Money For Nothing
by Joseph C. Hinson
March 30, 2002
Did you hear the one about the three corporations getting sued for something that happened over 130 years ago? It seems that three major US companies have been named in a lawsuit filed in New York on behalf of African Americans who are seeking compensation for the abuses suffered by their ancestors. The lawsuit is the first of its kind and accuses insurer Aetna, CSX Railroad and financial-services firm FleetBoston of profiting from the slave trade before it was abolished in 1865. I don't know if these people have done their homework, but CSX nearly shut down after the Conrail debacle. I think at some point any money still floating around from the slave trade probably all floated away.
Now I'm not sure you're going to find anyone short of David Duke to tell you that slavery was a good thing. Slavery is a black eye on the history of the nation. It was a cancer on the country. In fact, part of why this lawsuit is some god damn insane is in that statement. One more time: Slavery is a black eye on the history of the nation. The key word, of course, being history. For crying out loud, Strom Thurmond wasn't even alive when the last slave was freed. Hold on. Let me check. He is old after all.
The suit was filed Tuesday in a Brooklyn federal court by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a 36-year-old lawyer who has campaigned for reparations for several years. "The practice of slavery constituted an 'immoral and inhumane deprivation of Africans' life, liberty, African citizenship rights, cultural heritage' and it further deprived them of the fruits of their own labour," the 21-page suit reads.
"Unjustly Enriched"
Further, the suit contends CSX, FleetBoston and Aetna were "unjustly enriched" by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings." Now I don't know a thing about Aetna or FleetBoston, but I do know a little about CSX. CSX was not around in the 1860s. The railroad was former in the early 80s by the merger of several existing companies. Those companies existed because of the merger of companies before them. Oh, did I mention that it was the 1980s when CSX was formed? By the way, Strom Thurmond is old, but he's not that old. He was born after 1900.
James Strom Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902 in Edgefield, South Carolina. He never owned slaves. But it is entirely possible that Civil War veterans may have voted for him. He holds the record for the longest filibuster in Senate history at more than 24 hours. What was he opposing? A civil rights bill in 1957.
CSX spokesperson Kathy Burns said: "It is an unfortunate misuse of the legal system to attempt to address issues well over a century old at the expense of today's workers and stockholders." Aetna released a similar statement. FleetBoston had not commented by the time I started writing this rant.
I cannot believe that we are living in the 21st century and are still dealing on a daily basis with what happened in the 1700 and 1800s. Many people have commented that this is like the reparations made to the Jews after the Holocaust. The difference there -- and it's a big difference -- is that the people who had been affected by the tragedy were still alive. It's been 60 years since WWII, more than 130 since the end of slavery.
If this lawsuit garners any money at all, then someone needs to file a god damn wrongful death suit in the murder of Jesus.
Plaintiff: Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, along with lawyer Bruce Nagel, talks to reporters about the class-action suit against companies that include CSX rail company. Frank Wiewandt (AP)
Public Extortion?
"This is a case about wealth built on the back and from the sweat of African slaves," said the plaintiff's lawyer Roger Wareham at a news conference. "We expect those companies that are targeted to stand up," he said. That last statement almost seems to be public extortion. If you don't give us some money, we'll accuse you of being a racist entity. It seems to have worked well over the years for Jesse Jackson. Just ask Toyota. (Toyota to pay $7.8 billion for diversity.)
Now I am of a couple of thoughts concerning this whole lawsuit. For starters, why should people who never had slaves pay reparations for slavery to people who never were slaves? A quick analogy is this. A man robs a bank and kills the cashier. The man is never caught. He eventually dies of old age. But the evidence leads directly to him some 50 years later through DNA testing. Do we then arrest his grandson for the bank robbery? Mind you, I'm not trying to make as comparison between a simple bank robbery and the institution of slavery, just trying to make some sense out of all of this.
The government runs off of our money. We feed the beast. They confiscate our taxes and hand it out to other people. This is something everyone knows except, seemingly, our leaders in Washington. Sometimes it's warranted. Eisenhower's Interstate System seems to have worked well, if you like bland white roads stretching through what was once beautiful landscapes. Our taxes pay for parks and sidewalks and libraries.
And, in this case, our taxes would pay for the slave reparations. In 1861, less than 10% of the white U.S. population owned slaves. So should everyone alive today pay for something that only one out of ten people did 130 years ago? You'd basically just be moving money around from the tax payers. In fact, some of this money will come from wealthy blacks. For example, if I were Michael Jordan's accountant, I'd be looking into some offshore bank accounts for my client.
Of course, then you're looking into the possibility that only the white descendants of slave owners would finance the reparations. I'm not sure how one could ever wade through the logistics of that wicked sea. Furthermore, the last slave ship arrived in the United States in 1808. Do the math. That was almost two hundred years ago. It is highly likely that your white ancestors got to US shores after that. The obvious question then is: should descendants of those people have to pay for what happened in this country prior to their ancestors arrival? How many white Americans arrived in this country after the abolition of slavery? Is there anyway to even figure this one out?
And what about the white sharecroppers, the indentured servants? Should the ancestors of these people have to pay the ancestors of a people who were just below them on the totem pole? And why? Just because they're black?
I'm full of questions. Here's another one: Say that someone finds the whitest guy on earth named Bubba Smith. Let's just say for the sake of argument that it can be positively proven (again, DNA) that he is a direct descendant of a slave. His mother was a slave who was impregnated by her owner. As the descendant of a slave, does he get any of the money coming to him? Is it any less if he's a conductor for CSX?
In the mid-1800's, thousands of non-military whites placed themselves at great risk by promoting the abolition of slavery, and/or by operating the underground railroad. Additionally, thousands of white Union soldiers died fighting for the same cause. Should the descendants of these people have to pay for something their people were against in the first place?
The presumption with this suit, with any suit, is that a party or parties is guilty of something. Therefore, who is guilty of slavery? If you can find me a slave owner in the US today, bring him on! We'll put the bastard in jail. But no one alive today ever held slaves. No one alive today was a slave in the United States. Slavery existed for hundreds of years and was well-established for many years before there ever was a United States of America. In many places, slavery still exists today. Most of these countries are small and rather poor though. Unlike the United States.
And the question must be asked. In these countries where black immigrants are slaves, how would they view the African-Americans of today getting paid for something they never personally experienced?
The lawsuit does not name a specific dollar amount. A claim was made that 40 million dollars was with held from the slaves. It doesn't specify the 40 acres of land and the mule that was promised. I'm not sure we have 40 acres of land around that hasn't been infested by a strip mall somewhere. The mule is a little touchy, too. For one thing, that's a lot of damn mules. Secondly, why would people need a mule today? At least the goat that my sister-in-law and her husband have eats their grass.
But getting back on the subject, the 40 million dollars with interest and whatnot has turned into about 1.4 trillion dollars. That's a god-awful lot of money. In fact, one estimate I saw says that all of the Fortune 500 companies combined have a net worth of 7 trillion dollars. That means that the three companies already named -- and there will be more -- are supposed to carry a lot of the weight. Talk about extortion. A pay out of that kind of money could have a crippling effect on the U.S. economy.
I'm Against Reparations. Therefore, I'm A Racist.
Now I have a fear that anyone who voices their opposition to reparations will be called racists and bigots. I'm not going to sit here and type out the reasons why I'm not a racist or a bigot. I do hope that the right to disagree is still an option in this country with all that has happened over recent years. But I am vehemently opposed to anyone paying for something they did not do. This is insanity at its worse. It's divisive during a time that our country needs cohesiveness.
It may be that we are at a crossroads. Do we want racial harmony? Do we want to just get along? Because the split that this lawsuit could give us may be unlike anything this country has ever seen. The civil rights protests of the 60s may seem PG-rated to this. Images of churches burning, protesters being sprayed with hoses out of fire trucks and crosses burning may be something we see every day on television again. Not archival video from 40 years ago, but live broadcasts on CNN and your local news station.
This suit, in my view, propagates the victimhood of the African-American community. The black leaders, among them Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, have made millions from this victimhood. In the long run, it may do more harm to African-Americans than good. It trains them to give up when "the man" shoves them down again. Need a promotion? Well, when the white worker gets the job and you don't, just claim racism and give up. Whether or not the claim of racism is valid is beside the point for this argument. You still have to do the work and make the grade. Let the glass ceiling fall in on itself when it will.
But a nation of victims will always be a nation of victims. Train them long enough, tell them as many times as you can in as many ways as possible and at some point it becomes true. Eventually, they'll figure out that we owe them for something.
It's Called the Past For A Reason
Slavery was an abomination. No one seriously argues that point. But we made great strides in the 1960s. Great men like Martin Luther King Jr. led the way. Sometimes the country, and those that were in power, were pulled along against their will. President Kennedy was sluggish to do anything on civil rights until after MLK was arrested and thrown in a southern jail on trumped up charges. But the fact remains that blacks in this country have it better in 2002 than they did in 1962. No one seriously argues that point either. Has racism and discrimination been wiped of the face of the planet? No. It's going to take time. Frankly, it's going to take generations of people dying off. But I believe we can get there if we work together.
As a white man, I wish that there was no prejudice. Prejudices exists in many shapes and forms. In some ways, it probably always will. It's hard to change the way a man feels, especially when that feeling is not based in logic or reason. In this case, it's based on an irrational hatred or fear of a person with darker skin than their own. There's no reason for it. But how do you change it?
In this case, you just ask for a big payout.
There's not a damn thing we can do to change the past. There just isn't a DeLorean that will travel through time once you hit 88 miles per hour. With that said, I don't think we as a nation have fully come to terms with what happened back then. It's our dirty little secret. We don't want to think about it, much less talk about it. But here is something you may never hear anyone say. (Walter Williams did, in fact, say it.) But the African-Americans today benefited greatly from the slaves of yesterday. If their ancestors had never been kidnapped from Africa, they'd be living in the same poverty-stricken environment that is Africa today.
Most blacks live in the middle class. In fact, if the population of blacks living in America today were their own country, they'd be the tenth richest nation in the world. Part of the reason they are the richest blacks in American history is because their ancestors paid the price of slavery for them. Mind you, it wasn't their choice. Another reason the black community of today is better off than at any point in the history of this nation is due directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a bill signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson during the time Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading the movement. Would reparations payments accomplish what the 6 trillion dollars spent since 1965 on the War on Poverty hasn't?
Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to the current president, said she feared that such a suit could effectively consign African-Americans to permanent second-class status. In other words, here's your money, don't bother us again. She has gone on record previous to the suit filed last week as saying "I would hope that we would spend our time thinking about how to educate black children, particularly black children who are caught in poverty." Rice also pointed out that it makes more sense to focus concerns about the effects of slavery on those areas of the world, including the Sudan, where slavery is still being practiced.
While there is not a damn thing we can do to change the past, there is a lot we can do to change the future. Here are some issues.
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