The Connecticut newspaper, the Hartford Courant,
apologized to its
readers this week because it ran ads for the sale of slaves and the recapture of runaways.
“What in the world … ?” you ask. Relax. The paper was apologizing for profiting from such ads it ran in the 1700s and 1800s when slavery was still, sadly, legal in this country. The Courant has been around a while.
So, why the apology? Well, it seems the newspaper published a series of stories some time earlier detailing how the Aetna insurance company sold policies to slave owners. Consequently, officials at the paper said, the editorial board felt guilty for excluding details that once upon a time the paper had also profited from the “sale of human beings.”
Great Caesar’s ghost. An apology?
There hasn’t been legalized slavery in this country since the 1860s so it is unfathomable for this newspaper — or anyone else — to apologize for it. The ads the Courant ran a few hundred years ago were simply part of that time and culture, even if factual history makes us uncomfortable today. Lawmakers — and 600,000 Americans — eventually paid the price for this ignorance and, rightfully, made such an abomination illegal.
Perhaps more important than faux repentance, however, the driving force at the core of this “apology for slavery” mania is a familiar evil — money.
“What many black activists want, of course, is not an official apology for slavery but the payment of massive reparations to today’s black community,” writes Jay Parker in an edition last year of the magazine,
The World and I. This, even though no one alive today or born after the Civil War were slaves.
Apparently that fact doesn’t matter, according to some reparations supporters.
Lance Morrow, writing for Time.com, suggests it is time “to look clearly at the whole evil business, as if for the first time,” and consider paying reparations to some black descendants of slavery.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has supported a separate black state where those who are descendants of slavery are paid $23,000 apiece.
Michael Meyer, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, remarked that the call for reparations “is an embarrassment of muddled thinking — but then, foolishness and pie-in-the-sky sounding off are par for those who believe the world owes them. … However one defines it, ‘reparations’ is just another word for the old hustle.”
Columnist Charles Krauthammer proposed “a historic compromise, a monetary reparation to blacks for centuries of oppression in return for the total abolition of all programs of racial preference; a one-time cash payment in return for a new era of irrevocable color blindness.” Is he serious? How much cash is enough to “settle the score” — $15 per black? Can I get more? Sounds uncomfortably like the old slave auction, but look who’s holding the gavel this time.
Parker continues by saying, “At this point in history, the problem facing black Americans has nothing to do with the legacy of slavery and, as a result, cannot be ameliorated by ‘reparations.'”
Further, he writes, “The legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation.” While, “Black Americans have achieved unprecedented progress,” Parker argues, “Persistent problems have more to do with the disintegration of the family structure than the continuing legacy of slavery.”
Besides, as noted by professor, author and columnist Thomas Sowell, “First of all, slavery is not something like stepping on someone’s toe accidentally, where you can say ‘excuse me.’ If the people who actually enslaved their fellow human beings were alive today, hanging would be too good for them. If an apology would make no sense coming from those who were personally guilty, what sense does it make for someone else to apologize … today? A national apology also betrays a gross ignorance of history. Slavery existed all over the planet, among people of every color, religion and nationality. Why then a national apology for a worldwide evil?”
According to Parker, Walter Williams, chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University, “describes the call for reparations as ‘just another scam’ and argues that at this point in history, ‘slave owners cannot be punished and slaves cannot he rewarded. Black people in our country have gone further than any other race of people. You cannot portray blacks as victims. It’s an insult to their progress and success. Most of (today’s) problems have nothing to do with race; they’re social and economic.'”
America has already officially, righteously, and unequivocally “apologized” for U.S. slavery. We passed laws prohibiting it after fighting a war to, in part, eliminate it. What is left to do?
Parker writes: “Underlying many race-based programs in recent years has been the notion that all living white Americans are somehow beneficiaries of centuries of discrimination against blacks. Conversely, we are led to believe, all contemporary blacks are its continuing victims. In this formulation, white Americans whose ancestors arrived on these shores after the Civil War and Emancipation remain beneficiaries of slavery, and black Americans born more than a century after slavery’s end are still being victimized by it.”
Meanwhile, columnist Mona Charen asks, “What about immigrants, like Koreans or Vietnamese, who only just arrived? They did not participate in discrimination against blacks, nor did their ancestors.”
In his article, Parker quotes Charen as saying, “So many blacks in Africa have suffered starvation and massacres in the 130 years since slavery was abolished that at least one black writer has expressed his gratitude that his ancestors were taken as slaves to America. History is not simple.”
Indeed it is not, but one thing is clear: The lesson of slavery in America was put to rest once and it should stay at rest. There is no further need for atonement because there is no one alive who deserves it — in any of its suggested forms.
