Fulfilling a promise to establish a slavery reparation commission, 71-year-old Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx.) held hearings on Resolution 40 to explore the feasibility of reparations. Debated in the 2020 Democrat presidential primaries, 78-year-old Presidnet Joe Biden expressed openness to creating a blue ribbon panel to explore various aspects of reparations. Speaking at the Zoom meeting today, 58-year-old former NFL Football Star Hershel Walker expressed his opposition to reparations based on his Christian values, saying that reparations would only create more separation for African Americans. Others like Lee disagree, citing the New York Times “1619 Project,” that commemorated the 400 –year-anniversary of the introduction of slavery into the original 13 colonies. All colonies had slavery prior to the Sept. 3, 1783 end to the U.S. Revolutionary War.
In publishing the 1619 Project, New York Times writer Nicole Hannah-Jones wanted in Aug. 2019 to establish the original sin of slavery in the 13 colonies and contributions of African Americans to be paramount in the American anti-racist dialogue going forward, moving toward reparations. Jackson-Lee’s Resolution 40 works toward opening up a Congressional commission to explore the feasibility of reparations for black Americans. Walker opposed Lee’s attempt to go down the reparations path. Walker told Lee that current attempts by militant groups Black Lives Matter for reparations continue to divide the nation, bitterly splintered after the 2020 presidential election. “We use Black Power to create white guilt,” Walker told Lee. Walker questioned who would pay the hefty price tag estimated at $12 trillion or 254,782 for every African American that can prove slavery ancestry.
Walker wondered whether blacks would be forced to do Ancestry DNA testing to prove they came from West Africa the historic venue from which slave trade departed off the African continent. Walker also questioned who would pay for the astronomical sums of tax dollars required to pay reparations to the African Americans. He questioned how African Americans would be exempted from letting their tax dollars be used to pay reparations, if it ever came down to direct payments. Former President Barack Obama would be exempted from receiving reparations because his father’s ancestry was from Kenya, where no East Africans made their way to the U.S. On the other hand, Obama’s wife Michelle would receive payments because her ancestry came from West Africa, the main source of the slave trade. Walker thinks going down the reparations path leads to more racial disharmony.
New African American authors writing for left-leaning publications like 38-year-old Ibram X. Kendi or 45-year-old Ta-Nehisi Coates see reparations as the only way the U.S. government can atone for their sins. Kendi has written the current anti-racist bible, “How to be an anti-racist.” “An American that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane,” Coates said, asking White Americans to sacrifice by paying reparations to African Americans. If Kendi and Coates look at the history of slavery in Amreica, they’ll find it was not a uniquely American practice but rather brought to the 13 colonies, as it was to the British, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., territories around the globe. When Hannah-Jones writes in her 1619 Project about the first slaves brought to the 13 colonies, she mentions nothing about how many colonial powers brought slaves around the globe.
African American politicians and writers pretend the America initiated the slave trade when it fact it existed for hundreds of years, practiced by colonial powers around the globe Hannah-Jones, Kendi and Coates, in advocating for the U.S. government to pay reparations, forget that colonies in North America were not incorporated into the United States until Revolutionary War ended Sept. 3, 1783, but more, realistically, until the Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787 or the Bill of Rights signed Sept. 25, 1789. When you consider that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation Jan. 1, 1863 ending slavery, it was only 74 years after signing the Bill of Rights. By the time the Civil War ended May 9, 1965, 620,000 Americans lost their lives, essentially fighting to end slavery. So when black activists want to hold all Americans accountable to slavery, it misrepresents U.S. history.
Holding commission hearings on reparations should present all sides of a very complex issue related to the history of slavery in the United States. Because it was brought to the 13 colonies, like other parts of the globe, it was certainly not a uniquely American phenomenon because America as an independent country didn’t exist until the Sept. 3, 1783 end to the Revolutionary War. Even then, there was no U.S. Constitution until Sept. 17, 1787 or Bill of Rights until Sept. 25, 1789. If African Americans want to sue for reparations Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, etc., they wouldn’t have much of a case. “An American that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future,” wrote Coates in the Atlantic. Hannah-Jones, Coates, Kendi and other pro-reparation writers need to get their history right.
