Reparations for Blacks

As a black American, I was outraged by Randall Robinson’s Feb. 6 commentary. Robinson’s article promulgates the kind of misguided thinking that is generally espoused by those in favor of reparations for America’s black people.

He begins with a picture of black Americans that is (ironically) replete with those stereotypes one usually associates with the media--the predatory black youth, the beleaguered black mother and the emotionally emasculated black father. There is no mention of the burgeoning black middle class that has taken a firm hold in this country for the past 20 years.

Slavery, Robinson correctly asserts, was a virulent institution whose devastation is irrefutable. Yet he gives no recognition to the strides blacks have made in spite of the obstacles inherent in withstanding the insidious effects of slavery, segregation and the ghetto. In effect, he marginalizes blacks by painting the majority with the same “woe is me” brush.

His assertion that reparations are due to American blacks because of compensation given to other victims is an analogy built on specious grounds. In the cases he cites (including Jews and Japanese Americans), he fails to recognize that reparations were given to people who personally endured the injustice. Today’s blacks are 135 years removed from slavery. Additionally, the mixture of the races during the past 200 years in America severely compromises and complicates his proposal.

The self-hatred that he mentions is due more to racial entitlement programs during the past 30 years than the stigma of being black in America; yet Robinson proposes another “hand-out” program. America neither needs to apologize nor pay for its past wrongs because such gestures cannot be extended to those who deserve them--the slaves who died long ago.

No, Mr. Robinson, let America keep its hollow apology and “blood money”; and let a proud group of people keep their humanity and dignity intact.

WAYNE M. JOSEPH

Chino

* It is truly an outrage that in the year 2000, 135 years after the end of slavery in the United States, this country is still in denial about the realities of a system that physically, psychologically and emotionally terrorized millions of enslaved African Americans from the moment they were born until they died--1619-1865. Generation after generation of slave children experienced an infant mortality rate 30% higher than Southern whites. If they survived they were malnourished, and 30% to 40% of the children under 10 could be expected to be bought, traded and sold away from their family members. These children and their family members’ “stolen labor” contributed to the billions of dollars of profit that the slave owners and their descendants even today benefit from.

The least this country can do is remember and honor those men, women and children who experienced such horrors with a publicly funded memorial located within sight of the nation’s capital--funded with the accumulated assets stolen from them for centuries.

SCOTT HOWLETT

Fullerton