Reparations Are Morally Wrong

A LAWSUIT has been filed against several corporations for acts committed more than 138 years ago, and from which they are alleged to have benefited from slavery. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, co-chair of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, defends such suits as a means of social healing. But far from repairing the damage of the past, these efforts are calculated to open fresh wounds in the present, promoting new injustices which future generations will be forced to confront.

The Case For Government Reparations Is Based On Selective History.

The reparations claim leaves out the crucial and costly role played by the American government in ending a slave system it did not create and which it paid a heavy price to end, including the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives to end.

The Claims Against Individual Corporations Are Too Old And The Legitimate Claimants Are Dead.

The legal torts against individual companies are so old that no court will recognize them. When the alleged acts were committed slavery was legal not only in America but in Africa. In addition, some of the companies under siege are only connected to companies that existed during slavery through acquisition and merger. Finally the wealth of a corporation must be constantly recreated. Last year Enron was the 7th largest corporation in America. Today it is bankrupt. The wealth of targeted companies like Aetna Insurance is the creation of executives, employees and shareholders alive today, who are black as well as white, and who have no connection to slavery.

The Reparations Claim Diminishes The Moral Crime Of Slavery.

Slavery, as James Madison wrote, "is the most oppressive dominion of man over man." But the reparations proponents reduce the crime of slavery - a monstrous moral evil - to an economic scam. Will money paid now to people who were never slaves provide justice to slaves who are long deceased?

The Movement For Reparations Is A Shakedown Operation.

The lawyers conducting the reparations suits are well aware they do not have a legal leg to stand on. Their objective is not to adjudicate these issues in a court of law, but to cause a public relations nightmare for the companies under siege - to threaten them with a potential loss of customers and falling stock prices. Only a misguided political correctness prevents us from calling this what it is: legal extortion and an unsavory shakedown.

Reparations Claims Are Destructive To America's Social Fabric.

Reparations claims are destructive to the healing process its proponents say they hope to promote. They are an insult to the memory of Dr. King and the civil rights movement of the 1960s that a majority of Americans supported, and that triggered a profound and far-reaching social revolution in race relations.

Americans' recognition of what they have already generously given to repair damage suffered by African Americans will inevitably foster resentments against claims that they are complicit in crimes they abhor and in which living generations had no involvement. Reparations demanded from diverse ethnic communities, who have no real connection to the historic injustice of slavery, will only serve to embitter relations between African Americans and all other American communities.

Reparations suits are not a movement to repair injustice, as their proponents maintain. They are misguided attempts to punish the guiltless and will only make matters worse.