Many people, including blacks, question the current demand for reparations. However, few, if any, call out reparations by their true name, and that name is “Grave Injustice.” There are several reasons why they should be seen for what they are rather than what they promise.

Reparation is defined as “The making of amends for the wrong one has done.” This implies both a currently existing wrongdoer and victim. However, in America, there is no slaveowner (or government official) alive today who can make amends for “the wrong one has done,” nor is there a slave to whom one can make amends. By definition, reparation payments are a “grave injustice” to those forced to pay anyone via their taxes today.

Consider California’s proposal to pay millions of dollars to alleged descendants of slaves. First, California was not a slave state. Secondly, California has a huge population of Asians and Hispanics who were neither slave owners nor descendants of slave owners. The vast majority of American whites before the Civil War didn’t own slaves either. Blacks were also slave owners, but there is no effort to trace their descendants to assign them guilt for their ancestors’ sins. Five Native American tribes owned Black slaves, but their descendants aren’t expected to pay reparations today. Such facts corroborate the overwhelming evidence of their “grave injustice” to people today.

Image: California reparations hearing (cropped). YouTube screen grab.

Politically, the Democratic Party is the guilty party because it was the slave party, the Jim Crow party, the Ku Klux Klan party (lynching both blacks and Republicans), and, very recently, the anti-civil rights party. It has not apologized for its historical role in this injustice, nor has it offered to pay reparations. With most American blacks forgiving the political party most responsible for their ancestors’ or, if elderly, their own oppression, it appears that any innocents of such oppression should not be held responsible for such offenses. That includes most taxpayers of every race. That’s another reason for recognizing reparations as a “grave injustice.”

Relative to this issue is this question: When are guilty blacks in Africa, the ones who kidnapped and sold blacks by the millions into slavery, going to be recognized as oppressors? The same is true for the thousands of blacks who owned slaves in America or were bounty hunters for escaped slaves. Wouldn’t their descendants be liable for paying reparations and denied accepting reparations due to the color of their skin? This historical fact relates to the “grave injustice” reparations represent at this time in history.

Black history cannot and must not be ignored. Neither should free blacks or black slave owners be ignored. Simply put: Not all now-dead blacks were slaves, nor were all now-dead whites slaveowners. Moreover, despite obstacles, millions of blacks are successful in life and represent both the middle and wealthy classes of Americans.

The great black economist, Thomas Sowell, has written:

No way are millions of white, Asian, and Hispanic Americans going to pay reparations for something that happened before their ancestors ever set foot on American Soil. Even those whites whose ancestors were here before the Civil War know that most of those ancestors—whether they lived in the North or the South—owned no slaves.

Seen in this light, the demand for reparations may seem like an exercise in futility. However, seen as a source of a lasting unmet grievance, it is a stroke of genius to keep blacks separated from other Americans and an aggrieved constituency to support black “leaders” in politics, organizations and movements.

Reparations are truly a “grave injustice” to so many.

Nor do wealth gaps justify reparations. People of all races are on the downside of the wealth gap. For many, their economic situation relates more to personal choices in life as opposed to their ancestors’ circumstances. The tendency to continuously compare blacks to whites is unwise and wrongly headed. The United States is multi-racial and full-blown technicolor as to race. Ignoring such diversity and other groups of people is imprudent and irrational.

Any merited reparations, if paid, should come from the guilty political force and party behind black oppression. No innocent parties should be forced to contribute in any way to what can only be recognized as extortion and an illegitimate and immoral shakedown.

Reparations, as currently demanded, aren’t simply an injustice; they are a serious “grave injustice.”