Reburial reopens wounds: Black leaders call for government to pay reparations
They owe us. It's time to pay up.
- Rev. Herbert Daughtry
If you want to drive up my blood pressure, just bring up the subject of reparations. I am sick to death of African-Americans who think they are due a handout about because White America oppressed their forebears 140+ years ago. No, I'm not going to sit here and justify the historical reality that was slavery. It was a brutal, dehumanizing period of our history, and I'm sure the suffering was beyond imagining. Nevertheless, this happened long ago in the past. If any African-American alive today could reasonably claim to have been directly oppressed by slavery, I would be first in line to advocate opening the national checkbook. Reparation demands are being made by relatives of deceased slaves (and others with their own axes to grind), so any money paid out could not possibly go to the people directly effected.
What people demanding reparations are about is a handout, a lifestyle upgrade courtesy of the collective guilt of White America. It is an unreasonable and despicable demand by people too blinded by their own greed to recognize the ridiculousness of their demands.
I've said all along that I am 100% behind programs designed to benefit minorities indirectly- scholarship programs, public works programs, and the like. However, paying money directly to people simply because their ancestors suffered? How does that possibly begin to redress the wrong done in the 19th century? The answer, of course, is that it does not- and can not. It would simply put our tax dollars directly into the pockets of those who do not deserve it and have done nothing to warrant reparations.
These people are after a handout, pure and simple. Let's at least have the decency to recognize that fact and refuse to be a party to such a travesty.
