I just read an article in the current Village Voice called Getting Back on the Bus. It was about a bunch of people (a million, it’s always a fucking million even when it’s 50,000) who are converging on Washington to march for slavery reparations.
This divisive bullshit has gotta stop.
Here’s the letter to the editor I wrote:
So I was inspired to write a pit rant about this dumbass fucking issue.
I would like to state for the record that, “I DON’T OWE YOU ANY FUCKING MONEY”. With that said, let me move on to why I don’t owe you any money in more graphic detail than in my letter to the editor.
My family to my knowledge never owned slaves, and I can trace my ancestry on my father’s side to not too much after the Mayflower. I can trace my ancestry on my mother’s side to immigrants from Poland and Lithuania around the turn of the century. For those of you that aren’t aware, the turn of the century happened AFTER the emancipation proclamation.
A little history lesson for those of you that still think I owe you money just because I’m white. This country was founded by immigrants who came here looking for a better life than the country from which they originally started. There was a form of slavery called “Indentured Servitude” where you in essence belonged to the person who paid for you and your family to come over here from Europe for a certain period of time. No this was not as bad as slavery, because it was not open ended. People that came to America were fleeing religious persecution, famine, or just laws that didn’t benefit them in any way. This continued for many years up until the present.
Along came the civil war. For those of you that don’t know, prior to the civil war, slavery was illegal in much of the country. In fact, the richest parts of the country, the parts of the country that are still the richest parts of the country, it was illegal, in all of those parts actually. Combine this with the fact that, this nation was and still is more resource rich than most areas of the world, and you will start to get a clearer view, that Malcolm X, is in fact wrong, that our wealth had less to do with slavery, and more to do with industrialization and resources. As I illustrated above Plantation owners in many cases lost everything with the Emancipation Proclamation, so the ancestors of the people who DID owe slavery reparations, in most cases, do not have a single bit of wealth that was aquired on the backs of slaves.
Back to Immigration. Since the United States became a country in the late 18th century we’ve had a steady influx of immigrants. In fact we had huge amounts of immigrants flowing steadily in after the Civil War, until World War I and still have hundreds of thousands flowing in each year. These were people fleeing abject poverty in eastern europe, oppressive laws, famines, wars, you name it. Many of us, are descended from these people, I am.
When you ask for reparations from the US government, you are asking for reparations from all of us. You are asking it from the entire population of Harlem, you are asking it from the entire population of Cambridge Massachussetts. You are asking it from all of Virginia, and all of Louisiana. You are asking it from recent Mexican immigrants, you are asking it from every taxpayer of this nation. In otherwords you are saying that your ancestor’s hardship 150 years ago was greater than their ancestor’s hardship 150 years ago, and that they owe you money.
The rich plantation owners that owned slaves were a minority of the people who lived in this country. They were a ruling class, just like we have in every country. The ruling class always steps on the other classes. This one just happened to be harsher than most. However, what reparations are saying is that EVERY SINGLE person owes for the actions of that small ruling class. I’d be willing to wager that the vast majority of this country is not descended from those people who owned slaves.
So if you want to claim that racism is an issue, please do it, I’ll agree with you. I agree that oppressive drug laws disfavor blacks and hispanics. However it’s this kind of divisive bullshit that keeps anything from being done about it. Rather than unifying with the white people who are discriminated against and belong to a lower class, who are toiling in shitty jobs, we have divisive bullshit like a march for slavery reparations being performed. A march that says that a white janitor in Minnesota owes money because slavery at one point existed in this country. Maybe if people really wanted to do something about this, they’d have a million man march to DC to get more money for schools in poor black neighborhoods, or even better, in all poor neighborhoods then it could be a 20,000,000 man march, but no, we have people who think that their particular ethnic background suffered more than someone else’s particular ethnic background.
Racism is racism, whether it hurts of benefits you. If you want it to stop, stop claiming benefits from it.
Erek