Democratic Reparations: Injustice For Many, Unwarranted Placating For Others
Talk of reparations has raised its ugly head again. Democrats, the party that has instituted many of the policies that have devastated two parent families, are now again attempting to buy votes through reparations. The problems are many, but let’s start with the most basic. First and foremost, reparations are a complete injustice to anyone that is alive today that would be forced to contribute to them. Second, those that are supposedly owed this monetary debt according to the radical left, would only be receiving it to placate them. In other words to shut them up and at the same time buy votes for the demented Democrats.
The radical left, especially those that are African American, are of the belief that reparations must be paid, no matter who is responsible. They want you to believe that America was the prominent importer of slaves, but that simply isn’t true. The largest importer of slaves was actually Brazil. The U.S. imported somewhere between four and six percent, a relatively small amount compared to other countries. Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I am justifying this because of the numbers, I am not. Slavery was horrific and can’t be justified. It was and is indefensible. What I am saying is that many believe that the slave trade flourished in order to supply the U.S. with slaves and that is obviously very far from the truth.
A major fact that those pushing for reparations blatantly and very conveniently choose to ignore, is that the true beginning of the black slave supply chain started in Africa. African kings that had conquered other tribes, would enslave their own people and herd them down to the beaches in order to sell them. So if anyone should be on the hook for reparations, shouldn’t it be the African descendants of those conquering kings? Obviously, I’m not suggesting that because reparations centuries after the fact are a ridiculous farce. Still, the fact remains and cannot be disputed that the black slave trade was initiated in Africa by Africans enslaving and selling their own people.
Another huge misconception is that slavery was strictly based on race, with whites enslaving blacks. Totally ignoring the fact there were also black slave owners as well as white slaves. One famous case involved a black Angolan farmer named Anthony Johnson and a slave named John Casor. Again, another fact that the left won’t tell you is that Johnson, who had been an indentured servant himself, became the first legal slave owner in the colonies.
Johnson was brought to Virginia in 1621. Johnson was sold as an indentured servant to a white planter named Bennet to work on his Virginia tobacco farm. (Slave laws were not passed until 1661 in Virginia; prior to that date, Africans were not officially considered to be slaves). These workers typically worked under a limited indenture contract for four to seven years to pay off their passage, room, board, lodging, and freedom dues. In the early colonial years, most Africans in the thirteen colonies were held under such contracts of limited indentured servitude. They were released after a contracted period. Those who survived their period of indenture would receive land and equipment after their contracts expired or were bought out.Most white laborers in this period also came to the colony as indentured servants.
In 1623, a black woman named Mary arrived aboard the ship Margaret. She was brought to work on the same plantation as Johnson, where she was the only woman there. Johnson and Mary were later married and lived together for more than forty years.
Sometime after 1635, Johnson and Mary concluded the terms of their indentured servitude. He first entered the legal record as an unindentured man when he purchased a calf in 1647. Johnson was granted a large plot of farmland by the colonial government after he paid off his indentured contract by his labor. On July 24, 1651, he acquired 250 acres of land under the headright system by buying the contracts of five indentured servants, (four were white and one was black) one of which was his son, Richard Johnson. The headright system worked in such a way that if a man were to bring indentured servants over to the colonies (in this particular case, Johnson brought the five servants), he was owed 50 acres a “head”, or servant. With his own indentured servants, Johnson ran his own tobacco farm. In fact, one of those servants, John Casor, would later become one of the first African men to be declared indentured for life.
In 1653, John Casor, a black indentured servant whose contract Johnson appeared to have bought in the early 1640s, approached Captain Goldsmith, claiming his indenture had expired seven years earlier and that he was being held illegally by Johnson. A neighbor, Robert Parker, intervened and persuaded Johnson to free Casor. Parker offered Casor work, and he signed a term of indenture to the planter. Johnson filed a “Freedom suit” against Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654 for the return of Casor. The court initially found in favor of Parker, but Johnson appealed. In 1655, the court reversed its ruling. Finding that Anthony Johnson still “owned” John Casor, the court ordered that he be returned with the court dues paid by Robert Parker. This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the thirteen colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.
Though Casor was the first person who was declared a slave in a civil case, there were both black and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude before him.
So here is a case where a black man not only owned both black and white slaves, but he also took a black man to court which resulted him being indentured for life. So, will the left pay the thousands of white slaves reparations? Will they force Johnsons descendants and all blacks that owned slaves to pay reparations?
The woke left will also not tell you that Native Americans also owned slaves. By 1860 at the time of the civil war, Native Americans owned an estimated 21,000 slaves which was equal to the amount owned in the south. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, three years into the bloody civil war. However, that did not free the slaves held by Native Americans. It wasn’t until 1866 that the slaves in Indian territory were freed through hotly contested negotiations.
Will the descendants of those Native American’s that owned slaves be required to pay reparations?
As you can see the idea of reparations is ridiculous. There is no way to accurately assess what happened centuries ago, and the materialistic, Marxist view of the left doesn’t work. Problems are not solved by throwing money at them, look no further than our education system for proof of that.
Approximately 2000 British naval men died on the high seas trying to stop the slave trade, shouldn’t they be paid reparations? Estimates vary on the death totals in the civil war between 600,000 and 750,000. Shouldn’t they be paid reparations?
Reparations are nothing more than a Democratic attempt to buy votes. The real problems are much deeper and can’t be solved with something as shallow as unjustly forcing Americans that never owned slaves to pay others that were never slaves.
The left loves this type of grandstanding, but all it does is create division. They know this of course, but seeking a real solution would require work, reason and honesty, traits the far left doesn’t possess. Besides, by actually helping minorities instead of exploiting them for power, they may lose their base in the process.
For the left, choosing between truth and power isn’t a real choice. They will choose power every time no matter who or how many are hurt by their lies.
