Keep in mind as you’re reading this that I’m clearly the racist here. I’m a white, straight, male conservative Republican—wow, come to think of it, I tick all the Left’s boxes for the worst person ever, and that’s even before they begin to read my Twitter.
Reparations for hundreds of years of slavery in America have been a Democratic Party talking point for the better part of a few decades. Democrats, when up for reelection, love to float this idea, along with many other government handouts, to minority communities in order essentially to buy their votes.
From a 50,000-foot perspective, it’s a pretty racist concept because the Left ultimately believes that waving money in front of people of color—not presenting better policy—is how you get them to vote. Leftists also claim that people of color somehow don’t know how to obtain a government-issued identification card to vote, so this is par for the course.
Even though it goes without saying that slavery is bad, I have to state it here. Slavery is bad. If I don’t say it, then someone eventually will comment that I love slavery, even though the person criticizing me probably drives an electric car, watches Disney movies, and loves Nike athletic apparel. In case you don’t catch on to things too quickly, all of those items are manufactured or distributed via a system of slavery still very much prominent in some countries around the world.
We can’t deny slavery shaped world history. Don Lemon, who recently lost his primetime show and was demoted to CNN mornings, knows all too well that slavery was both bad and had a major impact on the world. In his coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, he questioned Hilary Fordwich, an expert on the royal family, as to whether their immense wealth should be used to pay reparations. Her answer silenced the typically verbose Lemon:
Well, I think you’re right about reparations . . . if people want it though, what they need to do is, you always need to go back to the beginning of the supply chain. Where was the beginning of the supply chain? That was in Africa.
Forwich then discussed how Great Britain was the first country in the world to stop slavery:
Which was the first nation in the world that abolished slavery? The British . . . Two thousand naval men died on the high seas trying to stop slavery. If reparations need to be paid, we need to go right back to the beginning of that supply chain and say, ‘Who was rounding up their own people and having them handcuffed in cages?’
Lemon was stunned. Fordwich had replied to him, not only acknowledging that slavery was bad but also that reparations should be paid—and she used history to point out that it wasn’t evil white people who were the beginning of the “supply chain.” Africans were rounding up and selling other Africans.
So why is it that when the Left discusses reparations for slavery, which existed far before the African slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean, they always seem to be demanded of the American government—and, in this instance, the royal family?
If reparations were based on actual historical facts, a lot more than just white people and the U.S. government would need to pay up. Bill Maher in his “New Rule” segment this past weekend put it perfectly:
Everybody who could afford one, had a slave, including people of color. The way people talk about slavery these days, you’d think it was a uniquely American thing that we invented in 1619—but slavery throughout history has been the rule, not the exception. The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, Romans, the Arabs, British, the early Americans—all the way up through R. Kelly.
Maher added that the world slave comes from “Slav, because so many Slavic people were enslaved—and they’re as white as the Hallmark Channel.”
The conversation about reparations for slavery has as much to do with reparative justice as the Inflation Reduction Act has to do with reducing inflation. The goal is to trick people into more division, hatred of one another, and maybe even get them to vote as if they think a handout is soon to be on its way given some particular outcome. Another leftist goal is to cash in on this division by getting paid millions to teach a false version of the history of slavery—a false history that even Maher noted with his backhanded reference to the “1619 Project.”
But what’s the ultimate end here? Bankrupting the federal government? Civil War II over the same issue that sparked our first Civil War? Or establishing a new system of welfare to keep people under the thumb of the current regime?
Whatever nefarious plan explains it, history’s fingers should be pointed in lots of other directions outside of America. Slavery wasn’t started here, the supply chain of slaves didn’t come from here either. So why should we, much like the royal family, be forced to foot the bill for the reparations that are never coming? Perhaps it’s because the leftists rewriting the history of slavery believe that western cultures have more money to tap into than the countries that began that supply chain—which is, dare I say it, racist.