You can tell politics are heating up for the 2020 elections with new cries for paying black Americans reparations for the many years some of their ancestors were enslaved in the United States. It seems we don't hear much about this issue until elections are on the horizon.
I've seen some staggering figures into the trillions of dollars should such reparations come to fruition. But the bottom line is who should pay for those reparations.
U.S. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has come under fire recently when it was learned his great, great grandfather owned 14 slaves.
I haven't checked my family tree so I don't know if any of my great, great or great ancestors owned slaves. Maybe they did, maybe not.
The idea behind reparations for slaves in the United States is nothing new. There was a push right after the Civil War to give former slaves 40 acres and a mule, but it never materialized.
So, where do you start if you are seriously considering paying dependents of slavery. Do you start by sending the bill to Africa where other blacks were selling blacks into the slave trade? Do you include the 'free' blacks in America who also owned slaves back in the day? If you run their family tree, shouldn't they pay as well.
You can't erase the historical fact that people in the United States, both black and white, owned black slaves decades ago.
Just recently, Colin Kaepernick was successful in getting Nike to pull its special Fourth of July sneaker that had an emblem of the flag Betsy Ross sewed because he said the flag represented a time when slavery was legal in the United States.
Nike folded like a tent, which is shameful.
It's the same Kaepernick who refused to stand for the current American flag because it represented the racial injustice in this nation. He needs to read a history book, it was the United States that abolished slavery in this country. You'd think he'd be proud of a country that righted a great injustice. You'd think he would be proud of a country that gave him the opportunity to make millions of dollars and a country that gives him the right to protest what he feels are injustices.
So where do we draw the line in paying decedents of people who were treated unfairly in this country?
What about the Japanese Americans who were rounded up and put in camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the beginning of the United States' involvement in World War II? Should we give reparations to all of them.?
Lets take it a step farther and give reparations to all the females, black and white, who live in this country today whose ancestors were denied the same rights as males. They were treated like second-class citizens and not allowed to vote and their sole role was to stay barefoot and pregnant and take care of their children and their husbands. Some churches today still treat women as second-class citizens, so why not make them pay.
If you start paying the ancestors of everybody who suffered injustice in the early years of this country, we'd be paying everybody.
We can't undo was was done in the past and we cannot undo the past with a check. We now live in a country that allows every citizen a seat at the table and the opportunity to take part in the American dream.
Reparations are not the answer to correct past mistakes. Instead of casting blame for the past, we should all embrace the freedoms our country has given us today.
