Column #2: It's all still with us
Proponents of reparations make the claim that while slavery as a legally
permitted practice ended in 1865, that it's effects still exist today, and
that this is a valid defense of reparation demands. They're half right.
It's good to start with a point of agreement, and at the very least,
nobody believes that there are any slaves still alive today. I actually
wonder if there are any first-generation ancestors still alive, and would
invite any information about that. At any rate, this is at the very least,
not a point of contention.
Knowing this, backers of reparation payments make the following claim:
while the practice may no longer exist in America, the effects of the
practice do still exist, and therefore that those being affected by it are
due compensation just as much as those who lived under it.
The statement that economic success of blacks has not yet risen
to that of whites certainly helps to fuel this claim, and I'd personally
make a guess that if this were not believed to be the case that we wouldn't
even be having this debate right now. Looking at it this way, it's reasonable
to understand how someone may use this argument.
I actually agree with part of this claim. Yes, the effects of slavery
are still being felt today. However, there is a reason for this, and when
you understand it, you also understand that this does not mean that
reparations is the next logical step.
The reason this is true is that the effects of everything are
still being felt today.
Just as no man is an island, no action is an island. Every event in
history is like a rock dropped into an ocean: even after the waves it
generates have stopped being distinguishable, they are still there, and
will always be there, affecting things in ways that, as time goes by,
become more and more impossible to see, but no less real.
This is hardly a new concept. Writes such as James Burke and Robert Anton
Wilson have made livings writing about the interconnectivity of events that
you would never think have anything to do with one another. Going back a
little further, what is known as "The Butterfly Effect" postulated that a
single flap of a butterfly's wings on one end of the planet could cause a
tornado on the other end. Bringing this to the area of social sciences then,
we are then faced with the question of what exactly someone is responsible
for, if they could conceivably twitch their finger and wind up unknowingly
"causing" the death of someone they've never met.
Let's even forget about the accidental effects of otherwise benign
actions, and go to more agreeably immoral acts. There was a small slavery
problem in Egypt once that Isreal hasn't yet forgotten about. Should we?
Jews, after all, also have a bit of a claim about bad things happening to
them since then, and not just Nazism. So do we start honoring their claims?
This is only the start. I was recently going back over a world history
book, and some of the pages, if you stare at them too long, start looking
like this:
"...and the
losers in A were enslaved for 30 years until their previous allies from B
liberated them and in turn enslaved all of the C's that had conquered them.
This was followed by a period of internal strife in which previous
descendants of D were treated as non-citizens and denied access to most of
the country. Meanwhile, E, was waging for with F, G, H and I, and J was
taking part in these fights, often on opposite sides, when all of them
realized that none of them liked any of A, B, C or D, and joined armies to
take them on (ambushing K in the meantime just for kicks) ..."
The next time your child complains about how hard it is to learn
American history, point this out to them and ask them to imagine what it
would be like if they lived in the Middle East.
Even trying to simplify it down to just slavery in the United States, we
see that it's not anything remotely like (pun intended) a black or white
issue. Some blacks were slaves, some blacks were slave owners, some were
free northerns and some were free southerners. Some whites were slave
owners (some harsh, some kind), some worked for emancipation, some owned no
slaves at all. And a lot of blacks and whites on both sides of the
Mason-Dixon line fought each other at slavery's end.
And since then? Many whites and blacks, and people of other
nationalities have moved all over the country. Many have moved out, a lot
more have moved in. Many have helped each other, many have fought each other,
and many have gone their seperate ways.
Many have gone to schools together, many have fought together in other
wars, many have played together, many have fought each other, many have
loved each other and many have hated each other. Many have fought members
of their own race. Many have learned from each other, and many have refused
to listen to each other.
And you know what else?
Many of them have married each other. Many of them have created new
family lines together. Many of them have also done so with people of
neither race. Many of them have created futures for themselves that
ignore all of the predetermined social goals of the intellectuals.
In short, there have been as many social changes in this country as
there have been people. Even at an age that is still young compared to
many of the world's countries, America is already a country with a rich,
dynamic history, going to levels of complexity far, far beyond the
influences of "important events" listed on a bite-sized timeline.
So yes, the effects of slavery are still with us today, just as the
effects of everything else are still with us today. So then, is every
single one of us responsible for all of the good and the bad that happens
to every single one of us? To put it in harsher terms, are you responsible
for every murder, every theft, every crime that was committed since the day
you were a screaming toddler?
Should we endlessly hold onto every single wrong ever committed by man,
in an eternal recalculating of winners and losers, based on an
exponentially growing encyclopedia of human interaction?
Pardon me for giving you the answer you expect me to, but it's pretty
clear to me that "no" is the appropriate response.
Does this mean that compensation is never warranted? No: at least,
that's not something that I would argue. There is a time and place for
compensation. I'll get into that in another piece soon.
For right now, it simply needs to stand: even when there isn't a legal
one, there is a natural statute of limitations. The issue of slavery is, to
be clear, something which should always be discussed in any competent
American history class. I'm not going to deny that it's profound impact on
our nation's history, and again, I'm not going to deny that its "effects"
are still with us today.
But as I said, that will always be the case. For right now, both for
this column and for our country, it's time to move on.
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