On Saturday, Oct. 4, segregationist and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan spoke at Tougaloo College in Jackson to endorse reparations for slavery. The reparations may include “exemption from income taxes, land, medical insurance, employment, opportunities for entrepreneurship and domestic development programs for rural and urban areas,” according to the leader of the Mississippi Reparations Committee as quoted in The Clarion-Ledger.
According to The Final Call, a journal founded by Farrakhan, Farrakhan claimed, “Reparations was the way, if White people wanted to escape the Judgment of God that is coming upon America.”
Ignoring the discriminatory and racist tone of Farrakhan’s remarks, the reparations he calls for have little justification. He wants-not just money paid in damages-but privileges enshrined in law given to people on the sole basis of their skin color.
The idea, supported in the U.S. Congress by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), is a violation of the spirit and letter of the cornerstones to the modern civil rights movement in America-the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
Some “reparations” are reasonable, like those for recent civil rights abuses. Rosa Parks can clearly show that she was mistreated and harmed by the Montgomery bus line. Ann Moody Brooks, assaulted at the Jackson Woolworth sit-in in 1963 while a student at Tougaloo, can also demand compensation. As can Joan Mulholland (formerly Trumpauer), also a student a Tougaloo assaulted at the Woolworth sit-in. (Mulholland is white, by the way).
On the other hand, the kinds of reparations Farrakhan wants are ludicrous. They are based on three mistaken premises.
First, they assume that the grievous harms done to American slaves can some how be atoned for by giving reparations to their descendants. They also assume that their descendants necessarily deserve these reparations.
Second they assume that descendants of slaves are easily defined as a class-specifically, blacks.
Third, they presume that the guilty are easily identified and that their descendants should pay. As Farrakhan puts it, “if you add it up White folks, you are going to have to give us the whole country.”
While the slaves, freed in the United States in 1865, could reasonably claim extreme damages against their owners, both groups are long dead. Today, their descendants enjoy equal protection under the laws of the land where “all men are created equal.” To presume someone deserves anything because of his ancestry is to renounce this fundamental doctrine.
To demand privilege because of ancestry is to create an aristocracy. Furthermore, nearly every person in the United States can claim some abuse or harm done to his ancestors. Go back far enough and everybody owes everybody something.
In addition, someone’s skin color is a poor indicator of his ancestry. Many whites have black ancestors and vice-versa. Personally, my fair skin and blue eyes belie my Choctaw ancestry, but it is there, no matter what people see. For all I know, my ancestors were once somebody’s slaves. No, I don’t want reparation from anybody, even if they were.
Farrakhan and his associates demand reparations for one group of people-blacks. Undoubtedly, most slaves were blacks, enslaved in Africa and shipped to the United States. However, there were other slaves as well. Native Americans were also used as slaves.
In addition, not all black Americans are descendants of slaves. Immigration between Africa and the United States continues today. Finally, indentured servants, primarily from Europe, were practically slaves for their indentures.
Who exactly was responsible for slavery? The slave owners can be held responsible. However, despite Farrakhan’s presumptions, they weren’t just whites.
Historian Larry Koger writes of black slave owners in his book Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860.
The Portuguese were largely responsible for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Should they be forced to pay reparations as well? Often the enslavers who traded human flesh to the Portuguese were Africans of the Dahomey and Ashanti kingdoms. Reparation advocates unreasonably assume that slavery was, quite literally, a black and white issue. They are clearly wrong.
Nathan Alday is a senior aerospace engineering major. He can be reached at [email protected].