Dude - Where's My Reparations?

It seems like this subject comes up almost annually now. I'm talking about reparations for the descendants of Slavery by and from the U.S. Government. Congress is once again offering an official apology for the horrible institution that ended with the Civil War. I have to admit I was inspired by a column that Michael Reagan wrote this morning in Front Page Magazine.

Alright now, if we're gonna do it for the descendants of African-Americans then I am putting in my claim right now. I'm 1/2 Irish and we all know how the Irish were treated by America. Potato Famine my ass! The real suffering began here in the U.S. for the Irish. They were treated like dogs.

I'm also 1/4 Cherokee and I can document it. My genealogical research on my late Father's family goes back six generations to Pre-Civil War Indian Territory. That's right. Oklahoma, where my late Dad was from, wasn't even a State when my Grandfather and his ancestors were registered on the Dawes roll. If any one Indian tribe was decimated by Official Government policy it was the Cherokee. Can you say "Trail Of Tears"? I have my Grandfather's BIA number to facilitate research. Kaaa-Ching!

I'm also 1/4 German and can trace my Maternal Grandfather's roots back to Prussia thanks to a wonderful family tree one of my Nieces did a few years back. I'll have to work on that one to see how I can shakedown the Feds. There has to be a German angle to this reparations scam, er, I meant payoff.

The Japanese-Americans who were citizens of the U.S. during WWII lost everything. Many of them are still alive and they deserved what little the Government did to compensate them many years later.

All sarcasm aside, I am profoundly against reparations of any type for the institution of Slavery. The last American Slave died in 1979 according to some articles I researched on the web. This differs from the survivors of the Holocaust, many who are still alive and did receive reparations from Germany. What tort was committed by anyone now living and against who when it comes to the issue of Slavery in the United States?

No decent minded American will ever defend slavery on any terms. Most of the Southern and Northern soldiers were not slave owners so what did they die for and what crimes were they guilty of? Even Southern soldiers who fought for the Confederacy also died saving the Union? They gave the final measure for the Wealthy Southern Plantation owners while they had nothing to gain. That was the reparation they paid.

There were over six-hundred-thousand deaths, North and South. As far as I'm concerned this debt to African-Americans has been paid in full with the blood of the Civil War. We can't undo past wrongs by holding folks living today accountable. The last Slave owners have been dead for at least four or five generations.

So all of the race hustlers including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Charles Barron, and anyone else who fits the shoe need to stop using "White Guilt" to keep a never-healing wound open. It's time to move on and fix the real problems facing race issues in this country. Problems such as drugs, children born out of wedlock, lousy education, gangs and all other ills plaguing the country - if we don't, we will never get past the issue of racism in America. It will destroy us.

Some links to the issue of reparations are below. Both sides of the debate are featured.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell071700.asp
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/repara00.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13785355/
http://www.crf-usa.org/brown50th/reparation_reading.htm
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/08/obama-flips-on-drilling-and-slavery.html