Reparations for Blacks: Injustice on Injustice

Re “Moral Justice Is at the Heart of the Reparations Issue,” Commentary, June 11: Neither I nor anyone in my family had anything to do with the historical evils visited upon Japanese Americans, German Jews or African slaves. Nor have I benefited from the evils done to individuals belonging to these groups. Nor could I. Evil never truly benefits anyone. As a double minority, I can identify with the agony such victims have suffered at the hands of those in political power.

But Allen C. Guelzo’s position that reparations should be made is an unspeakable moral evil. Guelzo’s claim rests on the view that the sins of the father pass to the son. As a form of determinism, it denies that man has free will and is responsible only for his own actions. Guelzo’s claim also rests on a collectivist view of humanity in which groups, not individuals, are the primary unit.

Determinism and collectivism are false, evil doctrines being used to attempt to deny individual choice and responsibility. They are also being used as weapons of avarice in the attempt to rob wealth from those who produced it to give to those who have no moral claim to such wealth.

Past crimes should be recognized and criminals held accountable when they can be identified. Unfortunately, sometimes justice can never be rendered even partially; for that one can rage and weep. But in regard to reparations, when all is said and done it really comes down to just wanting to steal a dollar from an innocent man, doesn’t it? To pile injustice upon injustice.

Ray Shelton

Glendale

*

Worldwide there are more slaves now than at any other time in history. The debate over reparations for the descendants of American slaves should help us realize that we should all work together for the eradication of slavery.

Thomas Prindiville Higgins

Ventura

*

We are told that African Americans deserve reparations at $200,000 per family. This is the present value of the “40 acres and a mule,” which supposedly they never received. Actually, following the end of the Civil War and slavery in 1865, black households were in a position to receive government grants of 160 acres. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave such grants to any farmer who would live on the land and farm it for five years. The federal government then granted title to that land, free and clear.

T.A. Heppenheimer

Fountain Valley