Slavery, which still exists in the United States and every country on Earth, is a vile act of not just owning a human being and murdering the human spirit, but profiting off the labor of those owned without reward for whatever work slaves are forced to performed.

When slavery was legal in the United States, slaves took their time performing labor.  They worked toward nothing and had no motivation to perform any tasks to the best of their ability, unlike those who were set up as sharecroppers, who did far more work than their slave counterparts.  Working toward rewards was and is a strong motivational force.

Those who view reparations as a good thing for no other reason than the belief that their ancestors were slaves, even though not every American of African descent is descended from slaves, do so by wanting to profit off the labor of dead slaves.  Wanting to profit off the labor of slaves, even those long dead, is equivalent to morally supporting slavery.

One cannot view slavery as a bad thing and believe profiting off slaves to be a good thing.  The two cannot morally coexist together.  If slavery is morally wrong, reparations are morally wrong.

Considering just how long it has been since slavery was legal in the United States, there are no slaves left living who would be due reparations of any kind.  (Those who suffer under modern-day slavery are never spoken about by anyone who speaks of slavery having a negative impact on them.)  One cannot be owed for labor performed if one is no longer alive.

The United States government never had slavery as part of the Constitution.  Even if, in some miraculous way, former legal slaves were still alive, they would be due reparations not by the United States, but by those who actually enslaved them.  The only people due reparations are those who personally suffered under slavery, not their descendants, and from those who actually owned slaves.

I do not understand how anyone can consider profiting off dead slave labor a good thing.  Slavery is a vile act that should be viewed as a vile act, regardless of ancestry.  Those who believe that it to be a good thing do so out of greed and a broken moral compass.

How could anyone look at profiting off of slavery as a good thing?

In the United States, there is nothing stopping people from succeeding except themselves.  There are no longer laws preventing individuals from achieving anything they wish.  The laws put in place by Democrats that once prevented people of African descent from accomplishing things have been cast aside, and there are no legal hurdles left.

The idea that used to permeate government about the ridiculous notion that race had any bearing on ability no longer exists outside a lunatic fringe.  The eugenicists, like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, have been proven wrong.  The false science they used to believe in at great cost to civil rights no longer negatively impacts a single American, regardless of ancestry.

Ultimately, reparations for those who never suffered under slavery should never happen under any circumstances.  No one should be able to profit off of slavery.  Slavery is an evil act that has rightly been illegal in the United States since the passing of the 13th Amendment.  Profiting off dead slaves is as morally reprehensible as modern-day slavery.

Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue, CC BY 2.0 license.