Reparations—that bugaboo that raises its rambunctious head every few years. Political perceptions of blacks by themselves and by non-blacks wax and wane in favor of and against this chimera as the zeitgeist dictates--sometimes it looks like the morally expedient thing to do, then it morphs into something morally repugnant, and soon it is seen as a thing that is morally unconscionable in either the affirmative or the negative, and in a tight election race, it is a thing that is morally incumbent.
Reparations for slavery are filaments of political exhalations that ebb and flow and blow in the wind like wispy grasses. Yet regardless of how these winds blow, reparations are a monster for those who would fight them, for those who would defend them, and for those who would ride them.
Now, as any student of monster literature knows (and monsters have been the mother's milk of literature since before writing appeared), monsters are not easily dispatched and are certainly not put out of commission by being fed and coddled.
Like all frightful monsters, this one must be dealt with in a once-and-for-all manner, or, as any reader of literature and/or watcher of monster movies can readily attest, the villagers will never have peace.
Thus it is with reparations. So Solomon is here neither to condemn nor to embrace reparations but rather to provide a means for everyone to escape the talons of the beast. For ever.
Granting monetary reparations for slavery to people who never were themselves slaves does seem bizarre and unwarranted. Paying monetary reparations does no good to assuage whatever guilt a situation contains if the money is given to people who experienced no wrong. All this would do is to enflame greed on the part of receivers and resentment on the part of payers, who did no wrong either.
Will we all agree that there are no people living who were slaves or who were slave owners? Good. Then all aggrieved parties and all guilty parties have gone to a state where our reparations will neither hurt nor assuage.
My family did not own slaves and were actually against the peculiar institution, so my paying makes no sense, but if I were forced to pay, what's to prevent future generations of blacks to keep coming back to the trough that is my family's income time and again? If I paid current black people, none of whom I have wronged and none of whom were ever wronged personally, the monster, in short, would still exist. Why should blacks at the beginning of the 21st Century be entitled to money when those who came before weren’t and those who come after won’t? Makes no sense. If this whitey pays, then why shouldn't my children, and their children, etc. pay constantly too?
No, one-time payments will never do. Repeated payments will never do. Unless…
Yes, there must be a condition that ends everything. And here it is: Every black American who can prove that his ancestors were slaves in America before 1865 is entitled to one reparation payment—with condition. The payment would be $100,000; the threefold condition is that he or she will board a plane, with a one-way ticket, for Africa; that his/her American citizenship be irrevocably surrendered; and that he or she be forbidden to return--ever--to American soil.
Any black who refuses to accept this condition forfeits the chance to ever get reparations ever again for himself or any of his descendants. Future generations who are resentful that they are still living in America because some ancestor chose not to take the deal are out of luck. I guess they are cursed to be Americans for the rest of their lives, or at least without any financial incentive to give up that onerous burden.
Every black American living as of a particular date (to be determined) who can prove that his ancestors were indeed enslaved will have a one-week window to make the final decision. Those eighteen and older will decide for themselves. Those under eighteen, alas, must abide by their fathers’ decision. If no father can be found for a black child (most unlikely, of course), then the default position will be that the child would want to get the money and go back to Africa and will be sent to Africa with a US check for 100k, making his/her adoption extremely likely.
So there it is, a take-it-or-leave-it deal that compensates all aggrieved black parties if they so choose and that will be a stake in the heart of the Reparations Monster for all time for those who must pay. Everyone should be, if not jubilantly happy, somewhat mollified. Slave descendants can start a new and, one hopes, prosperous life in the continent from which their ancestors were ripped, and slave descendants who choose to stay will be announcing that they are committed to being Americans without any grievance against white people that must be remunerated. Harmony will prevail in all corners of the world! Praise Jesus!
Except, Solomon suspects, there will probably be those who take the deal and find out that there are worse places than America in which to live. Oh, how full of rue are those who choose to sell themselves for transient indulgence.
The story of Africa, I believe.
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