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Empowerment is answer for blacks, not reparationWhat do you think about reparations, Mr. Perkins? the caller asked. I thought he was just throwing out a rhetorical question. But he really wanted to know if black conservatives, like yours truly, were “rolling with the homios on this issue.5 H c r argued that the descendants of the 4 million slaves freed following the Civil War in 1865 are entitled today to reparations of $400,000 or so (which is roughly the fair-market value of 40 acres and a mule). And he is convinced that there will always be enmity between blacks and whites until the federal government pays up.Now if the caller were the only black person making this case, I could dismiss his argument out of hand. But the February issue of Emerge, which bills itself as “Black America’s Newsmagazine, informs us that the reparations movement is gaining momentum.Then there's the question of which black Americans would receive reparations. There are few black families today that are 100 percent descended from slaves Indeed, most blacks in this country have at least some nonblack blood relations in their family lineage. That means that most black Americans actually are mixed race, albeit some more so than others.Then there’s the question of economic fairness. Why should average tax-paying Asian Americans or Hispanic Americans or even European Americans (whose forebears owned no slaves) be asked to pay reparations to all black Americans, including the most wealthy? The Oprah Winfreys and Bill Cosbys don’t need the help.The reparationists make their strongest case when they argue that the 30 percent of black Americans who remain mired in poverty may be suffering the residual effects of slavery 120 years later. Emerge cites David H. Swinton, a Harvard-trained economist who is president of Benedict College in Columbia, S C.If you practice slavery, discrimination, racism, or any of those things for some period of time, said Swinton, it does have an impact on
Newspaper Details
Alton Telegraph
Alton, Illinois, US
Tue, Feb 18, 1997
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Alaina P.
NA, 12 Jan 2017
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