers-by.  Each got a receipt.

The slavery shakedown:  Living white Americans bear no culpability for slavery, and living black Americans never suffered from it.  It would be unthinkable to make individuals responsible for the wrongdoing of their distant ancestors, or to require them to enrich the great-great-great grandchildren of the victims.  The overwhelming majority of nonblack Americans have no family connection to slavery in any case — most of us are descended from the millions of immigrants who came to this country after the Civil War.

O'Malley signs wage bill, apology for slavery.  Gov. Martin O'Malley signed this morning a first-in-the-nation law requiring a "living wage" for state contract employees, a move backers say will help expand Maryland's middle class.  O'Malley also signed a formal apology for Maryland's role in slavery — the second such action in the nation.

Regrets for slavery:  The next time the Virginia General Assembly gets into an apologetic mood and wants to pass another resolution aimed at its black citizens, here are my suggestions:  The Commonwealth of Virginia apologizes to its black citizens for not protecting them from criminals who prey upon them and make their lives a daily nightmare.

Albany Mulls an Apology for Slavery.  The New York State Legislature is considering one bill that would have the state formally apologize for its role in slavery and another that would study and recommend remedies for the descendants of slaves.

Elsewhere in New York...
Wealthy N.Y. couple charged with slavery.  A millionaire couple accused of keeping two Indonesian women as slaves in their luxurious Long Island home and abusing them for years have been indicted on federal slavery charges.

J.P. Morgan & Co. Sued for Profiting From Slavery.  J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. are among 18 corporate defendants named in a slave-reparations case to be heard tomorrow in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.  The case is a consolidation of nine cases filed by African-Americans across America in 2002.  Among the other defendants are Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Aetna Inc., New York Life Insurance Co., and Lloyds TSB Group.

Questions for proponents of reparations:  While there is a growing cry for reparation payments, what has been noticeably absent (often even pointed out by proponents) is a lack of a clear plan for how such reparation payments will be made.

Slavery Reparations — Paying for the Sins of the Founding Fathers.  It has been over 140 years since the end of the Civil War, and the end of slavery in the United States of America.  Those to whom reparations might be owed are long dead and gone.  The issues here are much more complex than those surrounding the issue of reparations due to Japanese Americans imprisoned during World War Two.

Weak-kneed corporate CEO's:  Corporate executives caving in to anti-capitalists' attacks will not buy peace.  Capitulation only whets anti-capitalist appetites for bigger, bolder and more widespread attacks and extortion.

Slavery reparations:  The slavery reparations shakedown lobby is gearing up for attacks on American industry.  They've failed in the courts and Congress, so they're going after weak-kneed CEOs.

Ending slavery:  To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery — which encompassed the entire world and every race in it — is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong.  In the late 18th century, that question arose in Western civilization, but nowhere else.

Pseudo leadership and black groupthink:  Black groupthink and the pseudo leaders that tout it are destroying the black community.  The black pseudo leader is the community activist who is dedicated solely to getting us to pay attention.  Nattily dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, he stands tall at phony press conferences, studding his speech with racially charged words that solicit knee-jerk reactions from the crowd.  The black pseudo leader is a parasite.  He nourishes himself on the suffering of others.  He exists by satisfying the mob's voracious appetite for excuses and easy solutions.

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea:  For example, there is no single group clearly responsible for the crime of slavery.  Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans.  There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States.  Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks — and Racist Too:  America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive — a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault.

Demoralizing Young Blacks for the Empowerment of "Black Leaders":  Black people are taught that every waking thought of white America is racist; black people are perennial victims of white oppression; we have no control over our lives and destiny. The only way black people can achieve anything is to prey upon white guilt, and seek special privileges like quotas, handouts, and lately reparations and apologies for slavery.

Reparations for slavery?  Who really benefited from slavery?  Who should fund any such reparations?  Who should be excluded from helping to finance such reparations?  How many billions of dollars have already been paid to so-called "historically disadvantaged minorities"?  Remember, when Congress makes payments, it uses your tax dollars to do so.  Here are some thought-provoking questions and historical facts.

Trillions demanded in slavery reparations:  The West is being asked to pay Africa $777 thousand billion within five years in reparation for enslaving Africans while colonizing the continent.  (That's more than three quarters of a QUADRILLION dollars.  Just make the check payable to "Africa".)

 Editor's Note:   Slavery did not begin or end in the United States.  There are still places around the world in the 21st century where you can pay cash for a slave, particularly in Sudan and Mauritania.  And according to the following article, it is an enormous problem in India, too.

Ending the "Slavocracy":  The institution of slavery continues to oppress millions.  In India, the practice often comes under the name of bonded labor — a euphemism for slavery.

Man Barred from Making Slavery Tax Claims.  A New York man was temporarily barred on Friday 4/15/2005] from preparing income tax returns for others because he has been including bogus tax credits such as reparations for African-American slavery and segregation.

Closely related:
National apology to Indians is just a sorry idea.  The U.S. Senate is considering … some kind of "whoops, sorry about that" to Native Americans, an apology for taking their land and driving them onto miserable reservations in the scrublands of the United States.  It's a bad idea.  Yes, it's fitting to regret cruelty it inflicted on any group over the years.  But that goes without saying, and those who want it said can be dismissed for parsing symbolism when there are actual problems in the world.

Reparations: A Scam Cloaked in Racial Pain.  Last month, reparations advocates held a rally under the remarkably revealing motto:  "They Owe Us."  "They" appear to be all white people.  "Us" is supposedly every African American for whom these leaders now claim to speak.  What is "owed" has been stated as high as $10 trillion.

What Would We Get In Return For Reparations?  Would we be freed, for example, from the costs of supporting blacks on welfare?  Blacks make up 12% of the population but account for almost half of welfare recipients.

Shameless exploiters:  Nothing highlights the pathetic state of the American left more clearly than the current movement for slavery reparations.

Randall Robinson:  The godfather of the reparations movement, has finally taken his criticism of this country to its logical conclusion:  he has moved out of the United States.

The Billion Dollar March wasn't exactly a spectacle fit for a King.  With the rallying cry of "They Owe Us," organizers say they will continue such protests until money is delivered.  In the long history of victimization politics among "leaders" of the black community, this movement takes the prize as the one most worthy of ridicule.

Quota "logic" part II:  What most blacks need is — first of all — the kind and quality of education that they do not get in most ghetto schools.  Least of all do they get this education from those teachers who spend precious class time dredging up the past instead of preparing students for the future.

Get out your reparations calculator.  [Anyone] whose family members ingested Filipino-harvested asparagus, peas, cauliflower, onions, tomatoes, grapes or fish, or who burned Filipino-cut firewood, or who lived in homes built of Filipino-sawed lumber from 1923 to 1947, can settle their debt by sending me a check for $999.99.

Slavery Compensation Itself Rests on Racism:  For the descendants of black slaves to make demands for special privileges, compensation, and apologies from current Americans — who had nothing to do with slavery — is an ugly moral inversion that makes Americans who happen to be white guilty because of their skin color.

An appalling idiocy:  [There is] a proposal to create a "National Slave Memorial" on the Washington Mall.  Supposedly this memorial will promote "reconciliation" and "healing," according to both the Republican and Democratic supporters of this proposal.  It is hard to imagine that any sane adult actually believes those words.

Appalling idiocy: Part II.  We have all we can do to live our own lives the best way we can, treating our contemporaries with decency and justice.  There is not a thing we can do about what other people did in times irretrievably past.

An appalling idiocy: Part III:  Divisiveness is where it's at for the Democrats and few things will be more divisive than a slave memorial on the Washington Mall.  But what's in it for the Republicans?

Stop Reparations Now:  You'll recognize many of their names immediately.  It's a who's who in the racial shakedown racket:  Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Johnnie Cochran, Randall Robinson, Cornel West.  These men, and others from the far left, are preparing for the biggest legal shakedown in history... unless they're stopped.

The True Cost of Reparations:  A growing movement is calling for the payment of reparations to black Americans for slavery, despite the fact that both the victims and perpetrators of slavery are dead.

Scorched Earth: The Reparation Desperation:  Pro-reparations "black leaders" like the Rev. Jesse Jackson remain locked in the victicrat mantra that blames slavery for America's "black plight," while, of course, suggesting money as the solution.  Will the "black leadership" stand up and recognize the primary problem facing America, in general — black America, in particular — the absence of involved, responsible fathers?

Demonstrators Want Slavery Reparations:  Estimated by police at about 2,000 to 3,000 strong, the demonstrators motored in from all parts of the United States to hear speakers such as activist Louis Farrakhan shout, "We need land for political independence; we need millions of acres.  We need payment for 310 years of slavery, of destruction of our minds and the robbery of our culture."

Farrakhan Rails Against "White Supremacy":  Farrakhan said, "We cannot accept a cash payment because a fool and his money will soon part."  Instead, he advocated the transfer of "millions" of acres of land from the U.S. government to African Americans.

New Twist On Old Scam:  Tax Exemption for Slave Descendants:  For just three dollars, those attending last Saturday's pro-reparations rally [8/17/2002] in Washington could purchase a "legal" document promising them lifetime tax-exempt status from the U.S. government. But the Internal Revenue Service and legal experts beg to differ.

Reparations and Irresponsible Demagogues:  The first thing to understand about the issue of reparations for slavery is that no money is going to be paid.  The very people who are demanding reparations know it is not going to happen.  Why then are they demanding something that they know they are not going to get?  Because the demagogues themselves will benefit, even if nobody else does.  Stirring up historic grievances pays off in publicity and votes.

"Millions" of Blacks to Rally in DC for Reparations:  Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), and a critic of the rally, said, "If that many people have enough money to go to D.C. to march, then they don't need reparations."

Get Your Reparations Here!  There are literally millions currently employed because of affirmative action, and probably fall within groups who consider themselves to be long-term victims, currently seeking reparations through legislation or civil lawsuit.  Seriously, one of the issues here is whether the citizens of this country have already helped those who have suffered slavery and discrimination.  I think the answer is "yes."

Reparations, once silly, are now taken seriously:  Polls show that 75 percent of Americans, and 90 percent of whites, are opposed to paying reparations to blacks for the enslavement of their ancestors.  This means that the reparations fight will not take place in the political arena, where victory is probably impossible.  Instead it will be a legal and public relations campaign to force corporate America to pay.

The Slavery Reparations Hustle:  Reparations' bottom line is that black people are permanent losers who cannot rise above their history.  That is a terrible libel, and no one but a racist would believe it.

Reparations:  America's New Slavery:  The transfer of wealth from productive members of society to those (of any race) who would loot it is nothing new.  What's new about the slave reparations issue is just how morally low the attempt to rationalize and justify these transfers has become.

The Dollars and Sense Answer to Black Reparations:  Historian and Ebony magazine editor, Lerone Bennett, Jr., says, "We're not talking about a sentimental argument.  We're talking about the fact that America owes us some money."  The racism peddlers apparently know no bounds in what is becoming a growth industry.

Gray Davis Joins the Race-Baiting Left:  The legal movement for reparations is not only preposterous; it is itself a form of white-collar crime.  No court will hear a case that is 100 years old, and the reparations lawyers know this.  Their clear and often overt agenda is to create a public relations nightmare for the companies involved so they will settle to protect their stock values.  This is blackmail, pure and simple.

Who Does the "Reparations for Slavery" Charade Really Benefit?  Being a race hustler is a very lucrative business for people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  But such people can extort money and power from white business and political leaders precisely because it is easier to pay off a relative handful of noise makers than to be bothered fighting them.  But tens of millions of blacks cannot duplicate what a small band of extortionists do.

The Debt for Slavery — and for Freedom:  At its core, the reparations movement is racist; it treats all blacks as victims and all whites as villains.

Enslaved to the past:  Polls show that 75 percent of Americans, and 90 percent of whites, are opposed to paying reparations to blacks for the enslavement of their ancestors.  This means that the reparations fight will not take place in the political arena, where victory is probably impossible.  Instead, it will be a legal and public relations campaign to force corporate America to pay.

The United Nations of Reparations Hypocrisy:  Perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell's decision to pull the American delegation out of the so-called U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, will be just a footnote in history.  But we can at least hope that it may be a turning point toward a future time when "racism" will no longer be a magic word used to gain money or political concessions.

Rapaciousness, Not Reparation:  During the last few weeks, a handful of blue chip American companies have been targeted by slavery reparations activists and lawyers for payments because of their activities prior to 1865.  This essay examines the consequences for all Americans if these companies elect to pay.

Reparations: The Super Bowl of Shakedowns.

The Present Slavery:  G.K. Chesterton observed in 1910:  "We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition.  There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother.  The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers."  These words resonate more than ever nearly a century later.

The Reparations Fraud II:  Most people seem to have responded to the demands for reparations for slavery in one of two ways.  Either they have supported the demands or they have maintained a discreet silence.

The Legacy of Slavery Hustle:  If what we see today in many black neighborhoods, as claimed by reparation advocates, are the vestiges and legacies of slavery, how come that social pathology wasn't much worse when blacks were just two or three generations out of slavery?  Vestiges and legacy of slavery arguments are simply covers for another hustle similar to the $6 trillion dollar War on Poverty hustle.  Interestingly enough, reparations advocates are not demanding that white people be taxed in order to send checks out to individual black people.  What they're demanding is for money to be put into a reparations fund from which they decide who receives how much for what purpose.

Does America owe reparations?  Which Americans owe black people what?  Reparations advocates don't want that question asked.

Campus Leftists Attack Ad on Black Reparations:  An ad criticizing reparations for descendants of slaves is creating an uproar at colleges across the country.  The controversy illustrates the anti-choice intolerance of left-wing activists and the speed of most student "journalists" to censor politically incorrect thought.

What America Owes Me:  When it comes to cashing in on the shrunken glove of racial resentment, you can count on Johnnie Cochran to make it fit.

Reparations for slavery?  lets do it!  In spite of the best efforts of the left, African Americans continue on their upward climb into the economic middle, and dare I suggest, wealthy classes.

Reparations for Slavery Arguments are Loaded with Contradictions:  Blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves — to work farms or plantations.  Are descendants of these blacks eligible and deserving of reparations?  Is there anyone prepared to make the argument that blacks in America today would be better off if they were in Africa?  If blacks wouldn't be better off, then why the reparations?

The Racism of Reparations:  In today's economy, much of the wealth is created by companies in the fields of computers, communications, and biotech.  If the reparations lawsuit is successful, it will be these companies that pay -- they have the most money.

Slavery's Effects Disappeared in Two Generations:  Economic disparities between the descendants of former slaves and free blacks largely disappeared within just two generations following emancipation, according to a study by Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote that may lend ammunition to opponents of slavery reparations.

 Editor's Note:   Apparently there is a move underway to offer the equivalent of reparations to native Hawaiians.  More information is available here.

The biggest scandal:  According to Newsweek, the young man at North Carolina Central University said that he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted, "whether it happened or not.  It would be justice for things that happened in the past."

Records of Freed Slaves to Go Online.  Records the Freedmen's Bureau used to reconnect families — from battered work contracts to bank forms — will be placed online in part of a new project linking modern-day blacks with their ancestors.

These people really have an apology to make.
Sorry we ate your forefathers.  The descendants of Papua New Guinea cannibals who killed and ate four Fijian missionaries in 1878 have apologised.

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